In fact Jesus ran what we would call a “faith ministry”. He had no visible assets to rely on for His basic needs, but proceeded as God led Him, trusting in Him for what was not clearly provided. Thus He could demonstrate reliance on providence for His material needs. This would have been unimpressive at first, but to people who were more perceptive of providence the cumulative effect must have been to confirm that Jesus was acting in harmony with greater spiritual forces.
The scribe was a professional teacher of the Torah, who derived his social position and perhaps income from teaching the truths of God. As such, he could easily have seen in Jesus a way to advance his own career, and thus have diminished the sense of the eternal value of God's word. Thus, Jesus sought to confront him with the lack of status symbols of His itinerant style of ministry.
There is a similar passage about counting the cost of discipleship in . Following Christ takes total commitment. All ties of money, blood or even self-preservation must be subjected to Christ. Everything that appears to reduce our effectiveness in serving Him needs to be reviewed and possibly discarded.
The logic of this comes from the relative worth of infinite life over finite life. There is nothing wrong with temporal benefit, but a person who has committed himself to Christ will confront the fact that this life is temporary, and only by helping people to a saving knowledge of God will the Christian demonstrate his belief that God will restore actual immortality to the redeemed of humanity. This contrast between eternal and temporal is brought out in the parallel verse , which follows up “let the dead bury their dead” with “but go thou and preach the kingdom of God”.
says “Whoever ... forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple”. The verb translated forsake here is u`pota,ssomai (middle), which means to bid adieu to (L&S), rather than to dispose of. Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell up and give to the poor, but in the requirement for the Christian to “provide for his own house” is stressed. There the greek verb translated provide is pronoe,omai meaning to have forethought and planning, such as setting up a business or other source of income.
Jesus's statement in v 22 seems uncharacteristically harsh. The gentle Teacher who welcomed children and who showed His respect for family ties by defending the 5th commandment in Matt 15, here says to an apparently grieving son, “let the dead bury their dead”. Lamsa however softens the meaning by explaining the request as an Aramaic idiom meaning take care of my father, presumably until he dies.
Also in and
The question that arises in my mind is: What should the disciples have done differently? Why did Jesus rebuke them for being afraid when they appeared to be about to die? People are killed frequently in accidents at sea; why should the disciples have felt they were special?
In the parallel accounts Jesus asked them about their lack of faith after He stilled the waves, whereas in Matthew Jesus's question appears first, and has the word to,te just before He got up up to calm the storm.
Option 1 - calming the storm first
If, as Mark and Luke seem to indicate, (and as in Desire of Ages) Jesus calmed the storm first, there is the sense that He as well felt some urgency, and was rebuking their level of panic, rather than the fact of being anxious, as if the level indicated that they were falling into despair from thinking life had no meaning beyond this life. But the rebuke only came when there was a more relaxed situation, when the waves were calm. Jesus respected danger in John 7:1 “After this, Yeshua travelled around in the Galil, intentionally avoiding Y'hudah because the Judeans were out to kill him” (Jewish NT).
Option 2 - rebuking the disciples first
If on the other hand Jesus rebuked the disciples first, it gives the impression that Jesus felt no great concern for the physical danger, and perhaps had explained God's protection to them earlier. A number of times His life was threatened, but He survived because “his hour was not yet come” (John 8:20). John 8:59, Luke 4:29. The disciples had already witnessed a number of indications of Jesus' special connection with God: the healings, the announcement by God at His baptism. One possibility is that Jesus hoped that the disciples would fully realize the implications of these signs, take hold of their meaning, and base their attitude to life on the corresponding sense of God's power, as the centurion had done earlier in the chapter.
Either way, it is clear that Jesus expects His followers' faith to produce courage in the face of death. An attitude of despair when confronted with mortal danger would indicate that the belief in God's ultimate resurrection of the righteous had not permeated the mind, and was still to some extent held only as a working hypothesis. This is a question for many modern Christians - how can the fact that temporal death is insignificant in the long run guide our response to life threatening situations? When this life is comfortable yet demanding, our hopes tend to be oriented toward what we can directly influence. I suspect the practices of Matthew 6 cover a large part of the answer of how to keep our connection with God feeling real.
Rebukes for lack of faith:A number of times when Jesus rebuked people for lack of faith, including this one, He seems to have implied that since God is able to perform miracles on behalf His followers, there is never a need to worry about basic provisions or His care for us. He expects us to take to a God's eye view. This lesson is similar to the story of Job - never to be downcast by a reversal of fortune.
