TEXT: Exodus 20:12

Honor thy father and mother...the fifth commandment. It is a commandment that comes to us fully loaded with emotional baggage--baggage from our personal lives and relationships with our own parents or children--baggage from authoritarian teachers who interpret honor as strict obedience--baggage from a culture where the Menendez brothers murdered their parents for money and where Susan Smith sent her own precious children careening into a watery grave strapped dutifully into their car seats.

Yet it remains the task of the church to proclaim a command to honor parents in a world where we often don't even know how to define parents anymore. There are the biological parents, who may or may not live with their children. There are step-parents and in-laws. There are adoptive parents, surrogate parents and people of no relation whatsoever that have taken the role of parents in our lives. Who is this commandment talking about?

And further, once we determine WHO they are, does it matter WHAT KIND of parents they are? Suppose they are abusive, neglectful or criminal? Can a parent have their right to honor waived by their behavior? Suppose the parents are making unreasonable or hurtful demands or suppose the demands of two sets of parents are in conflict? When my biological father and my biological mother are divorcing and ask me during a custody battle who I want to live with, or one is asking me to be unkind to the other, what does it mean to honor my parents?

The questions surrounding this commandment are very real and very urgent. Does it mean, for instance, that when my elderly parents need round the clock care, that I must somehow provide it no matter what the cost to the rest of the family? Is it dishonor to put a parent in a nursing home? What about turning in a drug-abusing parent or a parent molesting a sibling to authorities? For most of his life, my grandfather smoked several packs of cigarettes a day. But when he came to visit our house in Rhode Island, my mother always made him smoke outside. No matter if it was 10 degrees outside and a blizzard was raging; if he wanted a cigarette, out he went. Was that dishonor?

It would be easy to adopt a simple answer and say that this commandment means that young children should do what their parents tell them. But I don't believe that the commandment had any such thing in mind. To begin with, the culture of the Israelites in which the commandments were given, wouldn't have needed to deal with disobedient children in a commandment. It wasn't a problem. If a young child was disobedient, you sold it into slavery or killed it or whatever. End of problem. Children were not people, but property, as were wives. If it wasn't suitable property, you got rid of it. The commandment was not aimed at children, but rather at adults, and the issue was not obedience but honor. Adult children were no longer bound to obey their parents, but somehow they were to show honor.

So what are we to do with the command to honor our father and mother? I want to begin by taking a look at its literal context...giving honor to the people who gave us life and raised us--however many sets of people that turns out to be. Then I want to expand that to see the ways this commandment might apply beyond the realm of nature and nurture.

For both of those things, it is important to look at the word "honor." This word is often translated as "glorify," and just as frequently is translated as "heavy." That sounds like an odd combination of meanings, but we do have something similar in English: "gravity." The law of gravity, which we have courtesy of Sir Isaac Newton and an obliging apple, is a law concerning weight or heaviness. Gravity on a planet determines how heavy something is.

We take that notion of heaviness in the word gravity, and we use it in other places. When we say that an issue has gravity, we mean that it is serious, that it weighs heavily on the mind. A grave concern is a serious concern--one that we should drop everything else to pay attention to. We talk of worship having "gravity"--a seriousness about it that will not tolerate flippant attitudes or idle talk. There might still be joy and laughter, but it is never laughter that mocks or makes fun of the issue, event, or person.

I think we can learn from this what it means to honor. To honor a person is to consider everything about that person with gravity--with weight--with seriousness. When a parent asks a child for something, it is dishonor not to treat the request seriously. When your elderly mother is suffering from Alzheimer's and asks for the sixteenth time who all these people are in her room, giving her honor means to take her seriously--to give her request weight.

There might be several kinds of serious responses. You might decide to tell her who those people are for the sixteenth time. Or, you might say something like, "Mother, this is so hard for me. Your mind is failing and you don't recognize your family around you or remember when I tell you who they are. It must be hard for you too, when you think you are always surrounded by strangers. Can I just hold your hand for awhile?" Both of those responses are serious. Both of them honor the mother as a person. A response like, "Oh, stop it, Mom. I've told you a million times already. You're driving me crazy." does not show honor because it does not take seriously the concerns of the mother.

Putting a parent who needs constant care in a nursing home is not in itself dishonor. When children have made a serious effort to provide care and finally seek out a quality home where they visit their parents frequently, that is honor--even if the parents are not happy about the decision. On the other hand, when a parent is left to waste away in a nursing home where the children never visit and do not inquire after her care--when a nursing home, no matter how grand, is used by the children as a place to dispose of a nuisance, that is dishonor. It is not treating the concerns of the parent with seriousness, it is not giving weight to their needs.

