10 Keys To Successful Living
5 – Remember Where You Came From
Ex 20.12

This semester I’m taking Hebrew at the divinity college. The Hebrew classes are a bit different from the other classes in the college because they are also the Hebrew classes for the religious studies department. So, my class actually spans three generations. There are undergrads in their late teens and early twenties, and there’s at least one grandparent with grandchildren in their teens.

Last week a bunch of us got to talking about generations, especially the idea that each generation is smarter than the one before it. It’s a very common idea, even though it isn’t actually true, any more than the idea that Westerners are somehow smarter than people living in simple societies in the middle of the jungle. Access to more data doesn’t necessarily make you smarter.

But this idea that each generation is smarter than their parents does point out a common trend in our society. We tend to value our future more than our past. We value youth over age, novelty over tradition. So perhaps this morning’s text is even more relevant to us than it was to the people who originally heard it at Sinai.

We’re in the middle of a series on the Ten Commandments, and this week we’re looking at number five, “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

This is for everybody, not just children

Now, you may be sitting there thinking that this command only applies to children and that you’re off the hook for this one. The problem with that is that these commandments were given to the whole community of Israel gathered at Mount Sinai… and the great majority of them were adults. So, if last week’s message about taking time out applies to us, and if next week’s message about not murdering people applies to us, so does this one.

 So, what does it mean to “honour” your father and mother?

The basic idea behind the word honour in Hebrew is the idea of weight. If you honour someone or something you treat them as something of significance in your life, something weighty. So this command is about not taking your parents lightly; it’s about treating them as something significant and heavy in your life; it’s about taking them very seriously in your life.

Now, in the early years, this all happens very naturally. For a very young child, their mother and father are everything.

[I was at a Thanksgiving dinner on Friday night at the headquarters of a mission here in Hamilton and there was a little Korean girl wandering around crying and looking for her mother. She didn’t want anyone else, just her mother. (Her mom was playing a game that involved putting on silly hats so the little girl had come to the door of the room and looked in but not recognised her mother because of the hat she was wearing.)]

Young children only want their parents. What their parents think of them is the only thing that matters. And, up to a certain stage, children see parents as absolutely perfect.

But as children grow up this changes, as it should. We’ve all become more independent of our parents. Our lives give other people and other influences greater weight. When we get married we “leave” our parents and “cleave” to our partners, and they become more central in our lives. Also, as we grow older we become more aware of our parents’ faults. We realise that they’re imperfect and make mistakes, that they sin. It’s at this point that God taps us on the shoulder and says: “don’t grow so removed from your parents, or so disillusioned with them, that you stop giving them a place of weighty importance in your lives.”

Now, I want to make clear that I’m talking about ordinary, every-day parents here. None of us have had perfect parents, simply because our parents are human, just like we are. Martin Luther said this command tells us to honour our parents no matter how “lowly, poor, frail, and strange they may be.” This is for those of us who have parents who sometimes drive us crazy, or whose faults are very plain to us. God says that we are to honour our imperfect father or mother, partly because we too will be imperfect fathers and mothers.

But I believe there is a difference between honouring imperfect mothers and fathers and honouring abusive mothers and fathers. I spoke about that a couple of years ago and if you go to the church website and click on “sermons,” then “archives” you’ll find a series on “Abuse and Recovery” that addresses that topic. So, I just want to make it clear that I am not addressing those kinds of relationships.

 Jesus affirms this command

Having cleared that up, let’s take a minute to see what Jesus said about this commandment. He refers to it in Matthew 15.4-6 when he confronted some of the most religious people who lived at the time, who thought they had found a way around this commandment.

And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honour your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.” But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honour their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

This was a group of people who thought they had found a loophole in the commandment. They said that scripture allowed them to take resources that might have been used to support their parents and dedicate them to God, meaning that they would no longer be required to do anything to financially support their aging parents. In essence, they thought they had found a way out of financially supporting parents by playing the spiritual trump card. Jesus had no time for this. He said that this is actually a way of nullifying the word of God. They not only violated a commandment and disrespected their parents; they also showed complete disregard for the word of God.

The apostle Paul says the same thing in 1 Timothy 5.8, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Providing financially for our family is a spiritual issue, not just a financial one. If we don’t do this, it shows that we haven’t fully grasped the gospel.

Honouring parents has deeper consequences

So, we’ve looked at who the commandment was addressed to: mainly adults like us. And we’ve looked at what it means: to take our parents seriously and give weight to what they say. And we’ve seen that Jesus himself affirmed this commandment and rebuked people who were trying to get around it.

