St. Aidan’s Sermons
Winnipeg, Manitoba
The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, March 13, 2011
Lent 1; 8:30 Holy Communion and 10:00 a.m. Litany & Holy Communion
The Ten Commandments #5: “Honoring Parents”
Ephesians 6:1-4; Matthew 4:1-11
Opening Prayer:
Heavenly Father, you have told us to honour our parents; teach us now, by your Holy Spirit, what that means to us in the various stages of our lives, that we may be blessed and your kingdom built up, through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen.
Introduction
As this is the first Sunday in Lent, our gospel from Matthew 4 picks up the themes of Jesus’ spending forty days in the wilderness and his subsequent struggle with temptation. At the heart of his temptations was the devil’s challenge: “If you are the Son of God…” (Matthew 4:3, 6). Jesus had just been assured of his relationship with his heavenly Father at his baptism: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The temptations challenged that very affirmation. If Jesus could be persuaded to doubt his Father’s word, then the devil could derail God’s whole rescue mission for the world.
By highlighting the crucial relationship of Father and Son, this passage points to the importance of the fifth of the Ten Commandments: “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 12:20). I don’t think we often reflect on Jesus keeping this commandment – but he certainly did – both with his Heavenly Father and with his earthly parents. In Luke 2, when he was twelve, after he stayed behind in the Temple to the great consternation of his parents, it says that he then “Went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them” (Luke 2:51). Jesus modelled honouring our parents.
In this fifth sermon in our series on the Ten Commandments, we will do three things. First, we will look at what it means to honour your parents. Then we will look at the blessings that arise out of the obedience to the commandment, including how to hinder the blessings. We will conclude with two specific challenges – handling disagreements with your parents as you grow into adulthood and honouring elderly parents.
Honouring Parents
To understand what it means to “honour” your parents, we will look at Paul’s treatment of the commandment in his letter to the Ephesians (6:1-3): “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honour your father and mother’ – which is the first commandment with a promise – ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’” These verses are set in the context of a longer passage which begins with, “Submit to one another out of reverence for the Lord” (Ephesians 5:21). Paul then proceeds to unpack how submitting to one another works out in three areas of relationships – husbands and wives (5:22-33), slaves and masters (6:5-9) and children and parents (6:1-4).
Now, submission has a very negative connotation for us today – we think immediately of subservience, humiliation, abuse, and so on. But Paul is very careful to link submission with what how Christ has related to us. In his discussion about husbands and wives, he tells husbands to “Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25). We think of Paul’s admonition to us in Philippians (2:5): “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” and how he then proceeds to describe how Christ willingly submitted himself to us as a servant and humbled himself by becoming obedient to death to bring about our salvation. All this was done not in subservience but in freedom. Submission has been defined as “putting another’s interests ahead of your own.” Christ wants to transform us from being self-centred people to being other-centred people. This doesn’t mean being a door-mat with everyone walking over you, but it means humility – a willingness and openness to learn. Submission says, “I might be wrong, help me to see it another way.” Submission also means, “Let me hear of your needs; perhaps I can help.”
Paul uses the word “obey” to show how this submission works out for younger children. (We know he is addressing younger children because he then speaks about fathers “bringing them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” – clearly referring to the younger stages of a child’s life.) Now, the nature of submission to parents obviously changes as people grow up, but the commandment to “Honour your parents” is not limited to age! It does not say, “Honour your parents until you reach the age of 18 or until you leave home.” We will look at how that works out in practice in a few moments, but I think we could expand the meaning of “honour” beyond submission and humility to respect, gratitude, trust, confidence, praise, and care. This becomes clearer as we look at the blessings that result from honouring our parents.
The Blessings of the Commandment
Receiving the blessings: The commandment reads, “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12). Paul expands: “which is the first commandment with a promise – that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” (Ephesians 6:2, 3). This commandment is crucially important for us as good family relationships are at the heart of a healthy personhood and a healthy society.
For example, a person who does not learn to value and respect authority in the home will have difficulty with those in authority he or she will encounter outside the home such as teachers, employers and police or government. All we have to do is look at our society to see this scenario being played out more and more frequently. The more experience I have in ministry, the more I see family relationships as crucial not only for our physical and psychological health, but also for our spiritual well-being, both as individuals and society as a whole.
