The Park Road Pulpit

Once there was a little old man, of trembling hands and feeble eyes, whose uncertain table habits became increasingly offensive to the daughter-in-law with whom he lived, until one day she objected vigorously to her husband, the old man’s son. She and her husband took the fumbling old man to a corner of the kitchen, set him on a stool, and gave him his food in an earthenware bowl. Now he was no longer troubling them by his dribbled food; now the tablecloth was no longer soiled by his trembling behavior.

One day, in his trembling, he dropped the bowl and broke it. Now the daughter-in-law ceased even her moderate civility. “If you are a pig,” she said, “you must eat from a trough.” And they made a little wooden trough, and he ate from it.

The pride of their lives was their own four-year-old son. One evening they noticed the boy playing with blocks of wood in the serious fashion which children so often invest their play. When the father asked what he was doing, the boy said with an engaging smile, “I’m making a trough to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big.”

For a while the man and woman just looked at each other, not saying anything. Then they cried; and then they went to the corner and led the little old man back to his place at the table. They gave him a comfortable chair, and put his food on a plate. And never again were they really, deeply troubled by the food he spilled or by the dishes he occasionally broke.

They had learned that, in honoring a parent, they possessed their own future.[1]

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. (Luke 14.25-33)

I have always been told that I look a great deal like my father. This was proven to me time and time again in my youth. On more than one occasion, somewhere across the state of South Carolina from my home-town, performing in a band concert or in a tennis match, someone has come up to me to say, “I don’t know you, but I know you are Russell Dean’s son.” It was a sometimes heavy burden,[2] to be a young person, trying to “make my mark” in the world, and doing so with a virtual stamp across my forehead that said, “Property of Russell Dean.”

It was many years later that it occurred to me that he, too, might have felt the burden of having a teenage replica running around town and country, carrying his identity, acting in his name -- and without his consent. It was quite a jolt when at last I realized the gravity that my own actions carried. I did not act alone. Like it or not. Because I could be so easily identified, and because everywhere I went so many people seemed to know my father, I was challenged rather early to “honor my father” with my every action. And as a father now, I am already experiencing the first twinges of that parental concern. Sometimes they open their mouths, and I wince. There is absolutely no telling what they’re going to say!

Of course Amy and I know, as so many folk have reminded us over and again that parenthood is wonderful -- and worth all of the headaches (yada, yada, yada). But, sentimentalize the relationship with our mamma’s and daddy’s as we may, there is not a one of us who does not know how difficult this relationship can be. Teenagers in the crowd -- you are not the only ones who have trouble getting along with your parents! And, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Sometimes it only gets worse!

…the relationship between the grown child and the parent is not a simple, romantic, nostalgic, sentimental relationship. It is a relationship of conflict and tension that needs to be resolved or, at the very least, faced. It is a relationship of love and hate, of dependency and rebellion, of displacement and identification. When you get underneath the sentimentality that surrounds the cultural image of motherhood and fatherhood, you have touched one of the deepest guilt-producing emotions of human life.[3]

As my grandmother said to my mom, at the birth of her first child, “Helen, you’ve had your last worry-free night’s sleep. They never stop being your children.” And as I watched my mother care for my 96-year-old grandmother, as many of you have done for your aging parents, with an inexhaustible care and concern, I learned that the opposite is also true. Ornery, frustrating, time-consuming, maddening as they may be… parents never stop being your parents, either.

I need to make a point here, especially for our children and youth, that I think they will be very glad to hear. Though this commandment has been used by parents for centuries to justify their control, even the abuse of their children -- disciplining by any means deemed necessary -- the good news for you is this: the fifth commandment does not tell you that you must obey your parents. It does not give your parents the Bible’s approval to control your life, to beat you and mistreat you and make you obey at any cost. The commandment to honor your mother and father is really not about you at all. Not right now. That’s the good news.

