[AI translation] You know that on the usual month-end Communion Sunday, we take the next Word of the Ten Commandments as the basic Word of the sermon, so we now have the Fifth Commandment, the law of respect for parents. Without any further introduction, let me begin by explaining the text itself. It is noteworthy that God does not say: love your father and mother, nor do you glorify them, but: honour your parents. As you know, every normal child loves his or her parents, although, unfortunately, it is usually only when they are no longer on earth that he or she really realises this. It is natural behaviour, it is human nature, for a child to love his parents. He loves them even if he does not have much respect for them, even if they are not very loving towards him, even if there are periods in his life when he is at odds with them and feels coldly distant from them. Yes: there is still a natural love for parents in the heart of the child. The Word of God does not say to love your parents, it is not sentimentalism: it is much more than that! But neither is it about glorifying your parents, for this is a very pernicious thing, which has already caused a feeling of inferiority in the lives of many sons and daughters.In the Ten Commandments, it is "honour thy father and thy mother"! (Exodus 20:12a) Give them the respect, the recognition and the assertion of the right that they have as fathers and mothers. It is not for nothing that the Fifth Commandment is usually associated with respect for the authority of the supreme, political authority: it is the kind of behaviour which the Word requires of parents as a legal responsibility. Respect them as you should respect authority, or you will be in for all sorts of trouble. One may have many objections to the actions of the authority, criticise it, consider its representative an unpleasant individual: but respect it, for it is a superior! It's something like that here too: even if you have lost your love for your parents, and even if you can't identify with their way of thinking, you must respect them, because they are your parents! For in the order of life they are your supreme authority, your legitimate superior!
Yes: that is what the Word would literally mean! But why, on what basis can this respect for the rights of parents be demanded? And here is something very important and profound that the Bible teaches: We are to respect them not only through the physical and blood relationship, because we are the children of our parents, but also because the whole concept of fatherhood-motherhood is connected with the Fatherhood of God. Not by simply applying to God the concept of fatherhood that we humans know in our earthly father, but the other way round: by God giving something of his fatherhood to the people from whom we are bodily descended, that is, to our parents. God has adopted the earthly father and mother as his first co-workers in a good part of his fatherly work of creation and providence. He exercises this through them. Through the parenthood of father and mother something of the reality of the heavenly mother shines through. So close to God are fathers and mothers in their parenthood, motherhood and motherhood, that God Himself demands honour for them, and God Himself lends them a reflection of the light that otherwise belongs to God alone! He who denies respect to his father and mother denies it to God himself!
Do you feel how different this is here in Scripture from the sentimental musings of men about loving parents and loving children? For here the command to parents is very clear: parents, your vocation is to parent in a way that reflects God's fatherhood! And your duty is to give your children the great answer to the great question of the meaning of their own existence! And because you have such a high function, such a great dignity, and such a great task that God has entrusted to you, you must be respected by your children! And the command to children is just as clear: children, because God has made man a child through Jesus Christ, you have a father and a mother, and from here you can know the reality of fatherhood and motherhood, your parents represent to you the reality of the heavenly Father! So we must not only obey our earthly parents because and as long as we find their advice sympathetic and in accordance with our own will, but obedience to parents is an attitude of faith for us, through them we obey God or we disobey! In the same way, believers obey their earthly superiors, not because they find them sympathetic, but because they see God's order in them and obey God through them!
Obedience is for the Lord, not for the sake of parents, not for the sake of parents' good feeling, not for the sake of maintaining a beautiful tradition, a tradition of respect for parents, nor for any other sentimental reason, but for the Lord alone and only! And for the Lord, even if the parents do not know that they themselves are for the Lord, that their fatherhood and motherhood are a reflection of the Fatherhood of the Lord. So for the Lord, "Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you." (Exodus 20:12)
This is, so far, the theory. Unfortunately, in practice, alas, there are many problems! On both sides: on the part of the parents and on the part of the children! And this commandment touches the sore spot of both: parents and children, and wants to heal it! Sometimes parents themselves make it difficult, even impossible, for their children to respect them! Not because they lead dishonest lives - there are certainly such parents, but such extreme cases are hopefully the exception rather than the rule - but because, with so many parents, children seek guidance in vain on the serious issues of life: they do not get it, or they do not get it right. How many parents dare to talk honestly and openly to their adolescent son or daughter when he or she cannot cope with the surging energy of his or her own youth, and is left to his or her own devices at critical moments in life, or is given information that may cripple his or her body and soul for life! When our child is stumbling over the precipices of fears of imagined or real sin, oh, how much he needs a loving hand to help him over the abyss to a safe shore. Is that hand reaching out? But many parents make it impossible for their child to come to them with the great questions of life with confidence, because the marriage of father and mother is not, despite appearances, a happy one. The child sees everything very clearly. He notices the slightest disturbance, and every family scene has the consequence that the child withdraws more into himself with his own problems and does not go to the parents with his questions.