Why is this so? We come back to the notion of submission. We learn healthy submission through healthy relationships within the family. Because we start off life as self-centred we need to learn how to become other-centred. Parents are to model this attitude as they themselves submit to one another and especially to God. When they do this, God will exercise his authority through them for the benefit of their children, who will, in turn, reflect that model back. With children in healthy submission to their parents, God is able to use their parents as a jeweller shapes a fine diamond. It is as if the father is a tapping-tool in God’s hand and the mother a chipping-tool in the other, applied lovingly and caringly to chip away the rough edges as God fashions a beautiful gem.[1]
Through submission to our parents, we learn to submit to God as our heavenly parent. As they have modelled submission to him, so can we follow. Developing out of submission will come other qualities associated with honouring parents such as I mentioned a few moments ago like respect and gratitude. For example, gratitude; when we submit to the guidance and care of our parents, we realize that they are providing things for us we can not provide for ourselves. We see our need for others and are taught to value sacrifice and so we respond with gratitude. This, too, leads us to thank God, the giver of all good things. We are reminded of our creatureliness, our need to depend on him, and of the sacrifice he has made to save us in Jesus. This all begins with honouring our parents through gratitude, which begins with submission. All this is the benefit of honouring our parents through healthy submission – the blessings of the commandment.
Hindering the blessings: But we all know how easy it is to hinder the blessings. Children can be wilful and disobedient. But parents have a crucial responsibility here. In the Ephesians passage, Paul cautions parents: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Parental authority is to be exercised with great care and must be adapted according to the age of the child. The role of giving love and setting limits for the young child must change at puberty from controlling a child’s behaviour to helping him or her to stand on their own.”[2] This still involves rules and limits but they must be more flexible and negotiated. When Jesus set out on his own to question the elders in the temple in Luke 2, he was exercising healthy and age-appropriate questioning. Wise parents encourage and foster such searching.
However, parents who “exasperate” their children through inconsistent discipline, being over-harsh with limits or providing none at all, giving unfair punishments, and expecting too much or too little can hinder the blessings God wants to give their children through them. Sometimes a parent may see their child as an extension of him or herself, to meet unfulfilled parental dreams or unmet emotional or spiritual needs. Many of us are either recipients or practitioners (or both) of these attitudes. Parents, don’t give your children the incentive to disrespect you, both for their own and your own good.
The following poem sums up the dangers and blessings of parenting:
“Children Learn What They Live”[3]
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
But…
If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient.
If children live with encouragement, they learn to be confident.
If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
The poem demonstrates that attitudes are caught more than taught. The greatest thing parents can do is to model the love and character of the Lord. In this way, you will carry out Paul’s admonition “To bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). As children see your humility and submission to God, they will catch on. This is the greatest responsibility of any parent, to introduce their children to Jesus. It is in the home that there is the first and greatest opportunity to lead a child into a relationship with their Heavenly Father. Pray for them and love them. Give them incentive for honouring and respecting you and so bring blessings upon them and yourselves, as well as society at large.
Specific Challenges
Before closing, I want to look at two specific challenges to obeying the commandment that are the concern of some people here. One is handling disagreements with your parents as you grow into adulthood and the other is honouring elderly parents.
Handling disagreements: What happens if you are a young or not-so-young adult with non-Christian parents and they ask you to do something with which you disagree? What if you are a young couple getting married and are facing a barrage of requests from well-meaning parents but which go totally against your desires and wishes for the ceremony? I was greatly helped in this (because I was facing the first of those dilemmas) by the concept of “creative alternatives.”[4]
In the book of Daniel (chapter 1), Daniel and his three young friends have been taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon and are drafted into the Babylonian civil service. As part of their training, they are provided with sumptuous food from the King’s table – but of course, it is not kosher. What were they to do? Daniel comes up with a plan. He and his friends will go on a vegetarian diet for ten days and then they are to be compared with the other young trainees. The result is, of course, that they appear much healthier and so are allowed to keep their diet. By discerning that the intent of the pagan overseers was not to get them to defile themselves but simply to make them healthy, Daniel’s “creative alterative” respected their authority without compromising his stand. When there is disagreement, discern the good intentions of unbelieving or disagreeing parents and offer an alternative to achieving the same goals.
However, in Daniel chapters 3 and 6, when idol worship and abandoning prayer is required of the young Israelite men, they take a firm but respectful stand against what is demanded and are willing to face the consequences – ending up in the blazing fiery furnace and den of lions. Honouring parents must give way to honouring God if there is no alternative.
