It was a busy day at the market, and people were pointing and laughing at the old man standing in the rain. He should have been wearing his hat, but no, there he was – standing still in front of a stall, silent, letting the rain beat his bare head. It was a bizarre spectacle. And it didn't matter that this was one of the most famous writers in England – author of acclaimed essays, plays, and poems galore. It didn't matter that this was the man who literally wrote the dictionary. There he was, willfully standing in silence in the rain. What was wrong with him, the people in Uttoxeter might have wondered? But to know that, we have to go back to the beginning.
Samuel came from a curious family. He was born of a difficult pregnancy, when his father Michael was 52 and his mother Sarah was 40. Theirs was not the happiest marriage: Sarah nursed a longstanding belief that she had married beneath her station, and her father Cornelius had made a humiliating, burdensome, and complicated arrangement with Michael for her dowry. Michael was a bookseller, and he'd overextended himself by going into massive debt to buy large collections to sell. Samuel was their firstborn, and it didn't take long before it became apparent that he was both an odd child – sickly and prone to twitches and tics – and a brilliant child with a flawless memory and immense abilities. Michael couldn't have been more proud. He loved to show off his son to family friends – though Samuel found it uncomfortable and often hid when people came over. But he didn't have to put up with it too often. To avoid the inevitable arguments with Sarah, Michael tended to ride his horse on long trips to fulfill book orders, so he wasn't home terribly much.
As the miracle child, the eldest of just two sons, Samuel was pampered, indulged, and rarely scolded, no matter how he behaved, so long as he was witty and clever. He got away with a lot, respecting neither parent. Michael in particular came in for his disrespect. His debts, after all, jeopardized any chance for Samuel to have a bright future with a good education. Samuel called him a “foolish old man” and thought of him as a helpless and blundering failure with a narrow world and a grim view of life. Samuel thought his father must surely be mentally ill, and his worst fear was turning out like him and amounting to no more. As Samuel finished his schooling, there wasn't enough money to send him to college anywhere, but when his mother's rich widowed cousin – about whom she was always bragging – left an inheritance, he headed off to college at Oxford, and his doting, disrespected dad sent along loads of expensive books on loan to him.
The money ran out after just thirteen months. Samuel dropped out, so penniless he couldn't even afford to bring the books home. But Michael didn't complain, because he could tell his son was seriously depressed. Over the next two years, the two argued frequently. Samuel hated spending time with him. In September 1731, Samuel suffered another crushing blow. He'd wanted to get even a low-level job at a school he'd attended, a school where they knew him and had seen his abilities – but, just a week or so before his twenty-second birthday, he got the news he'd been turned down, passed over, because he didn't have a degree. Samuel was, once again, absolutely crushed. It was about that time that Michael started to get sick.
Now, Michael's financial struggles had spiraled out of control by that point. He was a poor bookseller, and he'd lost what respect he used to have in town. His dignity was at an all-time low. He used to operate not just his bookstore in their hometown of Lichfield, but had a stall in the town of Uttoxeter where, on market days, he'd sell books to maximize his profits. He'd always hoped that Samuel would join the business, always tried to encourage Samuel to do it, but Samuel wanted nothing to do with it or him. The day came when Michael was so sick that he couldn't get out of bed, and he asked Samuel to fill in for him – to take the bundle of books for sale, go over to Uttoxeter, and sell them at the market for him. But Samuel was a proud young man of 22. He thought a task like that was beneath him. He thought it was a waste of time. He didn't want to be slyly roped into a career he hated. And so he refused to help his father. A few weeks later, Michael died.
In the years that followed, Samuel gradually clawed his way toward success and acclaim. He was nearly fifty when his mother passed away. He traveled, he wrote, he earned respect in the world. But in the later years of his life, he began to find himself haunted by regrets, particularly about the ways he'd treated his family. And that cruel incident of scorning to help his father – that began to eat at him. He knew he had to make amends, but his father was long dead. What could he do? It was, perhaps, fifty years since the day he wouldn't go to market. Now, fifty years later, he went. He went, and he stood for an hour in front of the stall where he should have worked that day. He stood, and in the silence of his heart, he prayed to God to accept this cold and rainy day as penance for the wrong he'd done to his father. He knew, looking back over the years, that his treatment of his father that day had been a sin. And the stain had to be washed away. So there he stood in the rain.1
Samuel was right about that. The way he'd treated his father that day had been a sin, and he was understandably haunted by it. For the word of the Lord, which well he knew, was this: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy: every one of you shall revere his mother and his father...” (Leviticus 19:2-3). Those are two marvelous words – 'honor' and 'revere.' They're both words the Bible more customarily uses for how we're to treat God. The first word, 'honor' – that's the same word for 'glorify.' It means to accord due weight and recognition to something, to consider it important. The second word, 'revere' – that's the same word we find in the phrase, 'the fear of the LORD.' It means to be impressed by, to be in awe of something.
