Pentecost 14 (NL4) John B. Valentine
Exodus 20:1-2, 12 August 30, 2026

“HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER ... ”

We’re back at it ... folks. Walking through the Ten Commandments.

And today ... believe it or not ... we’re going to look at just one ... ONE! ... of the ten!

Commandment Number Four ... at least by the Lutheran way of numbering them ... the one which reads "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you."

But ... before we do that ... and just quickly here so that we don’t chew up too much of today’s sermon time ... I need to ask one question:

“What is the PURPOSE of the Ten Commandments?”

Obviously ... over the eons ...

We’ve used them ... people have used them ...

• as a basis for personal morality ... as a general set of guidelines about how I should treat other people ...

• as a basis for public morality ... as a general set of guidelines about how we all should treat other people ... and

• as a basis for defining legal civil conduct ... as the basic building blocks of a legal code which identifies right ... and wrong ... behaviors.

But what was the purpose of the Ten Commandments when God first delivered them ... to the Israelites who were wandering about in the desert???

They ... and in a certain way still ARE ... check this out: “A Guide for Worship Leaders”!

The Ten Commandments are the details as to HOW we actually worship and honor God!

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Really ... I kid you not!

• In Exodus 14 ... the Israelites flee from Egypt and that nasty oppressive pharaoh fellow and cross through the sea ...

• In Exodus 15 ... they sing a victory song to God for the deliverance which they’d just experienced ...

• In Exodus 16 ... they realize that they forget to pack a few things for their trip ... ... and God provides for them ...

• In Exodus 17 ... they realize that they forgot to pack a few more things for their trip ... and again God provides for them ...

• In Exodus 18 ... they kind of have this existential crisis as they wrestle with the question of who they are and what it is that they’re doing ...

• In Exodus 19 ... the “nineteen that comes before twenty” ... God steps in and tells them “You are mine. You belong to me. You shall be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” ...

• And then ... and only then ... in Exodus chapter 20 ... in response to the Israelites “How do we worship this ‘I Am Who I Am’ God?” ... we get the Ten Commandments.

In Exodus 19 ... they discover that they are in a relationship with God ... and thus start to worrying about how they might actually worship this God who has established a relationship with them ...

And in Exodus 20 ... God details what true and faithful worship might actually look like ... how it is that God’s people might worship and honor and live into that relationship which God has established.

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Now ... granted ... when WE get into “worship wars” in the church these days ... we tend to ask questions like

• Are we using the green book or the blue book or the red book or the purple book??
• Is it traditional or contemporary??
• It is high church or low church??
• Piano or organ??
• Vestments or street clothes??

Just like all those ancient communities that surrounded Israel back in the day ... we assume that the right way to worship is to just get the ritual of worship right!

But when Moses comes back down the mountain ... the worship instructions which he brings with him don't look like anything that any of them could have possibly imagined!

Because ‘worship' ... “honoring God” ... gets redefined as how God's people actually LIVE!

Not just how they treat God and God’s name ... but how they treat their families ... and how they treat their neighbors.

Let that sink in for a moment, folks!

• We worship and honor God not just one day a week ... that would be in the realm of the third Commandment ... the one about “keeping the Sabbath Day holy” ....

• We worship and honor God not just with the words that come out of our mouths ... that would be in the realm of the second Commandment ... the one about "not taking the name of God in vain" ....

We worship and honor God with our behavior ... how we treat other people ... our lives are an act of worship!

Including how we treat others in our household ... as detailed here in the Fourth Commandment: "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you."

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Anyhow .... I want to highlight four simple observations that we should make about the fourth commandment:

First off ... this commandment has a very particular place in the litany of God’s top ten. It come in at Number Four.

• After the three that specifically talk about our dealing with the “things of God” ... God’s place in our lives, God’s name and God’s day ...

• And before the last six which specifically speak of our dealings with the “things of our neighbors” ... don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet, don’t covet” ...

There’s “Honor your father and your mother.”

It’s the pivot point between the realm of divinity and the realm of humanity ... FAMILY.

Which I guess makes sense ... because the first realm in which we learn to live out our lives is ... in the family!

Family in one of the places ... the first place actually ... wherein our relationship with God is lived out in our lives with others ... by honoring our fathers and our mothers!

Secondly ... this Fourth Commandment is the only one of the ten that comes to us as a “do” rather than a “don’t”.

“Don’t ... don’t ... don’t ... DO ...... don’t ... don’t ... don’t ... don’t ... don’t ... don’t!”

It doesn’t proscribe something ... it PRESCRIBES something.

It is an invitation to discover for ourselves how to do something that God actively calls us to do!

Thirdly ... this is the only one of the Ten Commandments that comes with an extension attached to it!

It’s not just "Honor your father and your mother” ....

