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“On Honoring Thy Father and Mother”
Sermon by Catherine W. FitzGerald July 31, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you,” commanded the Lord. The word “honor” comes from the root word in Hebrew meaning “burdensome.” So, perhaps we could retranslate this fifth commandment: “Accept the burden of your father and mother.” And burdensome it truly seems when we refer to the great works of our tradition. Our Larger Catechism reads: “By ‘father’ and ‘mother’ in the Fifth Commandment, are meant not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts; and especially such as by God’s ordinance are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth.” Or, even more burdensome seem the words of John Calvin: “when honor is spoken of here, it doesn’t simply mean that children ought to make a display of affection for their father[s] and [mothers], to tip their hat and make a bow, for God does not care to be entertained in such a way…. In brief, a child ought to understand that he is not at liberty with respect to his father and mother…rather [the child] must be subject to them and serve them to their fullest capacity.” I appreciate that children need discipline from their parents—I appreciate that our society may function best when respect and honor are given to authority. But somehow, I struggled a great deal this week with this seemingly simple commandment. I couldn’t help but think of all those parents and authorities gone wrong… and how their children or inferiors might feel when asked to submit to various sorts of abuse. I have not been able to put out of my mind pieces of Scripture that have left me wondering how this commandment, or these interpretations of this commandment could be justifiable. I have always been troubled by Paul’s words from Ephesians concerning slaves and their masters, or images of the slave-girl Hagar fleeing to the wilderness only to be told by God to return to Abraham and Sarah in submission. I have been worried that to stand here and preach about honoring authority will send the wrong message to all those who’ve suffered in submission. I had even considered standing before you and daring to announce in the decent and orderly Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill that I just don’t agree with the church’s interpretation of the commandment. But in the final analysis, to throw out all interpretations that could be hurtful to certain individuals paralyzes our ability to understand the commandment’s meaning…and, quite frankly, paralyzed my ability to write about the commandment. And I will suggest later that it is our 21st century, post-modern sensibilities that have created in us an uneasiness surrounding such “universal” laws. But in order to fully understand this commandment, we must first examine the context in which it was given and received…we must go back to the wilderness…back to Sinai. “Deeply etched upon Israelite tradition is the understanding that the people of Israel had their origin in the wilderness,” writes Bernhard Anderson. Those who followed Moses in the flight from Egypt were a “mixed multitude” according to the Exodus account. Any commonality was found primarily in their desire to be free from slavery. Anderson explains: “Clearly, this motley band lacked the conscious identity, the commitment to a common way of life, and the shared experiences that constitute a people, a historical community.” But it was amidst the wilderness of Sinai that this motley group became the “people of YHWH.” It is within this context that the newfound community of God’s chosen people received the Ten Commandments—laws that would account for much of their growing identity as a nation. At the time, the Israelites lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle. People living in such a way do not tend to have individual possessions: all things are held in common by a clan or tribe. Because of this interdependence, families were extremely important, existing as strong entities within the community. We must understand that the commandments given to the Israelites worked to inform their growing knowledge of what it meant to be God’s people. The revelation to Moses and thereby to the Israelites at Mt. Horeb was not a revelation for individuals—it was for a specific community—God’s chosen people. It can be assumed without too much risk that the Decalogue was first and foremost directed to the adults—most probably to the male adults of the community. Though younger members of the community were not excluded, they are probably not the focus of the attention here. Walter Harrelson believes that we misunderstand the commandment if we believe it a design “to keep young children in line, to keep them tractable and dutiful and respectful of their elders.” He believes the fifth commandment, in this first context, addressed the treatment of older parents by the mature members of the community: “to curse one’s father or mother means to treat them as of no consequence or value, to wish them removed from the scene, to desire their obliteration.” Taking care of the aged members of the community would help to ensure that care was given to those in need of it. It also represents the value of life to God. “The commandment calls upon every human being to refrain from any action that would denigrate the life and worth of anyone, even those who may have lost much of their ‘commercial’ worth. Especially singled out are those human beings on whom one’s own life has depended,” writes Harrelson. And in addition to valuing God-given life, caring for the elderly would ensure that their stories would be told. “In both the theological and the social contexts, no individualistic motif was meant when this commandment was delivered to the whole of the community. Its intent was to keep the community intact as a people of God who would be unified in belief and formed through a code of behavior proceeding from that belief,” writes Elise’s beloved Bishop Spong. Individualism was unknown to the ancient Hebrews. The mother and father, in this commandment’s original theological perspective, were matriarchs and patriarchs of the faith. Parents were honored primarily because they were storytellers. This was the way to keep the faith alive. [To take a brief tangent, I want to emphasize here how important it is to listen to the human story. The foundation of our faith springs from listening to the story of Scripture over and over again. And yet, how often do we truly listen to one another? In my chaplaincy training I learned that very seldom does someone tell you a story without significance (whether