The transmission of history is one of the most important and noble things that humanity has the privilege to do. History is not something that is simply to be dismissed and placed in a box or in a book or in a library; it is something that is conveyed, transmitted, passed on from generation to generation; it is one of the great duties of a civilization or of a faith.
I felt this poignantly this past week when, as many of you know, I returned to Bermuda. As is the custom when you go back to the places that you knew in childhood or your teenage years, you want to honour and you want to respect that which formed you. It is an emotional thing, particularly to go back and preach in churches where formerly you simply worshipped.
The one church that I have mentioned to you before in a sermon some years ago was still the one that had the greatest impact on me. I wasn’t preaching in it. It was the middle of the day on a Monday, and I went and visited it. It was the church that was built by the slaves in the moonlight. Marial went with me for the first time and we sat in this little church that is now a designated United Nations Historic Site.
We looked at the wooden beams that formed the ceiling and the balcony of this immaculate old church. The beams had come from ships that had been wrecked around the Island of Bermuda. The slaves had erected their own church at night so that their masters would not know that they were building it. They worshipped in that church because their masters would not allow them to worship in their churches. For a moment, I could just feel the presence of those slaves in those wooden beams. History comes alive!
Even in our sports, as trivial as it sometimes might seem, we remember, history is important. Like many of you, I have been watching the hockey playoffs and last night I was watching the New York Islanders’ game. When I was really fired up about hockey, the number one team was the New York Islanders. I noticed there in the rafters were the names of Trottier and Bossy and Potvin and Nystrom, and their shirts and their numbers had been retired. I thought, “Every player that goes out and skates in that arena is going to feel the weight of the pressure of their performance.” Even when you go into the Air Canada Centre, you see the names of many of the greats that have been there and you actually hope, as one little wag said to me coming out of church today, “Well, maybe God will actually be in the beams of the ACC tonight!” I didn’t comment, because I didn’t want to disillusion him, but one can only hope.
History means something. It conveys something. We know who we are by virtue of what our people have been. It matters. It certainly mattered and still does to the people of Israel. In today’s passage, the great Ten Commandments, it is all there really. It is the transmission of history. It is everything that God wants us to do. It is borne out of a people who had a memory: they had come out of slavery in Egypt; they had come out of being subservient to a foreign power; and now they emerge and God gives them this great gift of The Ten Commandments.
It is as if before The Ten Commandments they really weren’t a people, but now with The Ten Commandments, it defines who these people are: they are people of the Covenant, a covenant where God makes a promise, and the people have a covenant to live up to that promise. The Ten Commandments are both God’s covenant – “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other Gods before me” – but it is also the peoples’ covenant to live in keeping with God’s will and God’s purpose and God’s law.
The Ten Commandments are about God primarily but they are also a statement to those who were the progenitors of the liberation to realize and to recognize that they also needed to pass on to the next generation the things that mattered, to remember the story, but even more to remember the story for the next generation to honour their God. That is why the Fifth Commandment is not a commandment to be treated trivially. It is not trite! “Honour your mother and father” is one of the great commandments.
It is one of the great commandments because it deals with the transmission of that history: it is the recognition of the succession of one generation to the other of the Covenant and the promise of Sinai. When you look at it carefully, it seems as though it has a quadruple meaning. These quadruple meanings have an impact not only on the people of Israel thousands of years ago, but upon us because it is about the transmission of four things.
The first of those things is respect. A great Old Testament scholar, Brevard Childs, suggests that the best way for us to take the Hebrew for the word “honour” is to understand it a little more fully and little more expansively. He says that “honour” really means “to take seriously.” You should take seriously your mother and your father. That is what honour is. Dishonour is to take them lightly and to ignore them.
For Brevard Childs, he says “The great thing that Israel needed to do was to respect and take seriously what had been handed down to them by their parents.” Those who had brought the people out of slavery in Egypt were the ones who should now be honoured and what they had to say and what they did and what they believed needed to be taken seriously. Childs says “This is not about subjugation. To honour your father and mother does not mean children are subjugated. It does not mean that they live in a subordinate relationship, as is sometimes interpreted when children are abused. No! To honour your mother and your father is to take them seriously.”
You take them seriously because they are the ones who pass on the message, who pass on the law, who pass on the Covenant. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 puts it perhaps even more clearly in the Shema Yisrael, but also in the words that follow. This is what is written in Deuteronomy:
Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hand and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of your houses, and on your gates.
If you see sometimes some orthodox Jews with a box attached to the front of their head and things that are wrapped around their wrists, it is Deuteronomy – the presence of the law – never to be forgotten! That requires respect. If children are going to listen to their parents and what has been handed on to them, they need to respect them: honour your mother and your father. But it is also even more the transmission of a blessing.
All of this is based on faith. The Ten Commandments are not a series of secular laws of dos and don’ts; they are borne out of the God who gave them in the first place. “The Decalogue is God’s monologue to the world” said one of my friends. It is clear and it is concise. This is what God wants of us. Honour you father and mother and you will receive blessings if you do this. “If you keep my commandments to the thousandth generation” says God, “I will honour you and protect you and take care of you and love you.”
There is this recognition that if the people themselves will honour one another, God will honour them. This passing on of the Covenant, this passing on of this promise requires though, even of the parents, a great obligation. It is not all one-way. It is not just about children honouring their mothers and their fathers; it is about parents being respectful to their children in order that they might have the blessing.