Well, first, the bad news is that the commandment is not about children obeying their parents, because your obedience to your parents is a given in the Bible. What I mean by that is that in the biblical context it is never questioned. Their job is to instruct. Your job is to learn. In fact, the book of Leviticus actually allows a father to stone his child to death for being disobedient.[4] (I hope that your parents choose “time out” or “grounding” -- stoning seems a bit extreme to me!) But the Bible does assume that parents are to instruct, and children are to obey. Sorry! And… there is even worse news. What this commandment is really about is the way that you (children) are to treat your parents -- when you get old, and they get older. And as I said earlier, if you think they are trouble now… just wait.

In some, ancient societies, and in some less developed societies today, the elderly are not honored or respected at all. In many places and times, when persons were no longer able to perform any kind of meaningful service for the community, to “earn their keep,” so to speak, they were simply put aside. Often this alienation meant death, without even support or compassion from their family.

[But] the Hebrew people, in their incredible insight and genius in understanding human life, seemed to understand [the importance of elderly parents], and so into their most sacred Ten Words from God they have enjoined us in the name of God to rise above the inner conflicts and give honor to those who have given us the gift of life.[5]

“…to rise above the inner conflicts and give honor to those who have given us the gift of life.” Here is the issue. We can set our elderly at a “feeding trough.” Put them away. Disrespect them. Ignore them. In a day of retirement facilities with round-the-clock care and full staff, many people are still doing this very thing, today. (I am certainly not saying that everyone whose parents are in a retirement or nursing facility has put them aside, but these facilities can become a socially accepted cover for just that.)

Or we can count the cost. We can seek to build a tower of their own lives, however worthy they may be of that (and some parents are not worthy of being praised for their efforts, in either parenting or vocation), by living in our own days lives worthy of their pride as parents.

This command cuts both ways. Parents, you may not abdicate the difficult role of parenting. Do not blame the school or the government or the church for not teaching your children.[6] The command tells us that we are responsible for our children. Period.

And, children, our parents are our responsibility. To respect. To honor. Honor is not equivalent to love, certainly not by any sentimental definition. Jesus’ parable reminds us that life is about priorities. When we have set our sights on that which is truly important, sometimes we must “hate” that which is closest to us, whether it be parent or possession. (Please do not take Jesus literally here.) ”Hating life” means that the cost of honor includes the sometimes painful costs of growing up, making our own way, disappointing those who would think for us, separating from those who would keep us tied down as little children. Honor means giving respect, in our own maturity, but never forgetting those who gave us life, never forsaking their inheritance, never taking for granted their support, never turning our backs on them when they are weak and needy.

[1] I have quoted the telling of this tale directly from J. Ellsworth Kalas, The Ten Commandments from the Backside, Abingdon Press, 1998, p. 55.

[2] “The basic meaning of the word (Hebrew, kabob = honor) is ‘heaviness’ in the physical sense, as well as ‘gravity’ and ‘importance’ in the metaphorical sense.” John C. Holbert, The Ten Commandments, 64.

[3] John Shelby Spong, The Living Commandments, Chapter 8 (emphasis added). The book is available online, so page numbers are irrelevant.

[4] See Leviticus 20.9 and, especially, Leviticus 21.18-21.

[5] Spong, ibid.

[6] In his book, The Ten Commandments from the Backside, J. Ellsworth Kalas says, “Our culture arranges, rather proudly, to have an annual day when a child can come to work with a parent, to see the parental workplace – a far cry from life on a family farm. Parents were by all odds the moral arbiters for their children. Some modern parents seem to have abdicated that role entirely, and society seems to reinforce such abdication, by blaming the school system for not instilling better moral values. A cynic looking at our contemporary scene might say, of this fifth commandment, ‘Honor your father and mother? What’s there to honor?’” p. 56.

[7] Nehemiah 9.17; Psalm 86.15, 103.8, 145.8; Joel 2.13; Jonah 4.2