We can turn it around. Sometimes it can be dishonor to keep a parent out of a nursing home, when their condition is such that they could do damage to themselves or others or when they are not really receiving the care they need. The same goes for dealing with parents who are driving and who should not be, with parents who abuse drugs or alcohol, or parents who have committed criminal acts. Honor thy father and mother does not mean automatic obedience and it does not mean always doing whatever your parents want. It means considering all the needs and conditions of your parents with utmost seriousness and striving to do what is best.

My mother's mother abandoned the family to run off with the local undertaker when my mother was just two years old. It was a month before anyone knew what happened to her...she just left. My mother grew up not knowing her...she was raised by her great grandmother. I never met my grandmother until I was in college. But when my mother became an adult, she found her mother and has made a point of keeping up contact, even though it is always one-sided. My grandmother has just had a stroke and my mother flew down to Florida to see her. If there were not children from other marriages to care for her, my mother would provide that. That is honor. There is not the affection that we hope would exist between a mother and a daughter, but there is still honor for the woman who brought my mother into the world.

The reason we are called to honor our parents is out of respect for the fact that without them, we would not be here. They were the channels by which God gave us life and the channels by which God brought us to adulthood. I think that anyone who has had a part in fundamentally shaping our identity is a "parent" to us and needs to be treated with honor--not unquestioned obedience, not doing everything they want--but giving their requests and needs weight and a serious response. "Forget it, Dad, I don't have to do what you say anymore" is not a serious and dignified response. It may be understandable if Dad is unfair and demanding, but it is not honor. You can deny the request while still honoring the parent. "I'm sorry, Dad, but I just can't do what you ask. I've thought about what you said, but it's just not what I think is best. I'm glad you still care enough for me to be interested, and if it turns out that you were right, I'll let you say, "I told you so."

As with any passage of Scripture, we have to consider the message of Scripture as a whole and not just any one passage. Living the Christian life is a matter of balance. If I do what my mother wants, are there any other laws of Scripture that I am violating? If I take my elderly parents into my home, will I still be able to love and care for my spouse and children? If as an adult I continue to do everything my demanding parent wants, will either one of us be able to grow in Christ's freedom and love?

Just as I think this commandment can be broadened beyond just those who are our biological parents, so I think it can be and should be applied beyond people dealing with our biological life. I think "Honor thy father and mother" can also be applied to our parents in the faith...not just those who have had a personal influence on our own personal faith development, although it certainly includes those. But also those who have come before us, who have paved the way for our journey.

I am thinking first of the Jews. Jesus was a Jew, remember, and had no intention of starting a new faith. The Christian faith was born Jewish and makes no real sense apart from an understanding of Judaism. Anti-semitism has no place in the Christian faith. We must honor our faith-parents, and the Jewish faith stands first and foremost among those. Also standing there is the Roman Catholic church. They and their Orthodox sisters carried the message of Christ for 1500 years before we Protestants ever appeared on the scene. And, just like Jesus never intended to start a new faith, but merely to fulfill the one into which he was born...so Martin Luther, the catholic priest who began the protestant reformation never intended to leave the Catholic faith...merely to reform it.

We do not completely agree theologically with either the Jews or the Catholics...that's why we're Methodists instead...but we are betraying our very roots if we neglect to give honor to the faiths that gave us birth. Anti-semitism has no place--neither does anti-Catholic sentiment. We can respectfully disagree, we are not bound to obedience, but we are called upon to show honor both to the faith that gave us Jesus and to the faith that made his name known across the earth.

Honor your father and mother. As the ten commandment broaden from those about our relationship to God to those about our relationship with others, we see that love of neighbor begins at home--in our biological homes, in our faith home. It's not always easy, but remember what the Ten Commandments are for...they are our witness to the rest of the world. They represent the way of living that sets us apart as people in covenant with the God of love and mercy. The idea is that, in living according to these commandments, we will show to the world the nature of the God we serve.

We are not to honor our parents just because they deserve honor. Many times they don't deserve honor. We are to honor our parents because that proclaims the nature of God...a God who gives honor to us--who treats our requests and our needs with serious consideration, even when we don't deserve it. We call that grace. Although it seems like the Ten Commandments move from giving commands about God to commands about other human beings, we must never forget that all of the commandments are really about God. We obey them to show God's nature to the world.

When we take God's name upon ourselves, when we agree to enter into covenant relationship with God, we have agreed to be priests for the world--that is to help the world come into contact with God. In the Ten Commandments, God tells us how to do that--live this way and you will be faithfully proclaiming who God is. In this case, God is the one who gives honor...whether it is deserved or not.

God patiently listens to us and gives our desires and needs serious consideration, even when we are whiny and demanding...even when we have never given God so much as the time of day...even when we fail to remember what God told us the last sixteen times we asked...even when we are trying to tell God how to run the world. God may have to tell us "no." But it is always said with love, with honor, with full remembrance of our limitations. Honoring our fathers and mothers is no more than doing for them what God does for us every day...and in this crass and violent and vulgar world, what a witness that is to the God whose nature is love.

Amen

(c) 1999, Anne Robertson