“Honour your Father and your Mother as the LORD your God commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)
When I first thought about speaking on the fifth commandment, ‘Honour your parents.’ I wondered if there was much to say. In many ways the command is straightforward.
But preaching on it raises some key issues.
Firstly, as we shall see this command has a kind of unique status and position compared with the other commandments.
Secondly, I am preaching to a congregation with a great variety of unique experiences with their parents.
There are some here who may still live with parents, who are still healthy and well. Others may have elderly parents that need increasing care, whilst many will no longer have living parents. Many will get on well with their parents, whilst others will have difficult or no relationships with one or more of their parents.
My own context is that I have reached the age of 53 and both my parents, my stepparents and my wife’s parents are still alive and relatively healthy. I am probably fairly unique in having such a healthy parental situation at my age.
It could be argued that it is impossible to preach a sermon on this topic that is relevant to everyone. Indeed, if you no longer have living parents you might argue that this sermon is not worth listening to. Someone even said to me about the sermon on the Sabbath that it seemed irrelevant to them, because they do not work!
But I think we all need to see sermons as not just helping us deal with our own life situation but equipping us to guide and support others in their lives. We need to learn from Christ not just for our own benefit, but so that we can offer true Christ-like wisdom to others.
Additionally, we can also apply our understanding of family life to the community life of the church. As we think of our earthly parents, we also need to apply this understanding to those in our church who may in some way be like parents to us.
So, let’s get stuck in with why this command is so unique among the ten commandments.
The Two Great Commandments and the Fifth Commandment
Where does the fifth commandment fit? It is often said that the Ten Commandments are summed up by the two great commandments.
Jesus says the greatest commandment is:
“To love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”
The second is:
“To love your neighbour as yourself.”
The first four commandments clearly refer to loving God: no gods before me, no idols, do not misuse God’s name, keep God’s Sabbath.
Whereas the last five are clearly to do with how we treat our neighbour: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet.
What about the command to honour our parents?
Is it part of the command to love God? No, your parents are not God. They are people like you and me.
So, is it part of the command to love your neighbour? Not really, because that says to love your neighbour as yourself, to treat others as equal to yourself. But the command says, to honour your parents. To honour someone is to treat them as having special value and to be due special respect. Honour is something you give to God, to show it to every neighbour would be to make it meaningless. But you are to honour your parents, to treat them in some way like God. Perhaps this command has more to do with loving God than it is to do with loving your neighbour?
It seems to me that this command with its focus on honour and its position in the ten commandments seems to be saying to us: Our parents are not God to us, but they are more like God to us than any other people in our lives.
This makes some sense. God created us, gave us a home to live in and provides for us freely, without charge. Parents do the same for their children. Together they bring them into existence, provide a home for them to grow up in and provide for them freely, without charge. Parents are not God, but they are like-God to us.
Let’s explore what this means in practice.
God is greater than our parents
Although the command is to honour our parents, we need to remember God is greater than our parents and deserves more honour than them. The command to honour our parents comes after and is subject to the commands about God.
Jesus, who elsewhere criticises people for not taking the fifth commandment seriously, makes this point provocatively in Matthew,
“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; ” (Matthew 10:37)
In our secular world, which hates allowing God a look in, struggles with such statements. We understand the fifth commandment and see valuing our parents as right and proper but have forgotten the first four commandments and God’s rightful place in our lives.
To a secular mindset, this statement seems deeply shocking, but actually it is deeply liberating.
No human parent is perfect. Your parents are sinners like you and me. Instinctively, most parents are loving and caring, but many of us make a poor job of bringing our children up. In fact, many psychologists work on the basis that most people’s mental health problems are caused by their parents.
If your parents are the only people in your life who play the role of god, then it will be very hard for you to escape any negative influence they have on you. But when you put their role as subservient to the true and living God, then you can look beyond our parent’s influence, corrupted by sin as it may be to the perfect example and model of Jesus and our Father in heaven.
More than that, if you feel abandoned or have been abused by your parents in some way, you may well feel devalued as a human being, because you have not received the love from your parents that you need.
