The "Weight" of Glory

Sermon, January 23, 2000

Texts: Deuteronomy 5:16, Matthew 15:1-9, Mark 9:42

I recently read of a Sunday school teacher who was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five- and six-year-olds. She was attempting to explain how, while the commandments deal with specific and basic issues, they relate to many other matters in life as well. After reviewing the fifth commandment to "Honor thy father and thy mother," she asked "Now, which commandment teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" She hoped to elicit from the children how they can honor their parents, how they can make their parents happy, by getting along with their siblings. Without missing a beat, though, one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."

The fifth commandment is this: "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you." A brief observation for those who might dismiss the Old Testament as being hopelessly "sexist" and patriarchal: note that the parents are to be honored equally. The same honor is to be given to the father and to the mother. In case there was any doubt, Leviticus 19:3 places the mother first: "Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father." That was a radical concept in those times and in that very patriarchal, male-dominated part of the world. (You may have heard about the journalist who had done a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War; she noted then that mothers/wives customarily walked about 10 feet behind the fathers/husbands whenever the family appeared in public. The same journalist returned to a few months after the Gulf War and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives. Thinking this might have had something to do with the influence of the large Western presence during the war, she approached one of the women and said, "This is marvelous! What enabled women here to achieve this dramatic reversal of roles?" The Kuwaiti woman replied, "Land mines.") Mother and father are worthy of equal honor, neither parent is to be honored over the other, and neither is to be honored less than the other. Anything less than that ideal is an aberration of God's design. One very practical reason for that is this: To compel a child to honor one parent over another is to tear a child apart at the very core of his/her being. Every child is the unified biological product of two parents; compelling a child to denigrate one or both parents is profoundly distressing to the very essence of who he/she is.

Years ago, my wife and I had a friend who was the single mother of two adolescent boys; both boys were involved in the youth ministry I coordinated at one of my former churches. She had been divorced from their father for some time; the man's behavior was anything but honorable...drunkenness, numerous affairs, insulting, boorish and rude in his dealings with the family...but she would never allow herself to denigrate and/or dishonor this father in the presence of her sons. Never. She would never speak ill of him in their presence....for better or worse, she wanted her boys to honor the fifth commandment. I believe she wanted her boys to honor God by honoring their father, no matter how worthy of dishonor he was. I also believe she took very seriously our Lord's words in Mark 9:42 -- "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck." To denigrate their father would have encouraged her sons to break the fifth commandment; the breaking of God's law is sin, and she was not going to cause her "little ones" to sin. I should add that both boys were polite, deferential, intelligent, attentive to their mother, and all-around exemplary teens; both are grown men, now, and from what I've heard, both are doing very, very well. This faithful mother believed in and tenaciously held on to the promise spelled out in the second half of this commandment. The promise? "...that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you." She believed the necessary corollary applied, as well: "Dishonor your father and mother, treat your father and/or your mother with contempt, and you may not live long and it won't go well with you in the land."

Again, the relationship between children and their parents forms the basis of and has a profound affect upon every other human relationship in life. The basic fabric of any enduring society is the family, and a strong family can only endure when there is continuing respect and reverence toward the parents. There really is no escape clause for the child, regardless of the child's age: the child is not to honor the parents only when they are honorable or kind or just or reasonable. Parents may at times be unreasonable or oppressive, we may disagree with them, we may not always see eye to eye with them, but we are still called to honor them. Even when parents can no longer function as parents, they are to be honored and respected. Why? Because God has ordained it; God has blessed the office of parent with honor.

Now, what does it mean, that "God has blessed the office of parent with honor"? "Honor" comes from the Hebrew "kavod," a root that means "to be heavy, weighty." Interestingly enough, the very same word "Kavod" is often translated in English as "glory." When the Old Testament Jew spoke of the Glory of God, he spoke of the weightiness of God. Now, that's not to imply that God is somehow overweight, that He is some Cosby-esque Fat Albert sitting on His divine throne eternally bellowing, "Hey, hey, hey!" No; to the Jew, God was the epitome of Weightiness, He was the ultimate Significance, the number one "Heavy." We use the same imagery today in English. Something that is laden with significance, full of meaning and/or importance is heavy, weighty. Or, conversely, when something is fluffy, insignificant, or frivolous, we say it is "light." When we are snubbed, or treated as if we were insignificant, we say we were treated lightly. In the same manner, in the Bible, glory and honor carry with it this idea of weight, "Kavod." When God blesses something or someone, when He bestows glory and honor on something or someone, that object or person who is blessed is literally touched with the Kavod of God, she/he bears the "weight" of the glory of God.

One who has kavod, even if it is a derived kavod, is one who carries weight, one who is significant, one who should and must be treated with respect. Simply put, this command says that parents should be honored and respected, for no other reason than that God has blessed them, God has given them this office of honor. The opposite of "to honor" would be to make light, to treat with contempt, to treat as insignificant, to act as if the object or persons were insubstantial, "unweighty," indeed, as if it they were nothing. Interestingly enough, one of the more common Hebrew words for curse is the word, "Qalal." Qalal also means "to be or make light." Simply put, to curse someone is to not honor them. To "curse" someone is to treat that someone as if he/she were insignificant, as if he/she had no weight, as if he/she really didn't matter. God has blessed the office of parent, He has bestowed equal honor upon mother and father. As reiterated by our Lord in Matthew 15, God exacts harsh punishment for those who would curse their parents, i.e., those who would treat their parents lightly, with contempt, as insignificant and so on.

Now, we parents certainly aren't off the hook. A few imperatives are implied to us, as well. Parents, we bear the weight of glory. We have a solemn duty to make it easier for our children to honor us. Again, the words of Jesus that the faithful mother I mentioned earlier took to heart: "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. It would be better for us to drown in a real ocean than to be engulfed in the sea of relentless bitterness, regret, and sorrow which often results when our actions cause our kids to sin. We are to make every effort to be people who are who are worthy of our children's honor; we cannot command respect and reverence if we are not deserving of it. Also, honoring father and mother is far easier for the child if the father and mother have fulfilled the honorable parental duties to the utmost of their abilities. The parent owes it to the child to provide protection, care, nourishment and spiritual training so the child may grow and mature. The parent owes it to the child to provide training and loving discipline so that the child may become morally and socially responsible.

The primary, basic duty of the parent to provide nourishment, care, protection, spiritual training and support for the child may seem so obvious that it hardly needs stating. However, that was not the case in the time and place this command was given. It is no coincidence that the commandment "Thou shall not murder" follows the previous commandment, "Honor your father and mother." We'll continue when we next pick up this series.