Sermon by Rev. Frank Rose

Lessons: Psalm 27:7-10; Mark 7:1-16; True Christian Religion 308

Sermon: The Ten Commandments were first given thousands of years ago. How many of them still apply? How many of them are still relevant in our life? The third commandment tells us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Very few people nowadays live that commandment as it was spelled out in the Old Testament, the day in which no work was to be done, no fires were to be lit, no cooking, and no traveling. We have changed this day partly because of the Lord’s own example.

What about the fourth commandment? “Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land your Lord God is giving you.” Have you ever noticed how different this commandment is from all the rest? Most of the Ten Commandments are negative. They tell us what we should not do. And some clearly are important to the survival of society, like the commandment against murder or theft. But why should we honor father and mother? Do you find it striking that this should have a special place in the decalogue? In fact it’s at the very heart of the commandments. It is the only one that is totally positive and it is the only one that offers a promise, the promise is length of days, "That your days may be long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you".

Did Jesus support this commandment in His teachings, or did He challenge it? In our lesson from Mark, clearly He supported it. He referred to the fact that the people had taken the commandment about honoring father and mother and had managed to get around it. They did this by saying that if anyone had money that they ought to have given to their parents, they could give it instead to the temple as Corban. This was considered a sacred gift and then they would have no further obligation towards their parents. So Jesus said that they had made the Word of God of none effect by their traditions. He was clearly upholding the fourth commandment.

And then there is that wonderful story of the rich young ruler who came running to the Lord asking what good thing he could do to inherit everlasting life. The Lord told him to keep the commandments. The young man said, "Which ones?" The Lord listed them including the one about honoring father and mother.

This is very different from what was said later in that same chapter in Matthew: "Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife and children or lands for my namesake, shall receive a hundred fold and inherit everlasting life." Jesus was not simply saying that they had the option of leaving father and mother and that if they did so they would be blessed. He was suggesting that they had to leave father and mother, as in this text from Matthew 10. " I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man’s foes will be those of his own household." There is also what is recorded in the gospel of Luke: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

So did Jesus support the fourth commandment, honor father and mother? What did He mean when He challenged them to leave father and mother and even hate father and mother, and warn them that a person’s foes will be the people in his own household? Clearly there is a very important reason for the fourth commandment. Our very survival depends on honoring father and mother. This was especially true when they were wondering through the desert. Their survival depended on the children as they were growing up being very obedient and attentive to the parents, respecting them, honoring them, listening to them, feeling a connection with them. In the kingdoms of the earth, there are many different animals and species where the offspring could not survive unless they obeyed their parents.

Think of how important our parents are to us, especially mothers and their nurturing function. Of all the created animals on the earth, human beings are probably the most vulnerable and the most helpless at birth. And they take the longest time to grow up. So they have years of needing a nurturing presence. And if the mother is not able to do that, someone must come along. If the child is not nurtured, the child will die. It simply cannot survive without that maternal function being provided by someone. It is absolutely essential to life. It begins as an emotional and physical need. As a child grows up, there is a need for moral nurturing and spiritual support. And throughout life we always have this need to be surrounded by people who encourage and support us in our growth, and provide that maternal function.

Of course there is another side to this. We had a gathering of men and the men were given the task to talk about their relationship with their father. Immediately their eyes filled with tears. Some of those tears came from love, but most of them came from pain. How many men do you know who have a strong, loving and positive relationship with their father? Most men as they grow up find they have all kinds of difficulties. They feel that their father was not there for them. He was too harsh. He was too distant. In some way, the father let them down. One of the painful things of growing up is coming to terms with that. We want our fathers to be more perfect than we are. Eventually we have to realize that our fathers are human beings just like us, with all the frailty, and with all the limitations that we have.

Think of women and their relationships with their mothers. That is not always a positive thing either. Sometimes it’s very painful. Sometimes the separation of mother and daughter involves bitterness, difficulty and strife. There are people who spend years in psychiatrists’ offices just dealing with issues that come from bad parenting. Some parents are neglectful. None are perfect. Some parents are abusive. Some are evil. Some desert their children. Some harm their children. What then does it mean to honor father and mother? Sometimes our very growth depends on breaking away and establishing our own identity and dealing with the sense of hurt that comes from an incomplete or in some way wounded childhood. We are wounded people, and often that goes back to the relationship with our parents.

