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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler-Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "On the Care and Keeping Parents." On this Christian Family Sunday, I would ask you to think with me about the Fifth Commandment. "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon

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the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Now notice first the priority of this commandment. The Ten Commandments are divided into two groups. The first group consists of the first four commandments, and these all have to do with the relationship between humankind and God. We are not to have false gods. We

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are not to make graven images and the like. The second group consists of six commandments, and these are what are often called the horizontal commandments because they have to do with our living with one another. We are not to lie to one another. We are not to steal from one another. We are not to covet that which

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belongs to others. Now the first one of these horizontal commandments, the first one of these commandments that concerns our relationships to one another is "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days might be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." You see, our Christian belief is rooted in the

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importance of the family. This is a key aspect of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Look at Jesus as an example. You will remember how when he was 12 years of age he went with his parents up to Jerusalem and became separated from them in the crowd. When they found him with the elders, he said,

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"Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" Indicating that he had some relationship to God that he was already beginning to understand as different from everybody else's relationship to God. Yet recognizing that, still in that same chapter, Luke 2, we read that Jesus was obedient to Mary

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and Joseph and returned with them to Nazareth. The importance of the family. Now 20 years later, from the battlefield of the cross, Christ is having his strength sucked out of him by that terrible form of death. But still, even though very short of breath, we are told in John chapter 19 that one of the seven

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words he was able to utter was this, "Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother." Again you see a concern for the family. Now the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, influenced all those who have written the words of Scripture. Go, for example, to the writings of the greatest of the Apostles, Paul. Now there

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are many places where he discusses the importance of the family, but I select the one in Ephesians 6 because in it he quotes the very commandment we are studying this morning. He says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. Fathers, do not provoke your

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children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." You see, the family is at the center of our believing. We do not look upon the family simply as an order of society. Rather, we look upon it as an order of creation. One theologian has called it the "trinity of humankind," a mother, a

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father, and a child. It is out of the family that new life is to come. The family is to produce this life, but more than that, it is also to teach this life, to share its history with this life, to bring this new life to a like faith. We've made so many scientific gains in the last few decades that I believe some

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people have come to think that we're a lot smarter today than our ancestors were. And with that, I would take very serious issue. The invention of language was much more significant than the invention of the telephone over which we speak it. The development of the wheel is much more significant in the history of

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humankind than the development of the steamboat. The writings of the dialogues of Plato exceed any literature that has been produced in the 20th century. The principles of Euclidean geometry were used to build the Panama Canal, but those principles are themselves greater and more foundational than that Panama Canal.

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Indeed, I might say that if I could do anything in this 20th century that I would like to do, the one thing I would like to be able to do and to leave behind would be something like Hamlet. Our ancestors, you see, were not fools. The sun was up long before we came on the picture, and the sun will remain up long

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after we are gone. But as yesterday, so today. And as is announced in both the Old and the New Testaments, we are to feed ourselves and grow as the people of God through the ministry of the family. This is the reason that God calls himself Father. He looks upon all of us as his children. He has given to us the

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gift of life in the first place. We exist only because of him. And further than that, he gives to us the teachings which are his, those things which we need to be the kind of children that God desires us to be. We are then, I would suggest, very clearly called to understand by the position of this commandment in the list

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of the ten, and by the importance that it has in both the Old and the New Testaments, the life of Christ, and our experience today, to understand the family as one of the noblest gifts God has given to humankind. Now having thought of that, let us also think about what this commandment prescribes. It says

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we are to honor our parents. The word in Scripture means to esteem someone who is in authority. We are to submit to the authority of our parents. Now submitting to someone else's authority, that concept is immediately troubling to some people. And I often wonder why this is so. When you take your car to the garage, you

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submit to the authority of the mechanic. When you go into the hospital, you submit to the authority of the doctor or the nurse. When you follow the instructions of a traffic officer, you are submitting to the authority of a policeman. Why if some little child wearing a school guard belt steps out in front of the school

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with a sign that says "stop" while the other youngsters pass behind, you are immediately submissive to the will of that child. We, because we live together, not alone, but together in a unity, are forced to deal with one another. Yes, we want to be free, but our freedom must not incur upon the freedom of other people.

