Chain Mail

Honor your father and your mother Deuteronomy 5:16

Honor – God never does anything without a purpose.  When it comes to the world of human beings, all of God’s actions have redemptive purposes.  So, honoring your parents is not just about respect.  It’s not just the “Yes, sir,” “No, ma’m” attitude.  There are critical redemptive issues at stake here.  Once you see what they are, things might change in your family.

The Hebrew word for “honor” is kabed.  It is literally a word about weight.  It means, “to be heavy.”  Honor is to give weight to someone.  That is a metaphor for important, respect, consideration and value.  In the Hebrew mind, this metaphor is connected to power and respect.  It’s like holding gold in your hand.  You can feel the difference between 10-carat and 24-carat.  Heavier is better.

God tells children to treat their parents like 24-carat gold.  Why?  Well, the answer to that question is not found in a manual of military discipline.  It is found in the covenant.  It is the parents’ responsibility to transmit the covenant in word and deed to their children.  This is an enormous burden and must be handled carefully and diligently.  As a result of this education, children are made aware of the great and glorious God of Israel.  The purpose and plan of the covenant passes to them.  Therefore, children are to show great respect for the effort of parents to teach them God’s ways.  Without their parents, instruction in the ways of God would be lost – and they would flounder in life.  With their parents, children are prepared to enter into a covenant relationship – and discover life with God on their own.  It is God’s chain mail, connecting one generation to the next.

How much honor would you give to someone who rescued your life from wandering despair and hopeless destruction?  How much respect is due those who, at great effort and cost to themselves, taught you the essentials of walking in harmony with the God of creation?  If you didn’t hold such people in high regard, it would simply demonstrate your own self-disgust.  When parents do what God commanded them to do, children benefit without measure.  That is worth honoring.  That has eternal weight.

How many times have your parents prayed over you?  How many silent pleas have they made to keep you safe, to give you guidance, to lift you up?  How many verses have they read, claiming them in your name?  How many times have they gone without so that you could thrive?  This is God’s way.  We each have our turn at the wheel, steering a course that He sets.  His plan is always connection – a community of relationships building and nurturing another community of relationships.  No matter what your background, you are now a part of God’s personal chain mail.  God has designed the chain so that if you learn honoring, you will know what teaching is all about when your turn comes.

Topical Index:  commandments, honor, kabed, Deuteronomy 5:16

A little commentary:  In the last few days we have looked at some of the Hebrew views on spiritual activities.  Of course, from the Hebrew perspective, there is really no distinction between sacred and secular.  God is at work in my life no matter what activity I am doing.  Our distinction between sacred and secular comes from a Greek perspective, an attempt to insulate one from the other so that Sunday has almost nothing to do with Monday.  It’s important to realize that the Hebrew word for work is also a word for worship.

Several readers have asked about the idea of the sabbath.  What does it mean for those of us who have always believed that Sunday was church day?  A lot of things change when I realize that work and worship are cut from the same cloth.  On the sabbath, God asks me to set aside all of my usual routines, everything that is related to sustaining my life in the world of sorrow.  He asks me to make this day a day of deliberate conversation with Him.  After all, He made this day for me.  It is the day when, with God’s help, I may become human.  I may set aside all those elements of the fallen world that try to press me into its mold and learn that my dependence is refreshing, my acknowledgment glorious, my vulnerability illuminating and my weakness reviving.  In other words, this is a day when drawing close to God means that I experience myself as God sees me.

So, whatever I do on the sabbath, it must be grounded in the conversation with Him that makes me whole.  It must be glorifying to Him because that is what lifts me up.  It must be dedicated to Him because that is what anchors my trust.  Sabbath keeping is wide enough to take in the whole of His creation but narrowly focused on Who He is and who I am in dialogue with Him.  Sabbath keeping is joyfully experiencing the grace of God in me – and in the community that surrounds me.  I am pretty sure that it is not possible to keep the sabbath alone.  That is certainly not what God had in mind.  I am also pretty sure that it is not possible to keep the sabbath passively.  I cannot be an observer of an event.  Sabbath keeping depends entirely on relationship interaction, so I have to do something.  It’s just that what I do cannot push me back toward a world where God’s original design is not at the forefront.  Sabbath-keeping is ultimately walking together in the cool of the evening conversing with the Creator.