But this commandment has deeper consequences than just how we treat our immediate family. This is the only commandment that has a promise attached, a promise that fits really well with the overall title of this series “10 Keys To Successful Living.” It says, “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

Now, this promise was given to the people of Israel who were actually on their way to the Promised Land which the Lord was giving them, the land that would eventually become Israel. But it still holds true, because in Ephesians 6.3 Paul makes it into a general principle. He quotes Exodus 20.12 and applies it to the believers in Ephesus, 1000km away from the Promised Land, “Honor your father and mother that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

For our identity

When we honour our parents we recognise that the world didn’t begin with us. It’s very easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that we are the smartest, the most compassionate, the most knowledgeable generation that has ever walked the face of the earth. It’s very easy for each new generation to be so full of itself. Honouring our parents is a very simple way of remembering where we came from, both literally, in the biological sense, and figuratively, in the sense that our parents are the most recent link in a chain that reaches back in time and connects us to the past. They are the most recent link to our family history, our family story.

When I used to teach English as a Second Language this was a practical issue. When families migrate to Canada the children usually become much better at English than their parents. As a result, family roles are reversed and children speak for the family. They explain the new systems to their parents, rather than the parents teaching the children. It’s very easy for the children to dishonour their parents and think of them as stupid. And, when it comes to the third generation, there is often a total breakdown of communication between grandparents and grandchildren. That chain connecting the younger generation back into their family story is broken and they struggle to find their identity.

Honouring our parents helps us locate ourselves in history and, as a result, helps us to have a more realistic view of ourselves.

For society

And it doesn’t just have personal consequences. Throughout the church’s history, Christians have seen this as a command that applies not only to our relationship to our parents, but to authority structures in general. You may roll your eyes and think that they’re taking things a bit too far, but think about it for a minute. Martin Luther said, “Out of the authority of parents, all other authority is derived and developed.” Think about it. Small tribal groups are led by elders, who are related in some way to everybody they lead. As societies get more and more complicated those leadership structures get more complicated too. But, even in a complex society like Canada, the basic unit is still the family. The family is where we learn to care for one another. The family is where we learn to do as we are told, even if we don’t want to. The family is where we learn that sometimes we have to bend to the will of others. Honouring our parents is a big part of that.

On the other hand, whenever the basic structure of the family breaks down, it threatens the well-being of the entire society. Life becomes diminished for everyone. But when we honour and care for our parents, we create a social climate that enhances the possibility of a good and long life, not only for each person but for society as a whole.

How do we honour parents?

So, how do we honour our parents, practically?

As I said at the beginning, our culture doesn’t really value the past as much as the future. We don’t value age as much as youth. So we need to hear the message of Exodus 20.12. This is a message that is pretty countercultural. Most of us have been taught to question authority. Our children are taught to be autonomous at a very early age. We tend to be very individualistic. So this commandment challenges us in some very practical ways.

As a young adult do you continue to include your parents in your decision making process? That doesn’t mean that you always do as they say. (Marilyn’s parents would have much preferred us to stay here in Canada than go to Pakistan.) But it does mean including them in your decision making so that you get the benefit of their wisdom and so that they feel heard.

As an older adult are you caring for your parents in ways that serve them, rather than your own needs? Marilyn’s mum has Alzheimer’s. When she was first diagnosed she set about writing a life story. It’s in a big binder. On Saturdays Marilyn goes up to the nursing home and reads Mum’s own life story back to her. (A bit like “The Notebook.”)

The Grimm brothers collected folk tales in what is now Germany in the early 19^th century. You know some of the stories they collected; Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella. One of their lesser known stories is of a very old man, “whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run out of his mouth.” His son and daughter-in-law became so disgusted by him that they banished him from the table, and when he broke his bowl they made him eat out of a trough.

One day the couple’s son, who was four years old, began to make something out of wood. The parents were touched and said, “What are you making?” “I am making a little trough,” answered the child, “for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.” The couple looked at each other and wept, realizing that they were teaching their son how to treat them when they got older. And they brought the grandfather back to the table, and from that point on they always let him eat with them, and they never complained even if he did spill a little of anything.

You get the idea. The way that you are treating your parents as adults is teaching your children how to one day treat you. How this applies will look different in every circumstance, but the principle is clear: honour your father and mother. How are you doing in keeping this command? We need to ask how we are caring for our parents financially, socially, emotionally, because how we care for them has an impact far beyond our immediate family. It affects our whole society.