SR October 2015
15
promise at the end. You take care of your parents, and if every-
one follows suit, you will be taken care of in your old age. “That
you might live long in the land…”
The Pharisees were dodging Social Security tax, but face to face,
with their own parents. Jesus rebukes them, quoting Isaiah
saying, “You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far
from me.”
You are using a legal loophole. I am after your heart. We will
come back to Matthew 15...Jesus lays it out so clearly, really
summarizing all of the commandments:
it is all about the
heart.
What is so important about parents?
So we have two very practical applications, but if this applies to
all of us (my parents aren’t in a home yet), and if it is all about
the heart, what is so important about parents?
This is in the top 10.
Only two human relationships are called out in the Top Ten
Words, written by the finger of God, spoken to all the people
(three if you count “neighbor,” but that’s a little more generic):
your parents and your spouse. Your parents come first. The Ten
aren’t necessarily arranged in descending order of importance
(in fact I think this one comes here for a different reason) but
this is top billing. This honoring is really important.
Parents are universal, founda onal and representa ve.
We all have parents. No matter who you are, no matter how
involved they end up being, every human being on the planet
has parents. This is a universal. So God speaks here into the
universal and fundamental human arrangement.
They are your earliest social relationship. The way you relate to
them forms and shapes the rest of your life. You learn how to
relate to others, how to love and honor others. Every interaction
you have with them throughout life is magnified by those early
times. Freud got crazy, but he was on to something here. You
are who you are in relation to them. Just as damage and
wounds or even abuse in that relationship cascade through
the rest of your life, so health and love strengthens the rest of
your life. What is your responsibility in a healthy parent-child
relationship?
Honor.
There is a sense in which your parents
already
weigh
a lot in your life, regardless of what you admit.
They loom large in your life. They have power. They have affect
in your life.
Honor recognizes that…
the scales are pped toward your
parents.
And, finally parents are representative.
From Ver cal to Horizontal
We are in the midst of a shift in the Ten Commandments from
“Vertically focused Commandments” (the holiness of God,
teaching us to love God with all our heart, mind and strength)
to “Horizontally focused Commandments” (teaching us to love
our neighbor as ourselves).
The last two commandments we’ve studied bridge this gap. The
Sabbath is God’s Sabbath, rooted in His Creation, an invitation
into His holiness. It is made
for
man. It is rest. It is celebration.
It is freedom from slavery. It is an awesome chance to learn to
love one another as well as love God.
(May 2015 SR)
Now we look at the fifth commandment: honor your father and
mother. The horizontal component is immediately obvious.
In the ideal, through our parents, we learn to love and honor
others.
But we also have “father and mother” as a living metaphor for
God. Hundreds of times, God calls Himself our Father. Occasion-
ally, poetically, there are maternal references. Profoundly, Jesus
calls Him Father, which means in the very heart of the Trinity, in
the midst of eternal 3-in-1, there is this kind of relationship —
this kind of Honoring happens in the being of God from eternity.
When we picture the ideal father/mother-child relationship,
we see how this plays out. Children depend upon the parents
for life — their life proceeds from Mom and Dad: their daily
bread, their knowledge, each moment is from their parents. At
the start, in the ideal, this Honoring (weighing heavily) happens
automatically. Mom and Dad loom large, they are the stuff of
the child’s life.
Now this shifts as children grow. Children get to know Mom
and Dad as persons — that echoes our growing relationship
with God. But they also get to know that Mom and Dad aren’t
actually omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent beings. True
story. So they are prepared to discover the Truth behind the
metaphor, the Being, the Heavenly Father who is everything
they once thought Mom and Dad were and more. In the ideal
circumstances, this interplay of metaphor, of relationship — us to
God, us to parents — continues to teach and mature us. We learn
to honor our parents, and so we learn to honor God. We honor
God even as we honor our parents. And we learn, in the oldest
relationship we have, how to love others as a reflection and
continuation of our love for God.
Parental honor becomes Divine honor. Divine honor commands
Parental honor.
Parental love becomes Divine love. Divine love commands
Parental love.
It’s a vicious circle! A feedback loop: earthly family to Heavenly
family. Horizontal to Vertical — from that closest, earliest
earthly relationship, we extend out to love our neighbor as
ourselves.
How Much Do Your Parents Weigh?
Are They Worthy of Honor?
So, the question for you is, how much do your parents weigh?
Are they heavy? Too personal?
Tip the scales toward your parents.
Among all your relation-
ships, give a little extra weight to your parents simply because
they are your parents. When they speak to you, lean into what
they are saying. Listen a little harder. When it comes to time,
tip the balance in their favor — give them more time than you
would others simply because they are your parents. When you
speak about them, honor them in your words.
Full disclosure: honoring my parents is natural and easy. My
parents are worthy of honor. People who know them honor
them for who they are, without having a Commandment to do it.
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