Fifth Word of Community Design - Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 16
The last Sunday in July we began a journey through God’s Words of Community Design. We took a break from this journey through the month of September with all the wondrous goings on of our outdoor service, 9/11 remembrance, homecoming, and youth Sunday. Today, we resume that journey. Let’s begin by reflecting back on what we have covered.
To begin with, what are God’s Words of Community Design? We more often refer to them as the Ten Commandments. The word we translate as commandment, the Hebrew word dâbâr (daw-baw’), literally translates, “word” or “saying,” so we could more accurately describe these not simply as the Ten Commandments, but God’s Words or God’s Sayings, as he called the Hebrew people into a relationship with Himself and with one another. God offered these Ten Words as a description of what it means to live in His Community.
Just to help us remember or to catch us up, this is what we considered with the first four words:
God’s First Word: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you hall have no other gods before me,” reminded us that: 1) This is God’s community, not ours, it was designed and is about God, not us, 2) We are important because God has loved us enough to invite us to be a part of the community, 3) This is not a compulsory community, God has blessed us with free will and we can choose to be part of it or not, and 4) If we choose to be part of this community, God must be first, before everything else. In community this word keeps us in our proper place in perspective with our relationship with others…all are loved and all are invited, we don’t determine who.
God’s Second Word: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…,” reminds us that God cannot be contained in anything in all of creation, because He is the Creator and we are the creature. We cannot manipulate or control God. In community we are reminded that God, and those around us, are not tools for our use, God is in control and those around us are lovingly designed by Him, for His glory, not ours.
God’s Third Word: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,” reminded us that is important that we are careful with the name of God. We are not to use it to frivolously, thereby causing it to lose significant to us (for we cannot diminish God, regardless of what we do). We are not to lose it too sparingly, denying the role that God plays in our lives. And, we are to be careful of our actions and how we represent God to the world, for if we claim the name Christian, then we must remember, as we vowed at our Baptism, that we are ambassadors for Christ in the world. In community, as we treat the name of God with respect, we are reminded of the respect we are to treat those named around us.
God’s Fourth Word: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you hall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt
Today, we come to God’s Fifth Word of Community Design: “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
Dr. Ellsworth Kalas, of Asbury Theological Seminary, points us to a story by the Brothers Grimm as a means to get started in our consideration of this Fifth Word.[i] In the early 1800’s, the Brothers Grimm related a shocking story in one of their collections of fairy tales. It is story number 78, “The Old Man and his Grandson.” Let me share this story with you as it relates so closely to our text today:
There was once 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 his son's wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove, and they gave him his food in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough of it. And he used to look towards the table with his eyes full of tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said nothing and only sighed. Then they bought him a wooden bowl for a few half-pence, out of which he had to eat.
They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old began to gather together some bits of wood upon the ground. "What are you doing there?" asked the father. "I am making a little trough," answered the child, "for father and mother to eat out of when I am big."
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while, and presently began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and henceforth always let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he did spill a little of anything.[ii]
It’s a fairy tale, simply a story that was collected by the Brothers Grimm, and there are different renditions of this story throughout different cultures in the world, but it does give us pause for thinking. Some cultures are good about honoring the elderly…other cultures tend to dismiss folks once they are no longer seen as useful, as being productive for the society around them. If we remember our history well, during the reign of the German Third Reich, it was the sick, frail, and elderly of the Jewish folks sent into concentration camps that were among the first to be put to death, as they were no longer considered useful.
Many of us would argue that that is not so today. We treat our aging parents with much more respect and honor than that, yet consider this story from September 23rd out of Elizabeth City, North Carolina: Elizabeth City Elizabeth City
“But wait a minute preacher. I can’t treat my father and mother with honor and respect. They were abusive, they were neglectful, they were absent. There is no way I can love and honor them.” My brothers and sisters, it is tough, and following God’s word is tough in many situations…many times God will ask us to do things which we do not want to do…and this may be one of those situations. However, we have to note that God understood this. Note, God did not say “love your father and mother,” He said, “honor your father and mother” and the Hebrew words for honor and love are two very different words. God understood that there are going to be parents that we would have a difficult time loving because of abuse, neglect, and absence…so God doesn’t command love of father and mother, He commands honoring them…treating them with respect…looking out for their welfare. God does not command honoring them only if we feel they deserve respect; or honoring them if they have been good to us…God simply says to us, if you want to be in my community, “Honor your father and your mother.”