Or how many children suffer because of the parents' outward religiosity! They see their parents praying, reading the Bible, going to church, and their lives do not show that they really believe, and that behind the outward appearance of their piety there is a struggling soul, a struggling man, a sinful man, who himself does not just pull the answers to life's great questions out of his waistcoat pocket! And how many parents are there who really do their best for their child, give him a good education, gather material goods for him, so that he may have all he needs for life; a self-sacrificing father and mother to his child, but never looking beyond himself to the true Father - and so, indeed, he sends him out into life beggarly and forlorn. And how good would it be if you were no longer a Father to your children, even if you were no longer a Father?
But many parents alienate themselves from their children, and make them really miserable, by not understanding the other needs, other problems, other changed circumstances of youth, with such pious hints: 'Well, in our time, you couldn't do this or that for a child! It is generally very simple, but it is outrageous to wail over the morals of today's youth, as if they were more useless, frivolous, frivolous, impure than those of the generations before them! I read a saying the other day, one we have all heard many times. It literally said, 'We live in a decadent, dying age. Young people are good for nothing: they have no respect for the old, they are impatient, they are rebellious. It doubts ancient knowledge, it disrespects its parents. These phenomena of our times point to a complete disintegration of the world." Do you know where this writing comes from? An inscription from an ancient Egyptian tomb! The youth of today is no more immoral than we were, than our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were, no more impure than the age of 40-50 years ago, or 3000 years ago. At most, the same uncleanness and immorality that has always existed is perhaps more blatant, more honest, more honest today, but disguised, more pompous, more pharisaical. It is not age that makes one more immoral or more moral, but Jesus Christ! So let us parents not complain about the disrespect of our children, but let us be parents, fathers and mothers who truly deserve to "honour thy father and mother", because we radiate the goodness, providence, love and self-sacrifice of the heavenly Father to our children!
Of course, even if this were not so, you children would not be exempt from God's definite law, "honour thy father and mother". Yes, the undoubted fault of the parent does not absolve the child from the obligation to respect! And if you find it difficult to honour your parents, you, child, should also consider that the fault may lie not only with your parents, but also with yourself! And indeed: perhaps it is not their fault that you cannot respect them, but yours! You see in your parents faults which are not in them, but in you! You have projected a lot of bad qualities onto them, which pushes you away from them. But you don't see in them things that are in them, that they still love you, that they still protect you, that they suffer for you! So, what shines through them most is the compassionate, forgiving Fatherhood of God, who suffers for us in Christ!
But what am I to do," asks a young girl or boy who is a truly serious believer, "if my parents want me to do something that I think is wrong? What am I to do if they do not like the one of my heart: should I break up with him? What should I do if they don't like my going to church: stop going? What should I do if my parents are so old-fashioned that they consider swimming, cinema, dancing immoral: should I obey them and become an anachronism, too, living out of touch with the world? Yes, these are all practical problems! How should I answer such questions? Shall I tell you not to be bothered by such old-fashioned, outdated views, go your own way? No! I could never say that! I would tell you to start by truly respecting your parents. Try to see in them the reflection of God the Fatherhood. So start to truly obey them. Whoever sacrifices something in this way, out of love for God: he may not be able to dance rock and roll, he may not be able to talk about the latest movie, but he will be much, much richer than others who live without sacrifice. Very rarely is there really a moment when parents wish something for their child that the child should not have to do. Incidentally, I know how many difficulties and problems there are between the older and younger generations in this respect. I dare to say one thing for sure: you parents, your children are waiting for, longing for, the approach of a trusted good friend, and you children, your parents, are waiting for the approach of a trusted good friend! Why then cannot you find each other? Why must you wander apart, orphaned, left to yourselves? Yes, the gulf between you is too great!
My brothers! In the very last verse of the last page of the Old Testament, there is a precious promise of God about Someone who, among other things, will be responsible for "turning the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to the fathers" (Mal 4,6). He has come into the world in the form of a son, the only begotten Son! And He performed His great ministry of reconciliation and reconciliation in such a way that the Father did not spare His only begotten Son, but gave Him up to suffer a crucifixion.
How wonderful that at the centre of our whole Christian faith is a Father: a Father whose heartache is such that no father has ever borne it - and a Son: a Son whom the Father beats, chastises, punishes! Thus God has taken upon Himself the afflictions of the fifth commandment, all that the fathers have sinned against the sons, and that the sons have sinned against the fathers and mothers! And so God has given healing in the pain of His wound on Calvary to every family! Yours too!
There, where the Father sacrificed the Son, at the cross, on Calvary, the hearts of fathers and sons meet in mutual forgiveness of sins. There, all the broken family life can begin again, now happily and as the law says in our basic verse, "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest live long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."
Amen
Date: 26 January 1958.
Lesson
Ef 6,1-10