"...and who is my neighbor?" The Fifth Commandment begins our journey through the second table of the Ten Commandments. We have already heard God speaking four words that deal primarily with our relationship to God; now, with this "Fifth Word," our attention shifts to a primary focus on our relationship with our neighbor. The Fifth Commandment begins an extended answer, composed of the final six interrelated commandments, to a question once posed by a lawyer to Jesus, "...and who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29) The Fifth Commandment is actually the first commandment of the second set, or second table, of the Ten Commandments. We will not grasp the full significance of the answer to this lawyer's question--to which Jesus replied with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37)--until we have completed our study of the answer provided to the very same question by the whole second table of the Ten Commandments. Once again, God is speaking to us his creative Word, giving to us abundant and eternal life through the same ten, life-giving words that the LORD spoke to his people, Israel, on Mount Sinai. The first thing to note, as we make the transition from the table that is focused on loving God to the table that is focused on loving neighbor, is that "loving my neighbor" starts at home. Loving my neighbor starts with loving my parents, those who gave me life. It is as if God starts once again with the fundamentals when speaking a healing word into our broken relationships: if I cannot find a way to love those whose relationship to me is a given, then how will I ever love the stranger or the enemy with whom I am estranged? As Luther said, God speaks to us in "baby language," gently accommodating to our need. Another important thing to note is how the Fifth Word is related to the Fourth Word (Hallow the Day!). Both are transitional commandments that provide connecting links between the First Table's command to "Love the LORD thy God with all thy heart" and the Second Table's command to "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Fourth Commandment--though it was focused on loving God, as we saw in our previous study--clearly also has implications for how we live life with other people. Other people, especially those who depend on us, will be able to keep Sabbath only if we keep Sabbath. Similarly, the Fifth Commandment, though it is clearly more focused on my relationship with my parents, uses language that is often more appropriately applied to God. "Honor" is, after all, a thing we owe to God. (In fact, the Hebrew word kabbed is used in exactly the same way in Proverbs 3:9, "Honor the LORD,....") You might say that the force of the Fifth Commandment is based on an analogy between God and our parents. Both God and our parents create us and give us life. Both God and our parents are due respect ("honor" or "glory," kabbed; and "fear" or "respect," yare'). We are to love and respect both God and our parents. This analogy between God and parents is explicit in Malachi 1:6 A son honors his father, and servants their master. If then I am a father, where is the honor due me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, "How have we despised your name?" (NRSV)Finally, the transitional Fourth and Fifth Commandments are the only two positive commandments. (The rest of the commandments follow the "thou shalt not" formula for which the Ten Commandments are so famous.) Both of these commandments, the one on Sabbath keeping and the one on honoring parents, also regularly occur together in Scripture, sometimes even in inverted order. (For example, Leviticus 19:3.)  Noah banishing Ham (or Canaan), Genesis 9, Gustave Dore. But my parents are not at all like God! As I was greeting people who were leaving worship after the previous lesson, one person--anticipating the sort of pain that could be experienced by some people from a sermon on the Fifth Commandment--verbalized what I have heard many, many people say about this commandment and also about our use of the metaphor of God as Father: "Remember that some children have parents who abuse them." In other words, for some people, the usefulness of this analogy between God and parents has been erased--or twisted and perverted--by cruel treatment and abuse. This concern is still all too real for a portion of children in our society. In Indianapolis, in the heart of the "family-values" Midwest, far too many children still die each year at the hands of their parents, or other adults who were responsible for their care and protection. As the angry protests that continue to follow Pope Benedict XVI from city to city around the world demonstrate, this problem is also real for children who are under the care of the church. Children have been abused by priests and pastors, by teachers and police, and by other "parental figures." The cruel irony is, as Patrick D. Miller has pointed out, that this commandment, which is primarily a commandment that protects elderly parents from abuse by their grown children, has been misused to sanction the abuse of little children by the very adults who are responsible for their care. The commandment whose purpose is centered on protection from abusive behavior is the one commandment most open to being a vehicle for promoting abusive behavior. (Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 168) The Good Samaritan, Gustave Dore. ...and who is my neighbor? Like the question that the lawyer asked Jesus, the Fifth Commandment demands a clear answer to the question of the primary audience for these "Ten Words" of God. To whom is God speaking in this commandment? It may at first seem obvious. In our study of the Ten Commandments we have assumed that God's life-giving words are addressed to "all of us" who have the LORD as our God. These words were spoken to the whole community of Israel who were gathered at Mount Sinai, young and old, male and female. It is therefore natural, in our context, to think of the little children in the community as the special recipients of this particular commandment. But if we look closer at the details of the commandments themselves and focus specifically on who is addressed by the commandments, something new emerges that helps us understand this particular commandment in a new light. First, it is important to understand that the commandments all occur in the second-person masculine grammatical form in the Hebrew text. English does not allow for the distinction between masculine and feminine forms in the second person. (We do not use different forms of the word "you" when we are talking to a man and when we are talking to a woman.) But Hebrew does allow for such distinctions; so, a