It’s "Honor your father and your mother, SO THAT your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you."

But you have to pay attention to how it is that that extension is phrased:

• It’s not exactly a promise ... it doesn’t read “If you honor your father and mother, your days will be long in the land.”

• It’s not a warning either ... it doesn’t read “If you don’t honor your father and mother, I’m cutting you off”

Rather, it is written as a statement of fact.

• If this commandment is kept, life will .. generally speaking ... go well with you.

• If this commandment is not kept, life will ... generally speaking ... NOT go so well.

And fourthly ... don’t miss that this commandment is “Honor your father and your mother” ... not “Honor your father” per se.

Now I doubt that sounds to shocking to any of us ... but to the folks to whom those words were first delivered ... there was some genuine shock value packed within them!

Because it says that fathers and mothers are both ... even equally ... worthy of respect!

And given the patriarchy of the day ... the elevation and authority of men in the ancient Near East ... and the degradation and subservience of women ...

That may make this commandment the most shocking ... and societally-significant ... commandment of all!

But then again ... the more I read the Bible ... the more convinced I become that our God has been working to empower and elevate women since back in like Genesis ... chapter one!

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But then again ... let’s add one more thing to that list ... which is kind of related to the fact that this commandment is an invitation to discover for ourselves how to do something that God actively calls us to do!

For I think that this is the ONLY commandment that is dependent on our particular station in life.

I mean ....

If we would have done KidTalk this morning ... I would have asked our youngest members what it means for them to “Honor their fathers and their mothers” and see what kind of a list we might come up with.

And I suspect that our list would have included things like:

• Listen to what they say.
• Recognizing all the things they do for us .... like cooking and cleaning and driving us to soccer practice or dance.
• Do what they ask ... the first time ... rather than the fourth!
• Respect their decisions ... even if we don’t like them.

For young children ... “Honoring your father and your mother” is fairly obvious ... and fairly straight-forward.

But what about for adolescents and young adults?

After all ... the National Institutes of Health tells us that one of the primary psychosocial tasks of adolescence is “individuation” ... shifting from childhood dependence to emotional and behavioral independence ... all the while maintaining a secure connection with one’s family!

For folks in that age-group ... broadly speaking ... the call of the Fourth Commandment has to do with “honoring” and “respecting” even when one disagrees ...

• Seriously considering their counsel ...
• Recognizing the challenges they face ... and
• Treating them respectfully.

But ... then again ... we never stop aging ... and we never stop being someone’s child ... and ... soon enough ... the tables start to turn.

And we begin to deal with our parents on an equal footing ...

And then ... soon enough ... at least some among us find themselves becoming their parents’ primary support system and primary caregivers.

The call to “Honor your father and your mother” means a much different thing to a fifty-five-year-old than it does to a five-year-old ... but its is still a calling from God.

In fact ... some top-flight biblical scholars insist that the primary focus of this fourth commandment isn’t about kids and young adults respecting their parents ... it’s about ensuring that there was ... and would be ... a safety net for those who were too old to work!

And finally ... we come to that point wherein our earthly parents are no longer among us.

What does it mean to "Honor your father and your mother" then???

• “Honor their wishes”???
• “Honor their memory”???
• “Honor their values”???

Actually ... given the fact that we’re all at such different stages in life ... honoring our fathers and our mothers will necessarily look different for each and every one of us ... but none of us are off the hook.

Maybe that’s why this is the one “DO “ commandment ... because it is an invitation to discover for ourselves how to do something that God actively calls us to do!

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But I’d be remiss were I not to leave you with this ... a poem by a woman named Jacqueline Woodson ... to honor her father and mother ... appropriately titled “Parents Poem” ... by Jacqueline Woodson.

When people ask how, I say a fire took them.
And then they look at me like I'm the most pitiful thing in the world.
So sometimes I just shrug and say “They just died, that's all.”
A fire took their bodies. That's all.

I can still feel their voices and hugs and laughing.
Sometimes.
Sometimes I can hear my daddy calling my name.
Lonnie sometimes.
And sometimes “Locomotion, come on over here a minute. I want to show you something.
And then I see his big hands holding something out to me.

It used to be the four of us.
At night we went to sleep.
In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.
Daddy worked for Con Edison.
You ever saw him? Climbing out of a manhole?
Yellow tape keeping the cars from coming down the block.
An orange sign that said Men Working.
I still got his hat. It's light blue with CON EDISON in white letters.

Mama was a receptionist.
When you called the office where she worked, she answered the phone like this
Graftman Paper Products, how may I help you?
It was her work voice.
And when you said something like “Ma, it's me”, her voice went back to normal.
To our mama's voice
Hey Sugar. You behaving? Is the door locked?

That stupid fire couldn't take all of them.
Nothing could do that. Nothing.