they realize it or not)…and we would recognize this, if only we had ears to hear, hearts to listen, and, most of all, the spirit to be patient. In my mind, there is perhaps no greater way to honor someone than to listen to their story.] Back to the point, the commandments served as a formational gift for the developing Israelites. In this specific way, God oversaw their freedom and formation. He fed them and nurtured them…and from time to time, threw in a little “tough love” for good measure. This is part of what God has done to uphold his community—to set in place standards by which his people must live. This is how God has been a parent to us. And this is perhaps why, in transitioning from the commandments concerning love of God to those concerning love of neighbor, God begins with the parent-child relationship. It is generally through parents that we first learn of God and God’s promise…and part of living within this covenant community means ensuring that knowledge of God will move on through the generations. We do this when we baptize children, when we participate in teaching ministries, when we study together, when we worship together, when we serve together… in our churches, in our homes, in the world. We do this when we care for the elderly members of our community, returning to them the gifts we have been given by their presence. So why, then, when such good is reaped from obedience to this commandment should I keep falling back to the exceptional stories of harm done in commanded submission? On the one hand, I believe it is absolutely my duty, an essential part of my ministry, to attempt to be sensitive to all circumstances. But in this process, I have realized that if we throw out the entirety of the commandment to avoid the risk of offensiveness, if we dispense with its universality, we miss its universal, communal aim. And now I return to the point I began earlier: that it is our 21st century, post-modern sensibilities that have created in us an uneasiness surrounding such “universal” laws. As opposed to the interdependent family system that became the Israelite people, it seems that prioritization of community has greatly diminished in this time and place. Today, we are more concerned with individualism than community. We are often afraid of sacrificing the interpretational freedom of individuals for the freedom that comes with community. In an essay addressing the commandments in a post-modern world Philip Turner writes: “My sense … is that within mainline Protestantism the Ten Commandments have been displaced … by more personal and subjective standards for measuring the health of society and the state of the soul…. Instead of suggesting the way people are to walk before God, instead of inscribing a common moral law, instead of being a light to the feet of lost humankind, they suggest unpleasant, even destructive, limitations on the lives of individuals that diminish the diversity of societies, constrain the freedom of persons, and inhibit the development of selves. The notion of commandments, in short, cuts across the very way in which we now describe ourselves as moral agents; i.e., as individuals, persons, and selves who are free agents with rights rather than embodied beings with intellect, conscience, and will, placed by God in a morally ordered universe in which we are to live in obedience to a moral law.” He concludes: “The Ten Commandments do not fare well under the postmodern banners of personal flourishing and pluralism.” Have we, especially in the moderate-to-liberal church, undermined the importance of such ordinances so that we might feel more comfortable with one another? Calvin addresses this issue in his sermon on the fifth commandment. He writes, “when we see that the law of God is about to crowd us, then we want an excuse to exempt ourselves from being under its subjection.” Perhaps this need for openness to the individual serves as an excuse to exempt us from responsibility. Perhaps, falling into a similar reasoning as the Pharisees of Matthew’s text, we bypass the heart of God’s commandments in order to avoid the burden. In Matthew’s account of Jesus and the Pharisees, the disciples are accused of ignoring hand-washing practices. In response to accusations that Jesus has broken the “tradition of the elders,” Jesus points out that while they are busy with the minute details of the law, they have missed real adherence to God’s commandments. He answers them: “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God’, then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.” “So for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.” I do not believe that any of us can be accused of over-zealously following the minutia of the laws of the Pentateuch, thereby overlooking God’s word. However, we are not so innocent as we’d hope. Turner might say that our “tradition” in post-modernity is individualism, and in it, we have lost sight of the communal aspects of God’s desires for us. With Jesus’ entry into our understanding, we remember his summary of the Decalogue: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And, I must add, in summarizing the commandments he does not obliterate the legitimacy of the Decalogue, but rather reminds us of its aim: that God’s community understand what it takes to love God and neighbor. We do not love God in a vacuum. The Decalogue was given to a community people, and as Christians, we are called to this community: the communion of saints. Commandments one-through-four do not suffice without the commandments concerning neighbor that follow. It is in our interactions with our fellow human beings that we begin to experience the best of what God’s gifts of community offer us. And, lest we forget our commandment for today, it is with our parent-figures that we begin to understand what God’s love really means. To honor our mothers in fathers, whether they are guardians by biology or spirit, means to listen to their story. Sometimes honor comes in the form of obedience, sometimes in mutual care, and in the final stage of life, it means bearing their burden—caring for the ones who dared to bring us into this world. Let us go forth this day reminded that this life we have been given was gifted to us by God and through our parents. We have been given a community in which to live and grow as God’s people. We have been given God’s Word to serve as our foundation, his commandments to enable us to serve God and neighbor. And in the end, let us remember that the greatest burden was not ours, but God’s; that the ultimate gift was that of his only son, who bore our burden to the cross. In His name, Amen. |