The Bible considers it natural to have these reactions to parents: “A son honors his father,” God matter-of-factly says through his prophet Malachi (Malachi 1:6). It presumes that to be a parent is something very special – that being a parent isn't just an ordinary, everyday status, or even just standing in a certain relationship to someone. No, being a parent is a social role, an office, a position, not unlike being a president. The Bible presumes, all throughout, that parents have a position of authority toward their children, an authority held in trust from God; that parents hold a certain dignity by their office of parenthood; that parents are called to give so deeply that the only sensible and only fair response in ordinary circumstances is immense gratitude. And so the Bible calls their children to uphold their dignity, to defer to them and submit to them, to revere them, to support them. Nor does the Bible – like the laws of surrounding countries – call for different treatment of fathers and mothers. No, the Bible stands out by saying that both must be honored, both must be revered, on equal terms.
Later Jewish and Christian writers, reflecting on this commandment, tied it closely to the first commandment. They saw the close similarities of the treatment God asks for and the treatment parents are owed. They started to talk about how parents have a certain similarity to God, because they're his partners in the generation of life, and that assimilates them to God's honor and God's reverence.2 One early bishop declared that “before all others except God, our parents are the authors of our life, and they deserve to be the first ones to receive the fruits of our good deeds.”3 They came to see parenthood as an earthly shadow of a heavenly reality. Each father is an image of God, the Father “from whom every father-lineage in the heavens and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15); while each mother is an image of Zion, an image of the Church, for “the Jerusalem above... is our mother” (Galatians 4:26). And it was as earthly images of these lofty heavenly realities that both fathers and mothers had such incredible responsibilities and also such incredible dignity.
While it's natural to honor and revere parents, especially when they stand in their son or daughter's life as the representatives of a living tradition that stretches back beyond them, the Bible was well aware that it was quite possible to mistreat your parents. “Whoever robs his father or his mother and says, 'That's no transgression,' is a companion to a man who destroys” (Proverbs 28:24). “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death” (Exodus 21:15). “There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers” (Proverbs 30:11). “Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death: he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him” (Leviticus 20:9). And a rebellious son totally unresponsive to any paternal discipline was seen in ancient Israel as hopelessly failed, and such a danger to society that the whole community was called upon to stone him to death if even his parents had both given up on him (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
This was a commandment Israel struggled to keep. Micah complains that in his day, Judah's society is falling to pieces, that nobody trusts anybody anymore, and Micah puts his finger on the reason: it's “because the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man's enemies are the men of his own house” (Micah 7:6). Over a century later, Ezekiel lists the sins of Jerusalem in his day, and one of the first things out of Ezekiel's mouth is the complaint that “father and mother are treated with contempt in you” (Ezekiel 22:7). In the wake of the exile and return to the land, with a keener understanding, the Jewish people tried to adhere more faithfully to laws like this one, and so one Jewish sage from Jerusalem a couple centuries before Christ wrote about it like this:
Children, listen to me, your father; act accordingly, that you may be safe. For the Lord sets a father in honor over his children and confirms a mother's authority over her sons. Those who honor their father atone for sins; they store up riches who respect their mother. Those who honor their father will have joy in their own children, and when they pray, they are heard. Those who respect their father will live a long life; those who obey the Lord, honor their mother. Those who fear the Lord honor their father and serve their parents as masters. In word and deed, honor your father, that all blessings may come to you. A father's blessing gives a person firm roots, but a mother's curse uproots the growing plant. Do not glory in your father's disgrace, for that is no glory to you! A father's glory is glory also for oneself. They multiply sin who demean their mother. My son, be steadfast in honoring your father. Do not grieve him as long as he lives. Even if his mind fails, be considerate of him. Do not revile him because you are in your prime. Kindness to a father will not be forgotten – it will serve as a sin-offering, it will take lasting root. In time of trouble, it will be recalled to your advantage; like warmth upon frost, it will melt away your sins. Those who neglect their father are like blasphemers; those who provoke their mother are accursed by their Creator. … With your whole heart, honor your father; and your mother's birth pangs, do not forget. Remember, of these parents you were born. What can you give them for all they gave you? (Sirach 3:1-16; 7:27-28)
That was the atmosphere in which Jesus, eternally God but coming to earth in human flesh and blood to grow up in a particular time and a particular place, appeared. And when he appeared, he took on himself a human mother and a human adoptive father. And we read of Jesus the simple and beautiful line about how he “came to Nazareth and was submissive to them,” that is, to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:51). It was a lifelong endeavor – even from the cross, he was taking care of and providing for his mother Mary (John 19:25-27). But in the tales he told, he could imagine people acting differently – like the one about the son who was so desperate for his share of the inheritance that he effectively told his dad he wished he'd die already, so just hand over the money and he'll be on his way. For that is exactly the start of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-13).
