The Summons at Dawn

Today's Poem Inspired by Matthew 8:22

In the dust of Galilee where roads fork toward eternity,  

a voice cuts through the ordinary clamor of the day,  

Follow me.  

Not tomorrow, not when the rites are done,  

not after the last lament has settled like ash on stone,  

but now, in this breath, this heartbeat, this unfolding instant.  

The man stands there, bound by chains of duty forged in love,  

his father cold upon the bier, or perhaps still breathing,  

waiting for the inevitable shadow to fall,  

and he pleads for delay: Lord, permit me first to bury my father.  

A request so ancient, so woven into the fabric of honor,  

that even the law itself bows to it,  

yet the Master turns, eyes like fire on water,  

and speaks the riddle that shatters every chain:  

Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.

What grave is this, where the living toil to entomb the fallen,  

where hands that should grasp the plow of the kingdom  

instead lower bodies into earth that swallows all?  

The dead are many, walking upright beneath the sun,  

their souls entombed in routines of sand and silver,  

in traditions polished smooth by generations,  

in fears that whisper louder than the wind across the lake.  

They mourn the physical corpse with solemn processions,  

with spices and tears and stones rolled shut,  

yet remain blind to the greater death within themselves—  

the death that severs the heart from its true Source,  

the death that turns bread into dust and water into thirst.  

These are the ones who bury, generation after generation,  

carrying forward the weight of what has already ceased to live,  

while the kingdom advances like dawn, unhindered, unstoppable.

The call pierces the veil between worlds.  

Follow me—not as one who adds a new obligation to the old list,  

but as one who redeems the list entirely,  

who reorders every allegiance under the banner of resurrection.  

The spiritually lifeless can attend to the physically lifeless;  

let them wrap the shroud, let them chant the psalms of farewell,  

let them scatter earth upon earth in endless repetition.  

But you, awakened by the word that quickens,  

you who have glimpsed the light breaking over the horizon of history,  

rise and walk away from the graveyard of excuses.  

The kingdom does not wait for mourning to conclude;  

it breaks in now, demanding the whole self, undivided,  

before the sun climbs high and hardens the heart anew.

Consider the paradox etched in those few syllables:  

life calls to life across the chasm of death.  

The one who follows steps out of the procession of decay  

into the procession of glory,  

leaving behind the customs that comfort the numb  

to embrace the adventure that terrifies the awake.  

No filial piety, no cultural reverence, no tender grief  

can stand as barrier when the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,  

when foxes have holes and birds have nests,  

but the kingdom's herald has only the open road and the open sky.  

To delay is to die a little more each day,  

to let the spiritually dead perform their endless burials,  

while true life slips away like mist at morning.

Yet in this harsh command lies astonishing mercy.  

For the Master does not abandon the man to his hesitation;  

he summons him out of it, pulls him toward the narrow gate  

where every lesser loyalty is crucified,  

and only the cross remains standing.  

Follow me, and the graves you leave behind will one day open,  

not to swallow, but to release the captives of death itself.  

The dead who bury will one day hear the shout that rends the tomb,  

but you, if you heed the voice today,  

will walk already in the power of that future dawn,  

proclaiming to the walking dead that life has come near,  

that burial rites are but preludes to resurrection song.

So the road stretches onward, past the tombs of Capernaum,  

past the mourners clustered like shadows at dusk,  

past the excuses that sound so reasonable in daylight.  

One man turns back to the familiar sorrow,  

another steps forward into the unknown blaze.  

The words linger in the air like thunder after lightning:  

Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.  

In them is both judgment and invitation,  

both sword and balm,  

separating bone from marrow, soul from spirit,  

yet offering the narrow path that leads to wide-open life.  

Hear them now, in the quiet hour before the world awakens fully,  

and choose: the procession of the buried, or the march of the risen.