Why would God emphasize this? Why is this such an important part of living in God’s community? So given the reality of what happens in the world around us, we hear this Word from God that to be part of living in His community, we are to honor our father and mother. Part of honoring father and mother, especially as relating to the Grimm Brothers story, the history of Nazi Germany, and the story out of Elizabeth City, connects us back to lessons learned from the command from a Sabbath rest. Folks, including our aging parents, are of more value that simply their productivity, they are to be valued for who they are, valued plain and simple for the fact that they, like us, are created in the image of God—how we treat others created in the image of God, is reflective of how we treat God.
Consider the placement of this Word of Community Design. We remember that these words were given to Moses on two stone tablets, and we have seen those stone tablets depicted in many different places and in a number of ways, from Charlton Heston holding them in the movies to displays in schools and courtrooms, though that is becoming a thing of the past.
The Ten Commandments are often divided into two categories, how we relate to God and how we relate to humanity. This fifth commandment of honoring father and mother is one that, I guess depending on who is depicting it, either falls on the first tablet which contains those relating to God, or the second tablet, regarding how we treat the rest of humanity. I, along with other scholars, would suggest to you that the difficulty in positioning this Word is more that simply balance of the tablets. God placed this Word fifth for a reason…it is the transitioning Word…it connects our relationship with God to our relationship with the rest of the world.
Remember the words of John in his First Epistle: “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brother and sister, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”[iv] If we cannot honor father and mother, a parent whom we have seen, how can we honor God whom we have not seen.
Before folks think that I am pushing this comparison too far, simply remember how often throughout God’s word, the relationship between God and His people are compared to the relationship between parent and child, even to the point of Jesus teaching his followers to pray, “Our Father….”
We have to understand that some folks have trouble with the parent language with reference to God and rebel against this type of imagery because of what we have mentioned earlier, absent, neglectful, or abusive parents...and we have to approach those feelings with the same grace that God offers to all His children. It is in those cases that we need to remember that this parent-child relationship is an image that is given by God, and we are to remember that we are made in the image of God, not God in our image…we are not to take the image of our parents, especially if they were less than desirable in their parenting, and cast that upon God, but to look at God, and see what true parents are supposed to look like.
So what does this honoring father and mother look like? Does it mean that we are to just have this warm and fuzzy relationship with them that ignores the reality of what we are living in or what they may be doing? No. Remember as I mentioned before, this is a command to honor, to treat with respect, not to love. Honor, in Hebrew, literally means to “make heavy.” I guess this helps us remember that this is not an easy task. Honoring, I would suggest, means that we do whatever it means to do to lift up our father and mother. For some of us that would be easy, they are good to us, it is easy to be good to them; they are living well, they don’t need any help, and in fact, may still be helping us. For others, it is more difficult; they have parents that are struggling, with finances, with health, or even with how they relate to others. Honoring them means making sure they are cared for, that they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over their head. It means making sure that their health needs are met, whether that is aid with medicines, trips to doctor, or meeting direct health care needs. When it comes to their relations with others, the ethics or morality of how they behave, it becomes even more difficult. Honoring does not mean letting your father and mother do whatever they want to do…it does not mean we turn a blind eye to illegal activity—such as stealing or drug dealing; it does not mean we ignore or try to excuse dangerous behavior, such as alcoholism; it does not mean that we endure abuse. It simply means that the way we address these and other situations are ways that will lift that father and/or mother up, that will help them, and will free them from whatever way sin may have enslaved them.
“But preacher, those parents don’t deserve honor and respect.” My friends, aren’t we thankful that when it comes to what we deserve, that we don’t always get what we have earned? Aren’t we grateful for grace? If God gave us what we deserve as a result of our actions, all we would have to look forward to are death and hell…yet God, in the midst of our sin, offers us grace through His Son, Jesus Christ…and it is that grace we are called to extend to others.
And it is that grace that extends to others that leads us to the whole of this Fifth Word…Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Honoring father and mother is not about what they have done for or to us in the past, it is about living into the future. Remember the lesson learned by the parents in the Brothers Grimm story…they saw their child preparing for them, what he had seen them doing for his grandfather. Our children learn from how we treat others, how they are to treat us and those around them. If they learn to treat others with disrespect when they are no longer useful to us or treat them harshly when they have wronged us, then that is how they will treat us and others. Yet, imagine the world if what our children learned from us, imagine the community God has designed for us to live in, when our children, and remember, our children go beyond mere biology, but to all we influence, just imagine a community filled with the grace that God has given us.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. [i] Kalas, J. Ellsworth, The Ten Commandments from the Backside, pg. 47
[ii] http://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/the_old_man_and_his_grandson
[iii] http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-elizabeth-city-woman-charged-with-murder-neglected-her-90yearold-mother-20110923,0,3452652.story
[iv] 1st John 4:20
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