This seems particularly pertinent this week. Not only is Sunday Mother's Day, it is also just over a week since I attended my father's funeral. So preaching on the 5th Commandment is especially relevant.
It is easy to think that this commandment is directed at small children. And certainly some of the NT applications of it, like Ephesians 6:1-3, seem to be directed there. But it is most likely that the target audience of the Commandments were adults. Today we live in a very different world to Ancient Israel. Rather than living in the home with my parents as they did, my folks have lived thousands of kilometres away from me, for most of my adult life. What on earth can honouring them mean now?
I was thinking about this last week as I stood beside my father's bed. He was sweating profusely with a fever, as his body struggled to fight the infections in his lungs. I was mopping his brow with a damp face washer. I remembered how he had done the same to me as a little child. How he held me strongly when I was ill. What an amazing privilege to honour my Dad, by tending to his needs as he had done to mine so many years before. The role reversal in honour was quite something.
I am not a child any more. I was an adult serving another adult. But at the same time, I felt like such a little helpless child, as my Dad's life ebbed out of his body. Here was my father, so helpless. And his loss in my life is profound. With him goes his voice, his kind words, his pride in me, his disappointment in some of my choices, the discipline I had as a kid, his laughter. To honour him now seems to be to grieve him well, to speak of him, to tell people what a great guy he was.
And to honour my Mum, who is now widowed of her husband of 53 years? Well I try to call every day. I pray. I will try to relieve her administrative burdens. and so on. But it goes deeper than that. Honour is an attitude of the heart.
I wonder if others want to share what they think this commandment can mean today?
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