Honouring Elderly Parents: What if you are a grown-up child with elderly parents? The commandment to honour our parents changes as one becomes an adult and leaves home; honour looses the thrust of simple obedience and grows in its nature of respect and gratitude. But how does the commandment work out when parents require care and become dependent upon others just as you were dependent upon them when you were a child?
The following story from Joy Davidman’s Smoke on the Mountain[5] illustrates the dilemma we face:
Once upon a time there was a little old man. His eyes blinked and his hands trembled. When he ate he clattered the silverware distressingly, missed his mouth with the spoon as often as not and dribbled a bit of his food on the tablecloth. Now he lived with his married son, having nowhere else to live and his son’s wife was a modern young woman who knew that in-laws should not be tolerated in a woman’s home. “I can’t have this,” she said, so she and her husband took the little old man gently but firmly by the arm and led him to the corner of the kitchen. There they sat him on a stool and gave him his food. One day his hands trembled rather more than usual and the earthenware bowl fell and broke. “If you are a pig,” said the daughter-in-law, “you must eat out of a trough.” So they made him a little wooden trough and he got his meals in that.
These people had a four-year-old son of whom they were very fond. One supper time the young father noticed his boy playing intently with some bits of wood and asked him what he was doing. “I’m making a trough,” he said, smiling up for approval, “to feed you and mamma out of when I get big.”
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while and didn’t say anything. Then they cried a little. Then they went to the corner and took the little old man by the arm and led him back to the table. They sat him in a comfortable chair and gave him his food on a plate, and from then on nobody ever scolded him when he clattered or spilled or broke things.
If we do not care for or honour our parents, neither will our children care for or honour us. But how do we care for and honour aged parents with failing health and the tremendous demands their situations can bring? This can generate much guilt and frustration for us. The psychiatrist Leonard Felder[6] gives three helpful keys to obeying the commandment in a loving and healthy way:
- First, overcome the fear of asking for help and make sure you get as much information and guidance as your parent’s situation requires. Use the expert help that is available in our society. Don’t try and do it all by yourself.
- Secondly, instead of seeing yourself as victimised by your parent’s increasing needs, begin viewing yourself as a “caregiving manager” who is making sure you delegate most of the tasks to someone you trust.
- Thirdly, overcome your guilt feelings and find a way to stay healthy yourself so you can come through for your parent. Just as the flight attendant in a plane safety demonstration instructs you in the event of an emergency to put on your oxygen mask first and then that of the person needing help next to you, so we must keep ourselves strong in order to be able to meet the needs of our elderly parents.
Conclusion
God’s commandments are there to bless us and society as a whole. This is true especially of honouring our parents. The fact that it is not easy to carry out does not diminish its crucial importance. Here are some final practical steps to obeying the commandment to honour your parents and to receiving God’s blessings:
As Children:
• Thank God for the parents you have; they may not be the greatest, but you wouldn’t be you if it weren’t for them
• Thank your parents for their care of you; they have given up so much to feed and clothe and nourish you
• See God working through them; listen to them – it is more important for you to see God using them in your life than even that they understand you
• Learn to forgive them and ask for forgiveness yourself when things go wrong; neither of you is perfect!
• Help them; don’t leave them to do all the work, do your share
• Pray for them
• LOVE THEM!
As Parents:
• Thank God for the children he has given you; they are a trust from him, not your possession
• See God working through your children to show you new things or call you back to childlike trust in Him
• Let children be themselves; don’t try and remake them in your image or project your own ambitions, joys, or failures onto them
• Train them in the nurture of the Lord; take time for family devotions and church life; model Christian attitudes and practices in the home
• Take time to be with them
• Pray for them
• LOVE THEM!
Healthy families are crucial to God’s plan for healthy people and a healthy world. In the power of the Holy Spirit, do your part as children or parents! Honour your father and mother!
[1] I am grateful to Bill Gothard’s “Seminar in Basic Youth Conflicts” for this analogy.
[2] John Townsend, Hiding from Love. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991), pg. 110.
[3] Adapted from Dorothy L. Law, excerpted from Dorothy Law Nolte and Rachel Harris, Children Learn What They Live. (New York: Workman Publishing Co., 1998).
[4] I learned of this through taking a “Seminar in Basic Youth Conflicts” from Bill Gothard.
[5] As retold by 1. John in Ten Steps to the Good Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), pp. 57-58
[6] Leonard Felder, The Ten Challenges. (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 1997), pp. 122-125
