Honor Your Parents

Honor your father and your mother.  This is one of the commandments given by God to the Hebrew nation when they escaped slavery and were faced with the challenge of governing themselves.  The commandments they received were the basis of their society, because any society needs laws, rules, and norms to live by.  In the middle of our American culture of individualism, I think that we often mistakenly think of the ten commandments as commands directed at individuals.

“Honor your father and your mother” means more than the duty of each person to his or her parents.  It means that we are all responsible to honor the generation that has gone before us.  It is a collective responsibility, and it promotes the well-being of us all.  On the personal level, it means that I show love and support for my parents, and treat them with dignity.  On the collective level, it means that I gladly pay my social security and medicare taxes, for the support of many people I don’t know, people who may or may not have children who are able to support them.  Social Security and Medicare are, of course, governmental programs that are not exclusively religiously based.  They are programs that stabilize the national economy in addition to meeting individual needs.  But, from my perspective, they are also ways in which I fulfill God’s commandment to honor our fathers and mothers.

God’s work in Jesus Christ is to reconcile the world to God (see Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:19).  Christ did not come for individuals, but for everyone.  And so we gather for worship on Sunday mornings in community, seeking to follow Christ together.