“The Honor We Owe”

8 in Leaning On the Everlasting Arms - The Ten do with our relationship with God, states, “Honor your Father Commandments and your Mother.”i “Honor your Father and your Mother.” Exodus 20:12 The scriptures consistently portray a people who are connected, and part of families. All those “begats;” “Abraham

begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob: and Jacob begat Judah and Exodus 20:1-2, 12 Genesis 29:28-50:6 ii his brothers…” , all those long boring genealogies, are a 1 John 3:23-4:7-16 reminder that we are connected, to our parents, and through

them to a great extended family. Jacob on his deathbed is November 6, 2005 All Saints’ Sunday surrounded by his sons. He blesses them and declares to each Dr. Edwin Gray Hurley the sort of families who will emerge from them. He gives his

burial instructions, “Bury me with my ancestors in the land of

Canaan, in the field that Abraham bought,” That said, Jacob Loren Eisely tells about a friend who dreamed one night “drew up his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was that he had returned to his childhood home. He found himself iii gathered to his people.” Joseph, the son of prominence as walking along familiar streets past houses of his playmates from Prime Minister in Pharoah’s Egypt, took charge of proper long ago. Rounding the corner he came to his own house, long embalming and burial, and together all the brothers carried out since vacant. Walking up the porch he leaned over and peered their father’s wishes, doing what countless generations of sons in the front windows, trying to see the faces of his mother and and daughters have done as a final act of honor for their parents. his father, who had died some years before. All he saw was darkness. Stepping back he lit a match, and in the flame he saw This “All Saints Sunday” we remember our connection, reflected in the glass pane the face of his father and the face of with thanksgiving and with love and with honor to those who his mother. Then the most interesting thing happened. The two have gone on ahead of us in the family of faith and in our own faces merged, and the one face he saw was his own. The lines family. We are not alone in the world. We are connected. We on the face of his father and the face of his mother became the are indebted to our fathers and our mothers for the start they lines of his own face. He awakened with a start. Loren Eisely gave us, for the direction they set. They were our faith teachers. asked his friend, “Did you learn anything from the dream?” The Most of us learned our first lessons about God’s love for us and friend replied, “Yes, I learned that I am they.” the person of Jesus Christ from our fathers and our mothers.

Parents make promises in baptism to do that very thing. Jesus You and I did not just happen. We were born of parents taught us to pray to God as “Our Father,” Abba, Daddy, a who shaped us and guided us and transferred to us by way of personal, intimate, familial term demonstrating we are related to genes and example so much of who and what we are. We are God as our Parent. Jesus taught us to relate to one another not self-generated. It has been said that nothing is so revealing within the Church as sisters and brothers. Family is most of our being or existence, as our belly button. With great important in how we understand and receive and relate to God wisdom the fifth commandment, first in the Ten having to do and to one another. with our relationship with others, following the four having to

2 We are commanded to honor our parents. That does not beginning with caring for our own parents as they age, on the mean to idolize them. That does not mean to worship them. other. Just now we are caring for Gayle’s parents’ dog, “Missy” That does not mean they are always right or do not make while they are out west! mistakes. As a father I assure you we do. Some of you have painful memories of poor parenting you received or gave. Still, I find myself increasingly appreciative of my family and for all the wrongs that may have come, our parents remain our reflecting upon them, those I knew personally and those I did parents, to be honored as such. not. My grandfather Gray, my Mother’s father, died when my Mother was 13. All I ever have known of him came through the In Kentucky one son in the congregation I served, a man stories and the pictures. And those came in abundance. I am in his 50’s, was reunited with a mother he had not seen since he named for him, and for his son, my uncle who was killed in was 10 years old. Somehow she had made contact with him World War II. Their pictures, always on my Mother’s dresser, again after more than 40 years of separation. She was dying of bear a striking resemblance to me and our sons Peter and Stuart. cancer. The son welcomed her into his home. They were Though never having seen them, we are connected to them. reconciled. And she died in a hospital bed in the living room of her son’s home. I never knew personally my Grandfather Hurley either. He was the eldest of five brothers and two sisters. A devout We owe honor to our parents simply because they are Christian leader in his church and community. At the Hurley our parents. Martin Luther said, Family Reunion last summer 70 or so of us who descended from this family gathered for the family photograph. Gayle and I “We know that (honoring our parents) is the greatest have been going to these reunions every other year or so for 26 work that we can do, next to the sublime worship of God years, since a month after we were married, when they described in the previous commandments.”iv resurrected the long dormant events. Gayle did not know what she had signed on for when she said “I do.” Of those seven John Calvin said, great uncles and great aunts, from whom this family are “The submission paid to (our parents) ought to be a step descended, all but one, 92 year old Aunt Mary, have gone on toward honoring the highest Father. Their eminence ahead. But what a heritage, for us and for our children, and for depends upon God’s loftiness and ought to lead us to their children. After honoring God, honoring our parents is the it.”v first commandment, and our first priority.

