Daily Reflection
June 30, 2025

So often when I read the gospels, I am reminded that Jesus is mysteriously both human and divine. When I first read Matthew’s Gospel today my initial thoughts were about his humanity. But then as the message “soaked” for a couple of days his divinity ever so gently came into focus. I’m always amazed at how this happens.

The first two lines of Matthew’s Gospel tell how Jesus seemed to move away from the crowd of people who came to see him by “crossing to the other shore.” While reading this I could feel myself saying, “Yes, Jesus must have felt overwhelmed by the crowd and wanted to get away for some alone time just like I sometimes do.” I’m not certain if this was true or not, but it was a wonderful reminder for me of the importance of slowing down and finding solitude when life feels overwhelming. And an important reminder that Jesus likely felt the same kind of stress that we do from time-to-time.

But as I was able to sit with the message for a while longer, a deeper and more subtle message became ever clearer. It seems like the overarching theme in this reading had to do with following Jesus in this alternative way of thinking, living, and being. There is something different about his path that we should embrace that is beyond our status quo and “business as usual” way of life. This alternative path calls us to move “to the other shore.” We cannot stay where we are if we want to follow him. And further, this alternative path calls us away from our home. The fox and the bird have a place, a home. But his home isn’t in one single place – it’s everyway. What a wonderful metaphor. To follow Jesus, as the scribe asks, means to expand our minds and hearts away from our home-based usual thinking and into something new. To say, “the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” is not a whining and complaining response to being tired of the big crowds, as this reading may sometimes appear. It’s a wonderful expression of the expansiveness of the Kingdom of God. It’s as if Jesus were saying, “If you want to follow me, be ready to see how all things are included, not just what you are used to seeing at your homestead.” And the metaphors he uses keep getting better as we continue to read this short gospel.

In the final four lines, Jesus is talking to one of his disciples – a close follower of his. And he says something important about being able to follow him. At first read it may seem that Jesus is being harsh and not allowing the disciple the time to bury his own father (someone he no doubt loves). Rather, what he seems to be telling him is more subtle about the attitude and way-of-life of this alternative path. “Let the dead bury their dead.” What a wonderful way to describe how we often feel. It seems like we use a great deal of our minds and hearts worrying, regretting, and replaying. And doing so can make us feel as though we are not alive, maybe even dead. We often use our mind and heart space for thinking about and regretting our past actions and replaying the conflicts we have had, while also worrying about what is yet to come. This use of mind and heart space gets in the way of living in the now – where real life is actually happening. Consistent with the theme of this gospel message, the alternative path of Jesus allows us to break free from this kind of living by not clinging to it and letting it go. This path will give the freedom to cross over to the other shore and not feel tied down to our usual home-place way of thinking. This is what it will be like to be followers of Jesus if we intentionally choose this path. What a marvelous sense of peace this message must have been for those who were able to hear it. No wonder they came in crowds!