Ever since then, and even before that, there have been complaints about younger generations not having a sense of respect. Today, you might well make complaining about the younger generation your pastime – kids these days, am I right? Of course, your parents and grandparents said the exact same thing about your generation. And their parents and grandparents said the same thing about their generation. We find the same complaints in ancient Greek writers who lived before Jesus was born onto the earth. But at the same time, we can't deny that, ever since the 1960s, there's been a significant shift in our culture, a shift toward disparaging authority and denying dignity – and the first target of attack in the anti-authoritarianism of the sixties was parents. Father no longer knew best. Micah and Ezekiel could've warned us what that would do to society. So what should it look like instead? What does it mean, in practice, to honor your father and mother? And what does it look like for a father and mother to assist their children in finding that commandment easier to keep?
A son or daughter is called to keep this commandment from his or her earliest days. Parents help by setting the stage through presenting a united front on how they'll parent – nothing jeopardizes the family like disagreement or even separation, dividing the authority in the family against itself. Parents model to the children a reverent and obedient life by obeying God and respecting their own parents. Parents cherish children tenderly, shunning no toil or danger to protect their children, providing good gifts of so many types that there's just no way the child can keep track of them all. And it's expected that little children are going to become curious and have a lot of questions (Joshua 4:6, 21), so it's expected that parents will share together the responsibility of beginning the process of education (Deuteronomy 11:19; Proverbs 4:1-5), to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6). At times, this education – not just in the world, but in how to behave, how to treat people – can require the exercise of parental authority. And yet Paul cautions, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged” (Colossians 3:21); “do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). It's fair and measured, not arbitrary and angry. Parents can relate by remembering and sympathizing with the temptations of childhood, much as in Jesus we have a high priest who is not “unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
The goal is for the children to grow up with happy memories of childhood, not fearful ones – the memories on which a lifetime of gratitude can more easily be built – and to keep these happy memories even though they're corrected for veering outside the guidelines and rules that the parents set for the good of the family and child. It is to children at this stage of life that Paul is especially speaking when he says, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord” (Colossians 3:20). Children are called to obey respectfully and just about absolutely, with gentle enforcement by the parents through their authority exercised in love.
Then children start to grow into adolescence, into those teenage years, into the age when they start to question, start to try to define their identities by setting boundaries and testing them. And parents have the obligation here to continue the process of educating and guiding their children: “We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them” (Hebrews 12:9). Parenting calls for correction and guidance where needed, and this is one area where King David utterly blew it with his kids: we read about how he refused to punish his son Amnon for committing major crimes (2 Samuel 13:21), how he indulged his son Absalom after he killed Amnon for those crimes (2 Samuel 13:39) which led to Absalom overthrowing David, disgracing David, even trying to have David killed (2 Samuel 17:14); and of David's son Adonjiah, the Bible outright tells us that “his father [David] had never at any time displeased him by asking, 'Why have you done such-and-such?'” (1 Kings 1:6).
In this stage of life, children are still called to act with an attitude of acquiescence instead of argument, with an air of deference and not defiance. They should continue to cherish their parents: “The glory of children is their fathers” (Proverbs 17:6). Children still owe their parents respect and even a default stance of obedience. As one early Christian wrote in the third century, “However much obedience we offer, we have not yet repaid the recompense of thanks for being born, for being carried, for drawing light, for being nurtured and perhaps educated and trained in honest skills; and, perhaps by the same originators, we came to know God and came to the Church of God and heard the word of the divine law.”4 This obedience must always, though, be subordinate to what children come to understand of God's will, like Paul says: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1).
