Church of the Holy City

Degrees of Parenthood

Degrees of Parenthood
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 8, 2013

Genesis 17:1-8, 15-22 Matthew 10:34-39 Psalm 103

The fourth commandment is, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.” On the first level of meaning, this commandment tells us to respect our parents. On the second level of meaning, it tells us to respect the church as our spiritual mother. And on the deepest level it tells us to revere God, who is Father to us all.
And then I have selected a problematic passage from the New Testament that seems to fly in the face of the fourth commandment. Jesus tells us to turn from our parents and our homes,
I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. 37 He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; (Matthew 10:35-37).
I think that if we look at these two passages developmentally, we can find a resolution to them both. Also, when we consider the deeper meanings of the fourth commandment, we will see that they cohere together beautifully.

We are told to honor our parents, for they have given us all we knew as children. They have fed us, clothed us, and taught us to be good citizens. While no human is without weaknesses, our parents have done the best they knew to give us all they could. Our early feelings of love were from our parents. Before we set out to make our way in the world, we had the unconditional love of a home that cared for us as special beings. As the wife in a Robert Frost poem says about home and family, “I should have called it/Something you somehow haven’t to deserve” (The Death of the Hired Man). We don’t have to deserve our parents’ love and support. They give it to us because we are their children. And we never outgrow our status as children in the eyes of our parents. Even adult children are loved as they were when young.
But we do grow up and leave our homes and family. We become our own persons and now we are in a world in which it seems we do have to deserve the love and respect we know. We may see that the world is different from the way we saw things as children. As we become adults, we examine our lives and see if the way we were brought up is the best way to live.
This is where I see the New Testament passage coming into play. We come to see God as our true parent. And we see that God is to be loved above all. This means that we shine a light on our lives from what we know of God’s ways. And we see where amendments need to be made in our lives. This is what loving God above all means. It means that our family life may limit our potential if we don’t grow beyond what we learned as children. There is another poem by Frost that illustrates this idea. The poet meets with his neighbor once a year to build a wall between the two of them. They have a stone wall that separates their properties. Over the course of the year, stones fall out of place and the two meet to put the wall between them back together. But the ironic thing about this wall is that the poet’s property is all orchard, and his neighbor’s is all pine. The wall serves no purpose! There are no cattle or animals that would roam into the others’ property. But the poet’s neighbor has a saying that he inherited from his father, “Good fences make good neighbors.” He holds this saying uncritically. He doesn’t look for why good fences make good neighbors. And, as we have seen, in this case, a wall makes no sense. Holding a stone in each hand, the neighbor seems to Frost, “like an old-stone savage armed.” Since his neighbor lives uncritically, Frost sees him moving
in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Do we have the courage and the insight to go past what we have learned from our home life if we see that there are other ways to live? I think that living critically, and examining our lives are necessary steps in growing up. In my own life, for one reason or another, I was brought up arguing. I could almost always see a contrary way of looking at something and almost instinctively would open up an argument when a subject was brought up–in fact, when any simple assertion or statement was made. There were benefits to this habit. I joined the debate team in high school and lost only one debate the whole semester. And in school, when we needed a topic for a paper, having an argumentative disposition gave me things to write about as I would question readings that had been assigned. But there was also a down side. In certainly inhibited my social life. Many people don’t like to be argued with. Continually debating and contradicting others didn’t endear me to many people. I managed to isolate myself from others. But in a 12-step program, I learned that there were other ways of living. I learned that I didn’t have to debate and argue all the time. I remember one very wise person asking me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” And as I relaxed my argumentative nature, I learned to live and let live. Now I am Vice President of a wonderful organization in which 13 different faith traditions all work together to find peace, justice, and education with one another, and to promote such aims in culture. Where would I be if I still tried to impose my beliefs on others and tried to convince them of my way?
Jesus’ sayings are even stronger than the way I have been presenting them so far. He says, “A man’s foes will be those of his own household.” This is saying that our household is even a foe, an enemy. Here we are entering the idea of what Swedenborg calls hereditary evil. Swedenborg claims that we inherit from our parents tendencies to evil. But we need to be clear that these are only tendencies. If we act on these tendencies, then we acquire actual evil. Some of these evils are necessary in our upbringing. Consider self, for instance. It is part of growing up to become our own person and to make decisions about good and bad from our own lights. It is part of growing up to look out for our own interests and to provide for ourselves. Otherwise, we would be a burden on society. So self-interest is a necessary step in human development. But if self-interest grows too large in our characters, to the point where we will run roughshod over others in order to get what we want, then self-interest becomes a problem. In fact it becomes destructive self-love. Then self-interest becomes our foe, our enemy. In this way, healthy traits from our natural upbringing can grow into our foe. Then, we need to become militant against our natural tendencies. Now, we see that we need to set ourselves against ourselves and our upbringing:
I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. 37 He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me (Matthew 10:35-37)
So we may need to become militant against the familiar ways of acting that we may have grown into. This is one meaning of Jesus’ words, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). We lose our lives for Jesus’ sake when we lose the evils we have acquired and let God and His goodness into our lives.
It is the church as our spiritual mother that provides the nurture and instruction to guide us into God’s kingdom and God’s ways. So as our spiritual mother, we respect our church. Our church has taught us the ways of God, and the church is a loving community that supports us as we walk our own path toward heaven. We see how all the commandments cohere beautifully. We honor the Sabbath when we honor our church. We hold no other gods before the One True God as we look to godliness and fearlessly reform our lives in the light we see from God. This is loving God above our mothers and fathers and honoring His name.
So the first four commandments all have God at their heart. Swedenborg tells us that the first commandments all refer to God and the second group of commandments all have the neighbor at their heart. This talk concludes the commands that center on God. Next week we begin the commandments that relate to our neighbor.

PRAYER

Lord, we give you thanks for all the loving memories we have of our parents and our home life. Our parents have taught us about love and about citizenship in this world. We know, Lord, that the early feelings of love we had in childhood remain with us and are your special dwelling in our hearts. And we give you thanks for our church. As we come of age, our church is as our spiritual mother. Our church nurtures us while we grow spiritually. Our church teaches us about being angels in your world. And Lord, we thank you for your love and nurturing of us. For you are our heavenly Father, and we are all your children. Help us to see one another as brothers and sisters under your protective wing.

And lord, we ask that you watch over those who are struggling and enduring hardship, be it sickness, poverty, or national unrest. Send your peaceful spirit to turmoil. May aid come to those in need and may all the nations of the world come together in good will to help nations that are suffering from natural disasters or internal strife.

Send the power of your healing love to those who are sick. We know on faith that in every trying situation, good can come. May we find the good in trouble, and healing where there is sickness.