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"Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." —Matthew 8:22 (NIV)

When I told my band director I'd be missing a few practices, he asked why.

"Well, my father just died," I said, "and I need to go to the funeral."

He looked me straight in the eye and said, "What's past is past. But you need to be at all my practices."

If your jaw dropped when you read this, I've accomplished my goal. No, this did not happen. First, I was never good enough to get into band. Second, any band director who says such a thing should be fired.

But Jesus did say this sort of thing. When crowds were pressing in on Jesus, he told his disciples they should all go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. One of his disciples said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."

To this Jesus replied, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

I made up the band director story to help us see how shocking Jesus' words really were. Maybe Jesus should have been fired.

OK, Jesus is Lord and can expect obedience from us in a way a band director can't. But doesn't this seem a bit over the top? I mean, why not let the guy go to the funeral and then rejoin Jesus in a few days? Would that be so wrong? No, probably not. In fact, this is likely what happened. As he often did, Jesus was using hyperbole—exaggeration—to make a point. He wasn't telling people to reject their families—like some cults do. He wasn't trying to put down the fifth commandment ("Honor your father and mother"). He wasn't saying not to mourn the dead.

Instead, this is one of many times Jesus was trying to make it clear that being a loving son or daughter isn't the point. It is part of life, but not the point of it. He was saying that sometimes duty to family conflicts with obedience to God.

Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to China, arriving in 1807 when he was 25. But it wasn't easy getting there. First, his mother told him she didn't want him to leave home until she died. Even though Morrison felt a powerful call to be a missionary, he delayed for the sake of his mother.

After she died, he excitedly prepared to go overseas. But while away at school, he received a letter from his family, begging him to return home to take care of his sick father. At this point, Morrison was in his mid–twenties, and he sensed he had to make a tough choice.

"Honored father, brother and sisters," he wrote back, "the account of my father's [health] growing worse and worse concerns me; but what can I do? I look to my God and my father's God. You advise me to return home. But I have no inclination to do so; having set my hand to the plow, I would not look back." (See Luke 9:62.)

The way God has ordered things, it's clear that the younger we are the more we are to obey our parents. And, yes, that includes the teen years. Unless a parent is abusive or dangerous, honoring them means doing what they say. But as we get older, and especially when we're adults, we have to weigh obedience to anything with obedience to Jesus. Sometimes honoring your parents is the way to obey Jesus—like Morrison's submitting to his mother's plea. Other times, these two loyalties conflict, and Jesus must be followed—like Morrison going off to China.

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