Then children grow to young adulthood. The law of obedience loses its grip, even as children are called to keep honoring their parents by fulfilling their reasonable requests wherever possible. But young-adult children are called to continue to “hear... your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching” (Proverbs 1:8). They can honor their parents by asking for advice and then acting on it wherever it's good. It's true that today, because of the rate at which culture changes, it's harder for parents to give good advice than it used to be: what worked for father and mother may not be feasible for son or daughter, and expectations that were fair even a generation ago might be unreasonable today. Ideally, parents will also give their young-adult children a good and healthy example of well-formed adult behavior, which the children can honor their parents by imitating.
Children in early adulthood, having hopefully absorbed all that was good in the lessons their parents taught them, will now have a chance to put all that into practice, and show that they've become wise. “A wise son makes a glad father,” we read, while “a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother” (Proverbs 10:1). The children can honor their parents still by addressing them kindly and respectfully, by praying for them, and by defending and protecting their parents' reputation at just the age when the world around us says it's time to expose all that your parents did wrong to mess you up. Think of Shem and Japheth, who heard that Ham had abused their father Noah when he passed out drunk and naked in his tent; so they walked in backwards and covered him up, to preserve his dignity (Genesis 9:23). And children do the same thing today when they learn to speak well of their parents even when they aren't around, and to try to understand their parents' behavior charitably.
Eventually, the children may marry, but either way, the parents will tend to reach old age, when they need care. This is the age when the children may well have another relationship, even on earth, that trumps the loyalty owed to their parents, for “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife” (Genesis 2:24). Yet parents remain the next-closest relationship and the next-nearest priority. There's an awareness in the Christian tradition that the advice of elderly parents is still to be cherished and valued and trusted – after all, “listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old” (Proverbs 23:22) – but also that parents may by this stage themselves be in need of their children's wise counsel and input.
By far, though, the main way this commandment is interpreted at this stage – and this is often thought to be its main meaning – is that children honor their parents by supporting and caring for them in old age. Paul calls on adult children of elderly parents to “learn to show piety to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God” (1 Timothy 5:4). An early rabbi defined honoring your parents as having six parts: “Food, drink, clothing, shelter, hospitality, and deference.”5 Throughout history, this commandment has been invoked to invite believers to really examine whether they've been willing to help their parents, support their parents, provide for their parents in times of need, when the parents become old, sick, infirm, or poor. And this is precisely where Samuel Johnson let down his father Michael.
As a pastor, I've seen situations – not in this church – where older members of the church fell on hard financial times, where they couldn't provide for themselves; and even though they had numerous children between them, not one was willing to step in and provide assistance. All pleaded one excuse or another, that they had their own lives or that they lived far away or that they were still nursing a grudge from the past. It was tragic. In my own family, I've watched certain relatives continually take advantage of their overly-indulgent elderly parent, getting that parent to pay for everything, to do their jobs for them, and so on. That is treating parents lightly, as expendable resources or as utter non-entities, and not weightily, not with honor. Jesus was furious with the Pharisees because they made up loopholes and excuses to help people escape this commandment and neglect their elderly parents (Mark 7:9-13; Matthew 15:3-9). I'm much more gratified, in this church, as I've seen times when some of you have gotten sick or needed extra help, and have had children who've stepped up, sent meals, been there by your side through the night – that is a way much more faithful to this commandment. Today, this commandment is perhaps less burdensome than it was on the Israelites – after all, with no social programs for support of the elderly, no retirement income, no Medicare, the only hope for an elderly person in Israel was to live with and be supported directly and entirely by his or her children. Today, a guaranteed fixed income takes a lot of that weight off. But the commandment still calls children to supply whatever is needed beyond that.
Finally, at some point in the children's life cycle, their parents will die. The Bible expects that, in ordinary circumstances, there's some kind of inheritance left behind: “House and wealth are inherited from fathers,” the proverb has it (Proverbs 19:14). But, unlike the prodigal son, the inheritance should never be valued above the continued life and relationship of the father or mother. Children continue honoring their parents by faithfully making sure the will is followed, and by providing a suitable funeral and decent burial. And children honor their parents by remembering them and coming to good terms with their legacy and hoping to see them again.
