Deuteronomy 5:12-16
We have two of the ten commandments to consider today in our effort to talk about all ten during the season of Easter. We’re looking at these commandments not as rules we must follow but as gifts which help us live long and full lives. Today we talk about honor – honoring time and rest and honoring parents.
The honoring of sabbath is about taking a break from physical work. It’s a radical thought that everyone deserves a day off. We are used to thinking about weekends as down time, but they are a very recent development in the history of humanity. In a subsistence economy where you work to stave off starvation, exposure to the elements and death, taking a day off is a risk. It’s also an exaggeration. Of course someone has to cook, stoke the fire, feed the livestock and keep life going, even if you aren’t weaving or working the fields.
Notice in this commandment that everyone gets time off, not just the wealthy or those who own slaves who can insist that someone else work while they rest. Everyone rests. This surely bolstered the case of organized labor for first 60 and then the amazing 40 hour work week. It also led to the complicated sabbath laws of our most orthodox Jewish neighbors – leading to lights on timers so no switch is flipped on the sabbath, meals cooked ahead, and housing clusters near synagogues so that no one walks too many steps to get to the services. We might think of these rules as extreme, and they certainly can be. They also help to focus on God, just like fasting during Ramadan, which has just ended. They can be a rule as an end in itself, or a practice as a means to deeper faith.
We may have rejected the practices of 100 years ago when no one worked on Sunday, children only played with religious-themed toys or read religious books. Stores closed. But we’ve lost something if we give up the idea of rest in the rhythm of our lives. Already our work week is creeping closer to 50 hours. Weekends become the time to clean house, shop for groceries, do laundry for the week ahead, mow the lawn. When everyone works away from home, time off is time to do household chores. As our world becomes more global, our friends may observe Sabbath on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. We can’t make local rules to favor one over the other. But it’s good for us to protect some time for rest, for reflection, for restoring our souls.
Sabbath may look quite different to each of us because we have different personalities and varying demands on our time. You may find sabbath in reading a book, going to dinner with friends, watching a movie with family. Sabbath means doing something you love in an intentional way. It might be painting or gardening or jogging in the greenway. It’s a change of pace, a time without stress or deadlines. In a culture which seems to expect more and more of us, it’s good for us to stand up for time off. It’s good to praise folks for doing a bit of nothing on a regular basis.
The second commandment for today reminds us to honor our parents. It’s good for this to fall on Mother’s Day, although the original Mother’s Day was a peace movement and not a time for giving gifts and breakfast in bed. In recent years we’ve been encouraged to celebrate this in the church as Christian Family Day, since all of us have families of one kind or another and not all of us are parents. This becomes a day of gratitude for our families and for the older folks in our lives who have nurtured us in formal and informal ways.
Our Tuesday study group last week read about Native cultures in which both children and older adults are honored by holding special responsibilities in the community. Older folk are valued as the sharers of stories and wisdom. Children are given tasks that match their growing abilities. Often in contemporary times both the old and the young are marginalized as contributing members of society. I notice a difference in the children I know between those whose chores are essential and those without regular chores. Being valued for who you are matters AND so does being valued for what you do. The older women I hang out with often talk about becoming invisible as they age. People talk past them rather than to them. Those who have been competent professionals are treated as though they have nothing to add to the conversation. Discounting anyone because of age – young or old – is to withdraw honor and it doesn’t serve us.
Sometimes this commandment has been used to tell children that they must obey parents or authority figures without question. I don’t think that’s what this means. We can give honor to a parent without always agreeing with them. Loving parents often encourage children to explore their own truth and form their own opinions. I don’t always like what my children think, but I’m glad they have the confidence to think for themselves. As parents, grandparents and mentors we need to remember that honor is due us not for our roles or our age but because of our behavior. We need to act in honorable ways. We need to be loving and compassionate and just. Honor isn’t about being obeyed, it’s about being valued because we have been loving.
Not all family relationships are easy. This commandment isn’t meant to gloss over those times when families are broken and healing is needed. There’s great pain in being poorly parented. There’s pain in raising children who don’t thrive because of illness or mental illness or poor choices. I hope our community is strong enough to open our hearts to those who experience family pain and help bring hope and peace to difficult situations. We aren’t meant to pretend that family is always ideal. Perhaps we’re meant to be family for those whose own families have let them down. To be a place of hope and encouragement and home.