In a very dark story, the writer O.Henry has this to say in a very short story. I read this some time ago, and it was almost chilling, but it is altogether too real in the light of some of the events that we have seen in our world just recently. It goes like this:
Once upon a time, there was a young girl. The young girl lived with her mother and her father. But, her mother died an untimely death and she grew up with her father. The little girl would come home from school and would want to play with her father and tell her father what she had done at school that day, and the father said ‘I have no time. I have to read the paper, smoke my pipe, and put on my slippers.’
The little girl would go out to play, and she would have played a great game, and she would want to come in and tell him, and he says, ‘I am sorry. I am too busy. I am reading my paper. I am smoking my pipe. I am putting my feet up and wearing my slippers. Don’t bother me.’
This went on for years until the little girl left home for no one seemed to be listening to her or caring for her. Finally, she makes it on to the streets: she has nowhere to go. She is recruited as a streetwalker, as a prostitute. People paid attention to her.
Eventually, she dies and she goes up to meet her maker. St. Peter says to Jesus, ‘Jesus, this woman was a streetwalker, don’t you think she should be condemned to Hell?’ Jesus says, ‘No. Show me the parent who didn’t spend any time with her and I will send him to Hell.’
Henry had a way of conveying things darkly, but they conveyed the truth. Parents need to respect their children if they are to be taken seriously.
It is also about the transmission of the law and the law in this particular case refers to the transmission of land. Look carefully again at the Fifth Commandment: not only are we to honour our mothers and our fathers, but in a sense if we do, then the land will be ours. We will inherit what we have been given. The land will be passed on. Now, this isn’t just the private ownership of land as we understand it today; this was a reference to the Promised Land. This was the fact that there would be a land that is to come, a land that would be given to them, and they would inherit this land if they honoured their mother and their father, if they respected them.
One to the things that confuses so many of us today is that when we look at the state of Israel in its relationship with Palestine we, as westerners, have a hard time understanding why there is so much conflict at times over such seemingly small pieces of land. But land is important. Land matters. When you are a people who have been subjugated or you are a people who have lived in exile, or you are a people who had no land and no one wants you, and in this case it applies to both sides of that conflict, then every bit of land matters. It becomes important.
I noticed that, for example, with the whole notion in Sub-Sahara Africa after the colonial period about how the new and emerging native societies could build anything if the land is always owned by someone who had been their colonizers? How do they build themselves up if they don’t have access to land? Access to land has become a great struggle, and will become an even greater struggle in the generations to come. Land matters!
The Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann says, “This is one of the great motivations for honouring your mother and your father. If you honour your mother and your father, then you will get the blessing of the land.” For Israel, you will get the Promised Land, God will keep his promises if you honour your mother and your father. But if you do not take them seriously, if you dishonour them, then this land will not be yours.
It was even more political than that, because what The Ten Commandments is saying to society is, “Look, you will not inherit the land because, if you do not honour your mother and your father, you are not honouring me, God. This is what I require of you. And if you do not honour and take seriously the message and the Covenant that I had with your forefathers and foremothers, then how do you expect to get to the Promised Land? You won’t!” One is dependent upon the other.
It seems to me that this notion of the law and the passing on of the law is the passing on of the blessing, it is a passing on of the respect, but it is the passing on of something even more: it is finally the transmission of value and values. One of the reasons why we honour our mothers and our fathers is because there is mutuality to this respect. If it is given one way, it should be returned the other. As God honoured Israel, so Israel honours God. As parents honour children, children honour God.
It is that sense of mutual support of one another that is so important and so many breakdowns in society, so many social ills are caused when that lack of mutual respect takes place. When those relationships break down and when the order that comes from mutual support of one another is taken away, then disorder and dishonour and disharmony occur: sin. But when the law is fulfilled, when God is recognized, when the mutuality of respect is in place, all is well. I think therefore it is beholden not only on parents, as O. Henry suggests, to spend time and to respect their children; there is a need for children to respect and to honour their parents.
I have always admired Grimm’s fairytales. In fact, some of them are quite brilliant. And I don’t want them to get lost, because they are so good. (Look at some of you! You are just smiling away! You know the stories!) But there is one story that is dark and turbid, and a bit like Henry, but boy, is it true! Grimm’s fairytale goes like this:
Once upon a time, there was an elderly man. The elderly man had a shaky hand and a nervous disposition. He had a hard time eating. His spoon did not always reach his mouth. He was living with his son and daughter-in-law. He dined with his son and daughter-in-law and his grandson.
Finally, the daughter-in-law said, ‘I am sorry. I cannot eat with you at this table. I am not enjoying my meal. I would rather you go and sit somewhere else. So they set him up at another table far away with his bowl and his spoon and his shaky hand. He did not eat well. And, it was getting worse.
It got so bad that at that table on his own he accidentally overturned the bowl and the food went everywhere. The daughter-in-law said, ‘I cannot tolerate this any longer. I cannot stand having this man in the room. We must put him somewhere else, and we are going to give him a trough to eat from and which he cannot overturn.
So, they put him in another room with the trough, and they were happy. They were enjoying their meals now, for he was somewhere else. One day, their little son, the grandson, came to them with a gift. He had been whittling away wood and preparing something. With a smile on his face, he gave the gift to his mother. The mother said, ‘What is it?’ And the little boy said, ‘When I grow up, I have made this trough for you that you may use it and enjoy it.’
The parents cried. They realized what they had done.
Only when they put themselves in the place of the parent did they realize the impact of their deeds.
The Bible is right! There is a need to honour our mothers and our fathers. There is a need to take them seriously, for they are not only the ones who gave us life, but they are the ones that have transmitted to us the values and the purposes and the faith that is ours. If we honour our mothers and our fathers, and if we uphold them and give them the stature that they deserve, the land will be ours, the faith will be passed on, the blessing will be received, and the world will be a better place to the glory of God. Amen.