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And in order to keep things in order, we need to have some submission to authority. Now it's in just that light that this commandment says that the child is to submit to the parent. Now this does not mean that this is always going to be a happy experience for the child. This is a tough world, and it takes

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tough parents with tough love to bring children up to full maturity in it. But that's the goal of parenthood, and that's what every child should understand also, that what their parents do for them is to bring them to maturity. No worthwhile parent wants the child to remain a child all of its life. Quite to the contrary, a

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parent who is serious about parenting wants very much for that child to develop independence and a sense of responsibility, and also that maturity which comes with a developing knowledge and faith. Now whenever I talk about children submitting to their parents, even when it is moving toward maturity,

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whenever I say that, I immediately hear, though it is unspoken, someone asking me, "Do you mean that children are supposed to submit to dishonorable parents?" Well now, laying aside pathologically ill parents, laying aside those who are sick in the mind and who do hideous and destructive things to children, putting

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that to one side, I would say yes. The Bible teaches that children are to honor their parents even when their parents are not especially honorable. And I say that for three reasons. First of all, we need to remember that we ourselves were not always lovable. Our parents think we're beautiful, but a lot of people

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think we're nothing but storm clouds. Our parents thought that we were a blessing, while the neighbors next door thought we were both a bore and a bother. Parents don't love their children just when the children are lovable or when the children are worthy of that love. They love their children always because they

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are their children. Well, in just the same way when parents behave in a manner which is beneath the dignity which should be theirs as parents, we are to continue to love them because they continue to be our parents. A second thing to keep in mind is this. If for nothing else, we need to honor our

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parents because they have given to us the gift of life. Now for some, life may be unspeakably hard, but it is only because we have life that we can come to know Christ. And this is the key to keep in mind. If we suffer everything that we fear and if we lose everything that we hope for, still, because we are alive, we

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can come to Christ and through Christ we can know not non-existence but a perfect existence in the kingdom of heaven forever and forever. And the life that makes that possible was given to us by our parents. And one other thought. If you owe money to a thief, regardless of whether that person is a thief or not,

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you still owe the person money. In just the same way, even though our parents might sometimes behave in a manner which would lead us to anger or frustration or to ingratitude, simply because they are our parents, we are to honor them because of our indebtedness as we grow in the things of the faith as Christians. And as

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in the worst circumstance, we suffer as children. And from our suffering develop fortitude. And out of that fortitude develop character. And have as that character a profound and an ever real hope in the power of the Holy Spirit never to disappoint us. Because these things happen in Christian growth, we are

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enabled to honor our parents. It doesn't make any difference really how small your faith is at the beginning. Paul says that in the process of your suffering and in the process of your hurtful living, you are going to grow much more rapidly than the person who has a soft and easy life. And as you become a better

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Christian, among other things, you will become more aware of your own sin. And as you become more aware of your own sin, you will be less likely to judge your parents for theirs. And one final thought. This commandment concludes with a promise, "That by days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth

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thee." Now when it says that "by days may be long," it is not referring to age. It is not saying you will live a long time. It is talking about national survival. When families are strong, when parents are revered, when the truth which they pass down to their children is respected and taken up and passed on to the next

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generation, when that happens in a nation, that nation will grow in its strength. It's not because God particularly rewards that nation. It's simply because that nation is moving in accord with God's natural law. Whenever you receive that which is worthwhile from the past and you conserve it and use it in the

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present and the future, your land is going to be stronger. On the other hand, whenever we reject the past and ridicule it as old-fashioned and irrelevant in our particular time and in our particular circumstances, we cut away at the very historic roots, not only of our family, but of our entire society, of our

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whole nation. I have a friend who was in Jerusalem and he wanted to bring home a gift to his mother. He saw in the window of a potter's shop a very beautiful blue teapot and a number of cups. Now the shade of blue, its iridescence and glow, was different from what he had ever seen before, and he decided that was the gift

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he would like to take to his mother. So he went in and said he would like to buy the teapot and the cups. And the owner of the store said, "I'm sorry, they're not for sale." Now if you've ever purchased anything in the Middle East, you know that you never just go in and buy it. There's always a lot of partering

