Christ’s Call to the Bereaved

“And another of His discit’lcs said, Lord, suffer mc first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.”

Matt. viii. 21, 22.

^^^UFFER me first to bury my father” 1^^ — to finish the days of mourning for my father. What the young man really meant was that he did not feel in spirits for joining such a public cause as that of Jesus — involving, as it did, such contact with the world; he wanted for a while to nurse his grief in seclusion. There are many whose sorrow takes the form of this young man’s sorrow. We have a tendency in the time of bereavement to resist locomotion, to keep within doors, to go nowhere. I believe this fear of going out springs from the dread of coming hack. I once urged a bereaved lady to seek a temporary change of scene. She said she would go at once but for the terror of returning — of meeting anew the old haunts without the old accompaniments. To come back to the old house and find no welcome there — to enter the hall and miss the former greeting, to mount the stairs and hear no footstep descending to meet me, to see the familiar chair without its occupant, to experience the blank in spots which once were full — all this is reaped by the bereaved heart in coming home. It reminds us of the poet’s plaint when he stood by a familiar sea and heard the breaking of a familiar wave, but missed “the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.” The heart that has not buried its sorrow refuses to go out because it dreads returning.

And yet, my brother, Jesus bids thee go. As He bade the young man, so He bids thee. Thou canst not cure thine own sorrow by nursing it; the longer it is nursed, the more inveterate it grows. It will be harder for thee to go out to-morrow than it is to-day; it will be harder ^//7/ the day after. Thou canst not cure thy sorrow by nursing it; but thou canst cure it by nursing another’s sorrow. Thinkest thou that Jesus wanted this young man to be a stoic! Was it from the ties of the heart He called him when He said “Follow me “? No, it was to the ties of the heart — other ties of other hearts. It was no foreign scene to which Jesus called him — no scene foreign to his grief. Not from the graveyard into the dance did He summon him, but from the smaller into the larger cemetery. Thither in thine hour of sorrow does He summon thee. He bids thee bury thy sorrow, not in Cana, but in Gethsemane — not in the winecup, but in the common pain. It is by tears He would heal thy tears; it is by grief He would cure thy grief. Come out into the larger cemetery; come out to meet the common pain! By no frivolity will He dry thine eyes. To follow Him is to follow the cortoge of all the Nains and Bethanys. To follow Him is to follow the stream of universal human suffering. Bury thy sorrow beside that stream!