Think of our modern society and how many children there are who have parents that either are not there for them or hurt them. Think of the gangs of children roaming modern city streets with no parents to look after them trying desperately to parent each other. And think of the sadness that comes from this feeling of desertion and abandonment. It’s a difficult thing, our relationship with our parents. It’s not a simple matter of just saying you will love and honor your parents whatever. Sometimes as we grow up, we have to rethink these relationships. That’s why the Psalmist says: “When my father and mother desert me, the Lord will lift me up.” Often, we discover a new kind of nurturing relationship as we grow through our spiritual struggles. Imagine a group of people who get together on a regular basis to support one another in living a spiritual life. As that group progresses, the group more and more nurtures the individuals in the group and it really becomes the mother of the spiritual life of those people. It becomes a spiritual mother. Originally that’s what the church was supposed to be. I don’t know how many times I have heard people say to me, "I believe in God. I believe in spirituality. But I do not believe in organized religion.”

Originally religion wasn’t something organized. It was a network of people who had similar beliefs and who supported one another in living a spiritual life. They comforted one another in pain and encouraged one another in positive directions. They gave understanding, love and nurturing. We all need such a spiritual mother. That’s really what churches are all about. And when we die and go to the spiritual world, we enter a kingdom in which people continue to do that. They support and love one another. They become mother to one another. And this collective group of people all serving each other, nurturing and caring for each other, become the mother in that wonderful and perfect sense, a mother that does not disappoint as individual mothers might do.

I was talking to a man recently who was sharing about his relationship with his father, and how difficult that was. They worked through their issues and eventually got to a point in which they were more like brothers than parent and child. What happens after death when we enter the spiritual world and all age disappears so that we don’t have grandparents and parents and sons and grandsons and grandchildren and great grandchildren? All angels appear around the same age. Therefore they are all brothers and sisters. Being brothers and sisters they are parent each other. This is the supreme mother, the Lord’s kingdom. And that is the most important mother for us to honor, love and cherish.

And what’s the father? Jesus said," Call no man on earth your father. For one is our father who is in the heavens." In the highest sense, to honor our father, is to honor our Creator and Lord. That’s our real source of life and that’s the father that never disappoints or lets us down. Eventually we come to the point where this fourth commandment is talking most of all about our relationship with other people and our relationship with the Lord.

Why then did Jesus say we should hate father and mother, reject and leave them? Clearly He wasn’t saying that to be a good Christian, you had to break up families. What was He saying? Spiritually what is the father that you have to learn to hate? In a sense you could say this father is your selfishness and your worldliness. Many things in our life come out of our selfishness and that selfish love is father to many of our problems. When we begin to live a spiritual life we have to reject that father and take on a spiritual father instead. In a sense when Jesus called the disciples, He was telling them to leave their natural father and mother because now they had one Father who is the Lord and one mother who is the Lord’s kingdom.

In our growth it’s not a person that we reject. It is not our biological parents that we reject. It is those selfish tendencies that are passed from one generation to the next. Those tendencies come to us by heredity, but they are just tendencies. We have to turn our back on those, if we want to be spiritual people, and not live our life based on self seeking, greed or materialism, but base our life on spiritual truths and goodness. Love and wisdom are the real parents of our spiritual life and in the highest sense this is what we are being invited to honor in the fourth commandment. In a way, it's the most sacred of all the commandments because it is this respect for what is good and true, this valuing of the nurturing, supporting and teaching role in our life, that is so important for our spiritual safety and spiritual longevity.

Since we all live forever after death, what does it mean to have a long life? Length of days spiritually means happiness and peace. You will be at peace with yourself and others if you learn to honor and respect those spiritual qualities that nurture you, and nurture other people, those qualities that teach and guide you and lead you into the Lord’s kingdom.

We read in Arcana Coelestia that when people are born anew, that is when they are being regenerated, they receive another father, and become his children. And He is the one who is to be honored. This is the meaning which lies within the fourth commandment. The person also gradually learns who that father is, namely the Lord. And he also learns how He is to be honored, which is to say worshiped, and that He is worshiped when He is loved. For with people whom from their heart honor parents, that spirit of honor is present in each thing that they do. It is also perceived from their gestures and speech. We see then the wealth of blessings that come for people who are able to honor their father and their mother.