What is on your someday list? Most of us carry one in the back of our minds: someday I will get serious about my health, someday I will have the conversation I keep avoiding, someday I will do the thing God called me to do, when there is more money, more time, more clarity, more courage. It sounds responsible, and sometimes waiting really is wisdom. But sometimes someday is just fear with better manners. In Part 5 of Unfiltered, on Thanksgiving Sunday, Pastor Jess DiSabatino opens Matthew 8:21-22 and one of the most jarring exchanges in the Gospels: a would-be disciple asks to bury his father first, and Jesus answers, "Let the dead bury their own dead." It is not cruelty. It is an invitation that will not wait for someday.
Series: Unfiltered
Scripture: Matthew 8:21-22 | Matthew 19:29
Pastor: Jess DiSabatino
Date: October 11, 2026
Key Takeaways
Jesus is not being cruel. He is answering a man who said "not yet." On first reading this saying sounds heartless, and it seems to contradict the Jesus we know: the Jesus who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, who raised a widow's son because he had compassion on her, who thought about his own mother while he hung on the cross. But there is a detail that changes everything. In first century Jewish culture, if a man's father had just died, he would already be home and the burial would already be underway. He would not be out following a rabbi. What this man is most likely saying is: let me go home, wait until my father eventually dies, settle the estate, and then I will come follow you. In other words, "I will follow you, Jesus, someday, just not today." And Jesus, who loves him enough to tell him the truth, answers that the kingdom of God does not work on a someday timeline.
There will never be a right time, so following Jesus happens inside the complications, not after them. Pastor Jess has three guitars on her bedroom wall and a plan to get back into playing someday. She remembered wondering when the ideal time to get married would be, and then when the right time to have kids would be (when the mortgage is paid off, when inflation goes down). Life does not run out of legitimate demands on your attention, and the next season is never less busy than this one. The man in Matthew 8 was not a bad person. He was a responsible son who took his obligations seriously, and Jesus is not criticizing that. He is saying that if you wait for the obligations to clear before you fully follow him, you will be waiting your entire life. And to the young people in the room, Pastor Jess was direct: the decisions you make as a teenager and a young adult tend to set the course for the rest of your life, and life does not get less complicated with gray hair. Do not wait to go all in with Jesus.
Following Jesus will cost you something real, and Jesus names the cost before the return. The man was being asked to leave something real, not something trivial: his family, his obligations, the rhythms that structured his life. Following Jesus has cost people career paths that made sense on paper, the approval of family members who did not understand their choices, and the future they had quietly mapped out. Jesus never pretends otherwise. "Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." He names the cost first because he is not selling anything. Pastor Jess admitted that in her early years as a pastor she preached Jesus as the answer to every problem (and a puppy), but a faith built on what Jesus gives falls apart when life gets hard. It is worth it, not because the cost is not real, but because what Jesus offers is more real than anything you are asked to release. And to parents: the greatest gift you can give your children is your undiluted yes to Jesus.
Name the competing allegiance that is setting the terms of your yes. The man's competing allegiance was a legitimate one, family duty, but he let it set the terms of his response: I will follow you, but first. Jesus turns that around. "I don't follow you. You follow me," and that means he sets the terms. Pastor Jess named four allegiances that often sit in that place. Comfort: a good life that works, so you follow Jesus to the edge of your comfort zone and no further (she does not want to reach the end of her life and hear, "Good job, you followed me to the end of your comfort zone"). Approval: people whose opinion matters so much that the cost of their disapproval feels higher than the cost of partial obedience. Your timeline: a reasonable plan that Jesus keeps interrupting. And grief: a loss, a betrayal, or church hurt that has become a reason to stay exactly where you are. Jesus sees every one of them, and he still says follow me now, not because those things do not matter, but because he matters more.
Let the dead bury their own dead: you are alive, so stop living as if the kingdom has not arrived. Jesus is not being callous about death and burial. He is drawing a contrast between people who are spiritually alive and people whose lives are oriented entirely around the present world. Pastor Jess has been at funerals of saints of God that felt like celebrations, and at funerals where the eulogy was the houses, the retirement savings and the travel, leaving everyone wondering whether there is more to life. This life is a vapor, and the number we wait to reach before we give more and serve more keeps moving. You who are sons and daughters of the King are called to a different kind of life, and people who have encountered the kingdom of God do not get to live as if they have not. So the homework is one question: what is on your someday list that Jesus has been asking for today? It may be small, like devotions with your kids at night or starting to tithe, or it may be big. Four years ago Pastor Jess said yes and called the Calgary Homeless Foundation, with no idea that city councillors would one day stand in the church's auditorium asking why it works. Your yes is not about the size of the step. It is all of me, to all of you. Not someday. Today.
Continue the series. Previous: Unfiltered Part 4 | Love Your Enemies. Next: Unfiltered Part 6 | Take Up Your Cross.