literal translation of this commandment might be "You males, honor your father and your mother." This grammatical clue by itself is not enough to settle the question, because sometimes the masculine form is used when both men and women are the likely addressees. But a closer look at some of the other commandments also give some hints as to the anticipated audience: the audience members are capable of murder; they are capable of coveting a neighbor's wife (notice that it does not say a neighbor's husband); they own slaves or have servants; and they can commit adultery (an adult sin). In other words, while the Ten Commandments are not exclusively addressed to adult males, adult males are originally their primary audience. This makes sense when we remember the ancient society to whom the commandments were originally addressed. God had created a new people and these commandments were a way of ordering this people's relationship with God and with one another. Since it was fully enfranchised males in the ancient world who had the right and responsibility to make and keep such agreements and covenants on behalf of the whole community, the adult males are the ones directly addressed with the responsibilities of this covenant with the LORD God. To whom is the commandment addressed? It is addressed to adult males, to those in power, to those who have the responsibility to care for others--in our day, we should think of politicians, police, teachers, clergy, parents who have dependent children and adult children who have dependent parents. That having been said, both women and children were also included in the covenant community, and even in the ancient world they were taught and kept the commandments in ways appropriate to their status within the community. Status and age change; the Word of God does not. What does it mean to honor our parents? The word translated as "honor" in most English translations is the Hebrew word kabbed, which literally means "to make heavy or to treat as heavy or weighty." It means to treat someone with respect and dignity. When the reference is to God or to a king, sometimes the word is translated as "glorify" someone or "give glory" to someone. For example, in Proverbs 25:2 we read that "It is the glory (kbd) of God to conceal a thing, and the glory of kings to explore (or "search out") a thing." Another thing to notice about giving "honor" or "glory" is how often it requires real, material gifts. For example, in Proverbs 3:9, which as we have already said is the closest reference linguistically to the statement in the Fifth Commandment, it says to "Honor the LORD with your net worth, and with the best of all that you produce." In Numbers 22:17 (see also 24:11), where King Balak promises to "honor" (richly reward) Balaam for cursing Israel, the honor comes with a material reward (an honor which Balaam is eventually denied). To honor our parents means to treat them with the same reverence (yare', literally "fear") and respect (kbd) with which we would treat God. (Leviticus 19:3; see 1 Samuel 2:30). Another way to define honoring is by looking at its opposite, what it is not. If a person hits (Exodus 21:15) or insults (Exodus 21:17, sometimes translated "curses") his parents, he is not honoring them. As Patrick D. Miller says, the scriptures (especially the Proverbs and other Wisdom literature) present "an open agenda of ways that children treat their father and/or mother shabbily and contemptibly, not respecting and dignifying them but denigrating them and regarding them very lightly rather than with great weight. Such behavior will usually be that of grown children who have the capacity to treat their parents in this way, though one needs to be careful about presuming a certain age when such accountability comes into play. ...There is not some fixed time in which childish behavior toward parents becomes adult contempt. One learns to honor early in order not to belittle later." (Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 179, emphasis mine.)One might add, given the ordering of the commandments, that one learns to honor one's parents, and in so doing learns also to honor one's "neighbors" and one's God.  To honor aging parents means to provide for them materially. It means to give them the things that they can no longer provide for themselves--food, shelter, and clothing--the very things they provided for us as children. (See Proverbs 19:26, 20:20, 23:22-25, 28:24, 30:11, 17, and Ezekiel 22:6-8.) Just as we are instructed to provide for strangers, and for widows and orphans who cannot support themselves, the responsible child must also care for his aging parents. Obedience Are children required to "obey" (or "listen to") their parents, as well as "honor" them? The text in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 would certainly suggest that this is the case. In fact, from this and other texts, it appears that obedience--especially learning to live well by following a parent's wise instruction--is one important form of honoring parents. But Deuteronomy 21 is not a case about showing respect for parents by taking care of their physical needs--in fact, the parents still seem very much in charge of the household. The parents in this instance seem to have the ability still to take care of themselves. The behavior of the child in this instance (again, probably by an adult child) seems to be of the sort that would shame the parents publicly, through public drunkenness and the like, and may present a harbinger, or an early warning, of the child's unwillingness to respect and support his parents in more substantial ways later. Grown children are to "obey" their parents by continuing to live when they have become adults in the same wise manner that they learned as children, by not departing from but continuing down the good path on which they have been placed. Part of that teaching they received as little children has to do with the care and respect due to their parents--a care and respect they learned by observing their own parents giving such respect and care to their grandparents. There is a caveat to be considered here related to the potential for abuse that we discussed earlier. The obedience that is due to parents is by analogy with the obedience that is due to God, and should therefore meet certain basic criteria, because God is good: 1) the instructions given to the child should be intended for the good of the child; 2) the parents' own life should display the same sort of respect for others that is being taught to the child; and 3) the instruction given by the parents should be in line with Scripture. Children are excused from obedience when parental instruction is