Now, what might all this mean here? Most of us are in the later phases of that cycle. Maybe your father and your mother are both deceased, and have been for a while. Your children might be grown, even your grandkids might be in young adulthood, and a few of you have great-grandchildren being born these days. What can all this mean for you? What call does this place on your life? Some of you, as you look back on the days you did have with your parents, can recall loving relationships. Others might remember faults that made themselves all too clear, problems with your parents that inflicted damage on your lives. That's no new insight: Christians all down through history have admitted that any given father or any given mother might be lowly, poor, frail, odd, or have their assortment of faults and failings; and yet, except in cases of abuse, they've insisted on anchoring the honor owed to parents not on the parents' personal qualities but on their official position as father or mother. Some of you might have great relationships with your children and your grandchildren. Others might be aware of a breach in relationship with one or more of them – some offense that just hasn't been gotten past. Perhaps there's something you have against them in their failure to honor you as father or mother. Perhaps it's something they have against you, in behavior that's a stumbling-block to this commandment. Perhaps it's hurt feelings that are really no one's fault but need to somehow be buried and washed away.
There are three points for us to bear in mind, where we are. The first is that there is healing for the wounds of the past. “My father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in” (Psalm 27:10). The same could be said about children forsaking their parents. Whatever the wounds, wherever the abandonment, here's a promise: the Lord will take you in. He will be there for you. He will supply what you're lacking. He will tend to your damaged heart. He offers healing for the broken relationships. He offers honor and wholeness.
Second, it's never too late to address the sins of our past. Maybe – like Samuel Johnson – there are ways you look back, and you offended against this commandment when it came to how you treated your late parents, who are no longer here to apologize to, no longer here to make amends to. You may not have to stand out in the rain. But God offers ways to address those past sins all the same. It's called repentance. It's called confession. It's called receiving forgiveness – and offering it for whatever your parents maybe did that they failed to repent of in their lifetimes. Similarly, maybe you look back and can see how, in your parenting, there were times that the sins and attitudes you couldn't let go of, they went on to place stumbling-blocks in front of your children with respect to this commandment – ways you made it unnecessarily challenging for them to honor you, because you weren't honorable or easy to love in those moments. The same is true here. It's never too late to deal with that. Maybe you can apologize to those children, reach out and strengthen that relationship; maybe you can repent to God, confess; but you can receive forgiveness and offer it to your children and grandchildren as well.
And third, no matter how old your parents are, or even if they're no longer with us, the responsibility outlined in this commandment to honor them is still ongoing. Have you thought of them lately? Have you prayed for them lately? Have you thanked God for them lately? Have you remembered any good they brought you lately? How have you been with their memory, with their legacy, with their stories, and with their hope?
Reflecting on this commandment, it might be easy to become discouraged. Being a parent and being a son or a daughter to a parent can both be very challenging things, and both can be emotionally taxing as well as fruitful and wonderful. I dare say that not one of us has honored this commandment flawlessly, and for those of us who have become parents, not one of us has made this commandment perfectly simple for our children to follow. The Law declares to us, “Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother” (Deuteronomy 27:16). But the gospel sings in more beautiful melodies, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us” on the cross (Galatians 3:13).
And so, as the Word become flesh, as the complete human incarnation of this commandment, Jesus offers us a promise – because this is, as Paul points out, “the first commandment with a promise” (Ephesians 6:2). It's “that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5:16; cf. Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:3). For the Israelites, that was an assurance of his favor and also the logical conclusion, since the strength of family ties would stabilize society and also give each next generation an example to imitate in caring for the one that kept the command. But for us, it means even more than that. In fulfilling this commandment, we honor God through our parents and love God through our children, and wherever we've failed, Christ redeems us from the curse and extends the blessing of a new creation instead – a new creation where all the family missteps here have fallen away, where reconciliation is effortless, and where Father God and Mother Zion rejoice with their children of every age. We have a bright future in store – so celebrate today, celebrate the glories of a father and a mother, celebrate what God has given and what God has planned. For in Christ, all these things will be made glorious. Amen.
1 See Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Jackson (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977 [1975]), especially pp. 127-129
2 E.g., Philo of Alexandria, On the Special Laws 2.225
3 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians 21 (on Ephesians 6:1-4)
4 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 11.3.3
5 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai, Tractate Baḥodesh 55:1, 1C
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