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and a lot of harangue back and forth in order to arrive at some agreeable price. And he thought that that's what the owner of the store was suggesting to him. "Hey, let's bargain for this." But the owner quickly made himself more clear. He said, "No matter what you offer me, I will not sell you that teapot and those cups." You

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see, the secret for making the blue in that ceramic pot has been in our family for 800 years. It has been passed down from father to son, from father to son. My father had that secret, but tragically he was killed in an automobile accident before he had the opportunity to pass it on to me. So we cannot duplicate this, and

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that's the reason we will never sell it. Think of it. A family conscious of the treasure is being passed down within it for 800 years. It's when you get a grasp of that kind of thinking amongst the Arabic people that you can begin to understand a little better the conflict that is going on in the Middle East.

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Well, in just the same way, we are to treasure, like that culture does, what is passed down to us by our parents. Alex Haley, the late author in his book, Roots, which appeared on television and was the most viewed television series in history, was interviewed shortly before his death and asked what he thought was

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important for the continued growth and development of the American family. And this is what he said, "We ought to interview the older members of our family, get their history before it is gone. We need to have more reunions. We need to cultivate the treasures which belong to every family, for all of this

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will strengthen us not only as families but as people." And his last line was this, "Those who have a contempt for the past will have despair in the future." I always think of Marian Anderson in these terms. Marian Anderson was one of the great women of the 20th century. She was the first black woman, the first black ever

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to overcome the deeply entrenched prejudice of the Metropolitan Opera and to sing many times from its stage. Toscanini described her as having the greatest voice of the 20th century. She did many, many performances at the White House, Buckingham Palace, and other command performances for royalty all

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around the globe. She was given the Bok Award, which is an award given by the city of Philadelphia to the Philadelphian who has done the most for that city. She was also given the Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor that can be conferred upon a civilian by our country. And then she was made a

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special ambassador to the United Nations. Now she was interviewed on one occasion and a reporter said to her, "What was the greatest day of your life?" And with all of these honors that were hers, all of these accomplishments, she never said a thing about them. She immediately replied, "The greatest day of my life was the

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day that I went home and told my mother that she didn't have to take in washing anymore." She was saying, you see, that she appreciated what had been done for her in the nexus of the family. She knew what that sacrifice was and she knew the cost and the value of it and she was saying, "Now I can take over." She was honoring

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her mother and her father. The promise that comes from God's heart to our heart is that if we honor our parents, the good will be passed on. It's people like Marian Anderson that do that and the more people like Marian Anderson there are in a society, the stronger that society, that nation is going to be. As I

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conclude, there is one last thing that I should mention to you beside the priority and the prescription and the promise in this commandment. I should call to your attention the fact that this is the only one of the Ten Commandments that you will probably not always be able to obey. You see, in the

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normal course of events, your parents will die before you do. So if you do not honor your parents now, there will come a time when you cannot honor them, when you cannot explain to them the love that you have for them. This is Father's Day. My father died 15 years ago. He loved a good story or joke and you know even now, 15

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years after his death, whenever I hear a good story or a good joke, the first thought that goes through my mind so quickly that I cannot stop it before it travels is this, "I've got to call Dad and tell him that story." But I can't do that anymore. I cannot apologize to him for anything that I should have apologized

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for and did not. I cannot thank him for any of those things that I forgot to thank him for and did not. I cannot brag to him and hear his commendation about those things in my life in which I take some pride. That time has gone for me just as it has gone for many of you. So what the finger of God wrote on Moses'

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tablets of stone, we must pray will also be written on the tablets of our hearts. "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." When that happens, then we will be honoring our parents, we will be honoring ourselves, and we will be honoring our country. Let

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us pray. O God, we call thee Father, and that immediately brings to mind that thou art not only our Heavenly Father but that we have earthly fathers and mothers as well, that we are of a family and in a family. Grant that this solemn word

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echoed so often in so many places and so many ways in the pages of Scripture. Grant that this word to honor our parents and to receive the blessing that comes from that might be reality in our lives. We pray this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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You