This miracle fits into the 4 major classes of miracle that Jesus performed:Walking on the water is a disputable instance of protection; the wine at Cana is not quite “essentials of life”; cursing the fig tree doesn't fit into these classes. Otherwise however, all of Christ's miracles do. The fact that each of these 4 classes is clearly covered in Christs's ministry demonstrates God's total concern for human life, and His ability to look after His people in any situation.
The fact that Jesus rebuked the storm immdiately after being woken up shows that He could be ready for spiritual challenges without spending time to prepare for each one separately. His mind was so well developed from constant close contact with His Father that His thinking ran readily in the right direction, even when disturbed from sleep to face a problem. It's true that He may well have known beforehand what He would be called on to do, since He did not rely on His own power and must have known that it was His Father's will for Him to calm the storm. John 10:32 quotes Jesus saying “Many good works have I shewed you from my Father”. John 14:10: “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works”. However, there had been little opportunity for solitude in the preceding day either.
This readiness contrasts with the slowness of even some of the great men of the Bible - Gideon and Moses both took a lot of persuasion from God before they confronted their dangerous situation in His name. This slowness however was as God was calling them from normal life to become leaders.
It is surprising that Jesus stayed asleep during the storm. The fact that He did suggests that He was involved in carrying out a test to allow the disciples to see the way they would react in a life-threatening situation without His words to reassure them. The experience showed up weaknesses in their faith and thus may have prevented them from becoming too independent of the Lord.
This event is also recounted in and .
If we confront the reality of the healing of the demoniacs, the surprising aspect of this event is the way Jesus holds a conversation with a person, or a mind, that has control of its victims by being “inside" them. This is strange, in fact disturbing - it seems to defy the laws of physics, and certainly our everyday conditioning about the nature of minds. Yet Jesus talks to some entity that wants to be allowed to continue to possess physical life forms, by passing into a herd of swine, rather than ending up in “the abyss” (Luke 8:31).
The fact that the demons recognise Jesus gives an insight into the nature of the spirit world. The truths of religion are connected with an unseen order that interacts with ours in ways we don't understand. This fact should limit our presumption of complete understanding. God has warned us not to dabble with the spirit world; possession seems to be an unfortunate downside to exploring something we can't handle.
Something that is unusual about healing demoniacs is that it is the demon that is addressed. Unlike numerous other healings where Jesus addresses Himself to the patient: “Take up your bed and walk”, or “What do you want me to do for you”, or in some other ways asks the patient to participate in the healing, in this case the demon is commanded to leave the individual (Mk 5:8, Lk 8:29), while the individual himself is ignored.
This glimpse into the spirit world leaves a question unanswered: What happened to “Legion” when the pigs drowned? Did they end up in the abyss anyway? Or were they free then to find another victim? Since the spirit world can exert a fascination but only a minimum of knowledge about it is given, what is given is intended to illustrate Jesus' interaction with humanity.
From the accounts in the gospels, the demoniacs approached Jesus without showing any sign of faith and repentance, the usual criteria for a healing. This indicates that when a person is unable to control his own mind, Jesus is able to discern their underlying, unformed disposition. In Luke's telling of this event, the man (Mark and Luke only notice one of the 2) begs to follow Jesus, then when Jesus tells him instead to report “all the things God has done for you”, he does exactly that (vv 38,39). He is clearly grateful, which implies that his mind was ready to be freed of the possession, even if he had earlier entered into that state willingly, and had no way to express his hope to Jesus.
The benefit of Jesus' actions was that 2 individuals were restored to sanity and the area they had made impassable during their demon possession was now usable. But rather than wanting Jesus to teach them the way of God, they ask Him to leave. According to Luke, v 37, the reason was fear, presumably of the intervention of Jesus in the spirit world - the fear starts according to Luke 8:35 when they see the change in the demoniac. This shows up a perverse aspect of human nature - they seem to have accepted the fact of fierce demoniacs blocking the path through their cemetery, perhaps having observed the slow decline into insanity of the men involved. But evidence of Jesus' direct intervention with the “other side” was too disturbing to handle, even though it was a positive intervention.
This shows a lack of faith that God is in control, despite His promises. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”, God asks Abraham in Gen 18:14. God works through our faith. Jesus respected their request, so they missed out on the further blessing that could have been delivered. However, in requesting the ex-demoniac to stay and witness, Jesus shows that He wants to try different avenues to win those who at first reject Him.
In this event Jesus demonstrates His persistence with 2 quite different types of rejectors: those so steeped in spiritual things of the wrong sort that they recognize Jesus as an enemy just from His presence, and those so conditioned by their material, day to day existence that they fail to see the immeasurable value of Jesus's work.