contrary to God's specific instructions. (See Ezekiel 20:18-21; for the whole question of obedience and disobedience, see Miller, The Ten Commandments, pp. 198-202.) The Promise The thing to notice about the promise is what Patrick D. Miller calls its "reciprocality" (The Ten Commandments, p. 204). In other words, in this commandment what goes around comes around. The commandment is obeyed by me, and a promise is made to me, but it is the obedience of my children (not my own obedience) that delivers the promised good to me. It is the care that my own children give to me in my old age that represents the fulfillment of this promise. It is the connection made between the generations that provides life-giving force to this commandment. What did Jesus say? Then he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban' (that is, an offering to God)-- then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this." (Mark 7:9-13, NRSV)In Jesus' day, the commandment to "Respect your parents!" had been all but nullified by a loophole that some people argued should allow children to dishonor their parents under the guise of honoring God. As we have said before, it is rare that one can keep a commandment "in spirit" by breaking it "in the letter." Dishonoring parents--in this case, literally giving the money that would have been used to support them to pay temple taxes--does not honor God.  The New Testament letters also reiterate the commandment to respect and "obey" parents, with the letter to the Ephesians drawing special attention to the promise. (Ephesians 6:1, Colossians 3:20) These letters also recognize the potential for abuse, and thus include the additional statement, "Fathers do not provoke your children." (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21) How to keep the Fifth Commandment Both the blessing and the curse of this "Fifth Word" from God is the open-ended nature of the command. There is hardly any sense in which this commandment is defined or narrowed for us. If you can think of any way to show respect to those who are in authority--to teachers, elders, politicians, bosses, pastors, or parents--it is commanded by this "Fifth Word." Whatever your age or status, you can be learning to put this commandment into practice--either as the parent or as the child. (We would say either as the powerful one in the relationship, or the vulnerable one.) At certain times in life, we are both, givers and receivers of respect. If you are a boss, this commandment requires that you treat your employees in such a way that they will gladly return honor and respect to you because you have their best interests at heart, you provide for their needs, and you are always trying to help them achieve their dreams--and you never, ever, ask them to do what is contrary to God's directing. The same should be true of your relationship with your children if you are a parent. If you are an elder in the church, or a pastor, this command requires especially that you exemplify the kind of care that God provides to his children, and not act in a way that contradicts the guidance you give to others. The command requires special care from us that it not be misused and abused. If you are the employee, your employer is due your respect and obedience. If you are a little child--or the aging parent--then you are due the respect and care of those who are stronger and better able to provide and, in return, you should also honor and respect the office they hold. Questions for Discussion Read Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16, and Ruth 1:1-22 and 4:9-17 1) ABC News recently reported on a survey completed by faculty at the University of Indiana on modern U.S. attitudes toward the family (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/defines-family-children-americans-survey/story?id=11644693). More people surveyed by the study were willing to recognize non-traditional families "as families" if children were involved, because "Having children signals something. It signals that there really is a commitment and a sense of responsibility in a family." How does this "sense of responsibility" relate to the Fifth Commandment? Or does it relate? 2) I live a full day's drive from my parents, who are nearing retirement age. Am I breaking this "Fifth Word" from God? Does it matter for my own life? For theirs? 3) Does it make a difference in my relationship with God if I do not know who my parents are? 4) Many people who study the Scriptures have recognized that the story of Ruth is a great example of both the keeping of the Fifth Commandment and the fulfillment of the promise made by God to those who keep it. Do you think this is so? Why or why not? Pay special attention to Ruth 4:14-15. What is the assumption being made about what will happen when Ruth gets old like Naomi? 5) Read the story of Ham in Genesis 9:18-27. How does Ham break the commandment? What is the result? Is this an instance of not providing for an aging parent? Of public embarrassment? Of disobedience? 6) Can you think of an instance when you or someone you know broke the Fifth Commandment? What were the consequences? 7) Do you agree that "honor is not a synonym for obedience"? (Miller, The Ten Commandments, p. 212) Are there times when it is OK to disobey the authorities? If so, when? 8) Read the story of Jesus as a boy in the Jerusalem Temple (Luke 2:41-51). Did Jesus disrespect his parents? Is there ever an appropriate tension between honoring parents and honoring God? 9) What did Jesus mean when he said that we must "hate" father and mother to be his disciples? (Luke 14:26-27; compare Matthew 10:37-38) 10) Think of someone for whom you share some responsibility this week and make a list of things you can do to "respect" that person. Then DO some of them. Also think of someone to whom you owe the respect of obedience. People to whom we owe obedience need not even be alive now, since obedience is about the ways they taught us to live well. If the person to whom you owe obedience is still alive, thank them this week for teaching you the right way to live. This "Fifth Word" is all about maintaining strong bonds within the family, both the natural, human family and the family of faith. Once you have renewed your bonds of responsibility and respect with your human family, contact an elder in the church (or, if you are an officer, contact one of the members) to demonstrate the kind of care God shows us and the kind of respect we owe to God. NOTE: To comment, log in to your Google account or e-mail the pastor at glovergl@gmail.com. Copyright © 2010 by Gregory L. Glover |
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The Fifth Word: Respect Parents! |