But if you are able to look beyond them to the God, who is so much more honoured and wonderful than them, but has loved you so much that he sent his only Son to die on the cross for you – he made the ultimate sacrifice out of love and commitment to you, then you can find value and meaning despite the failed love of your parents.
It is only when we realise that God is to be honoured and loved more than our parents that we can be released to flourish and mature to become the kind of people God really wants us to be, rather than limited to our upbringing.
Without realising that people often end up doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents. God is greater than your parents.
Your parents have a god-like role in your life
Nonetheless, our parents are to be honoured. This is right, but it also leads to the blessing of long and happy lives, as the command promises.
So, what does that look like and how does it lead to a long and happy life? It will look different at different stages of our lives. Everyone’s lives look different, but I want to consider three broad areas of life.
While we’re growing up
To honour our parents while we are still young and growing up in the home, will mean being obedient to them. It is at this stage of life that our parents are most ‘god-like’ to us. We have much to learn and they have much to teach us. They are responsible for protecting us when we are at our youngest and most vulnerable to the threats of the outside world. We are totally dependent on them to provide our food, our clothing and a home to live in. Not to mention the emotional support and reassurance we need.
As we grow, we will gradually gain more independence and a good parent will encourage and enable that to happen at just the right pace. But increasingly from late childhood through the teenage years,
the child’s desire for freedom and independence and the parent’s desire to protect and guide will clash. Parents as Paul says need to be careful not to anger their children, but for children and teenagers in the context of this difficult transition, honouring parents will most clearly show itself through obedience. Paul states it clearly:
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” (Ephesians 6:1)
Mostly, parents want their children to flourish, and a happy life is found in following the instructions of the parents who want the best for you – even and perhaps especially when you think they are wrong.
This obedience is of course, subject to prior obedience to God and there may be occasions where there is a clear need to obey God rather than parent. But that will be exceptional.
When we marry
As we move on in life and out of the home setting, obedience is no longer the main focus of honouring our parents.
Interestingly, when we marry, the Bible says that in some sense, we ‘leave our father and mother’:
“For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
(Genesis 2:24)
Such an understanding does not negate the need to honour our parents, but it does signal the need for the relationship to change and become in some sense more distant.
This may be a time, where boundaries need to be drawn with parents, as children carve out emotional space time and energy for the new commitments that marriage and possibly children will bring.
But in negotiating the boundaries of this new relationship, parents are to be honoured. They may not have as much of our time, but they should still have some of our time and be invited to be involved in our children’s and their grandchildren’s lives in appropriate ways.
It may be also, that in this new phase of life, where the relationship has more distance, that honouring may involve dealing with any resentments, upsets or hurts from the past. For some it may even be that honouring our parents means attempting a full reconciliation after what may have felt like an irreversible falling out in our younger years. That may feel costly, but as Christians we know the great price that Jesus paid to be reconciled to us. In the same way, especially with parents we should seek reconciliation if at all possible.
Of course, sometimes such attempts may fail or be rejected by parents. If so, then at least your attempt at reconciliation expressed your desire to honour your parents in your life.
When they need our help
As time goes on parents grow older and may need our support as they enter a season of poor health before dying. At this time, honouring our parents may need a lot more time and commitment from us. Every situation is different. For some, it will mean regular visits and involvement in their care and support or even having them to come and live with you. Often trained medical care will be needed and a nursing home may be the only appropriate place. Yet we can still visit, and our visits may be needed more than ever.
This is an essential part of honouring our parents. Paul, in the context of teaching about caring for widows, warns Timothy:
“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:6)
A long and life-giving relationship of honour
Our relationship with our parents lasts as long as our lives overlap. It will change and develop and the meaning of honouring them will change over that time.
But the more we work to show honour to our parents, the more we influence our society and our family to do the same. In the end, supporting and enhancing such a culture will rebound on us and as we grow old, we too will reap its benefits.
This special command about how we should treat the special people in our life turns out to be for our good after all.
St. Luke's Church Ramsgate 