I II The Fifth Commandment calls us to make honoring our The Fifth Commandment prescribes how we are to parents our top priority. This is not instruction only for young relate to our parents. Namely to honor them. To honor means children. This is a commandment especially aimed at grown “to put in a place of high esteem and authority.” We don’t tend children about the way we relate to our parents. Gayle and I are to like that word “authority” these days. Living in a democracy in “the sandwich generation.” We are sandwiched between two we like to think we are free of all authority. Not so. The way slices of life, almost done with the immediate parenting we practically live out honoring our parents changes over our responsibilities for our children on the one with hand, and then years, from one of total dependence in infancy to one where the 3 reins are gradually loosened in childhood and youth, to an adult- of glad reunion. We trust and we believe that in some great way to-adult loving friendship. But still, not one among equals. Our in heaven our loved ones and we will be reunited. Like Jacob parents have authority and honor over us because they gave us we will be “Gathered to our people.” life. Our parents remain our parents, worthy of our honor. Last Sunday, while you were worshipping here on our Marian Anderson was one of the greatest opera singers 117th Anniversary as South Highland Presbyterian Church, I was ever to arise in the United States, and the first black woman to worshipping in a great European Cathedral in Sarajevo, Bosnia- sing regularly on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Asked by Herzagovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, when a profound a reporter what was the greatest moment in her life, she did not sense of “connection” gripped me. In 1984 Sarajevo hosted the reply that it was when she sang in the White House for the Winter Olympics. From 1991-1994 Sarajevo lay under siege by Roosevelts and the King and Queen of England, or when she Serbia with no power, no medicine, no food readily available for was given the Congressional Medal of Freedom, or dozens of 4 years. Now the former Yugoslavia is broken up into separate similar moments. She replied, “The greatest moment of my life nations, including Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, which we visited. was when I went home to my mother and said, ‘Mom, you won’t All of them are formed along religious majority fault lines, have to take in washing any more.’”vi through forced exile of minorities for the lucky ones and genocide for the unlucky ones. Now there are 90% majorities of The specifics vary. The prescription to honor our parents Catholics in Croatia, Muslims in Bosnia, Orthodox in Serbia. does not. You think you want one nation under one God visit the ethnically cleansed Balkans! The hatred of one people for III another was palpable, as the sight of a little 5 year old Serbian For – unlike some of the other commandments, that are boy making a sign of slitting his throat toward us, probably accompanied with threat of punishment, the Fifth assuming we were Croatian, indicated. What had this little boy Commandment is the First Commandment with a promise been learning from his mother and father at home? of blessing.” “That your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”vii A long and good life is Worshipping Sunday in that Roman Catholic Cathedral promised to those who take this commandment to heart. For at the English-language mass, I heard the vicar, a brilliant New some that adds up to long years chronologically. For others, Testament scholar with whom we later visited, preach about though the number of years is short, their impact is long. Like servant leadership. He stressed the need to elect good servant the impact of my Grandfathers, whom I never met, on me. They leaders and to ask ourselves, “how am I a servant leader?” both died in their 50’s.The promise of longevity to those who When the invitation for communion was given I listened honor our parents says something about the kind of people we carefully as he invited all who trust in Jesus Christ to come. So, are, something about future generations, something about what disregarding denominational rules to keep a higher rule, “Do this we believe is our true and lasting home through Jesus Christ. in remembrance of me,” I went forward. Walking slowly up the central aisle of the Cathedral, as the organist played Mozart’s, Through faith in Jesus Christ we trust and we believe this “Ave Verum Corpus,” my mind filled with images of the horrors life is not only not all there is. This life is not even the best of of which our travel group had been reminded, seeing: all there is. Heaven lies ahead as our true home, with the hope 4 -the Sarajevo Synagogue where 85% of their members There is a world beyond the Balkans, even for the people disappeared during the Second World War. of the Balkans. There is resurrection. The postlude of that -the spot where Austro-Hungarian Archduke Ferdinand worship last Sunday was the triumphant Easter hymn, “Thine is was assassinated in 1914 by a Serbian nationalist, the glory, risen conquering Son.” sparking the First World War. -the streets in Sarajevo marked with spots of red paint, For Croatians, for Bosnians, for Serbians, for us on the indicating where yet another Bosnian had been killed by other side of grief and loss of those we love there is resurrection. the Serbs from up in the hills under the dictator Milosevic in a war that claimed 200,000 lives. “And this is his command, to believe in the name of his -the town of Srebrenica where on July 11, 1995 8,000 Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he Bosnian men and boys disarmed, in the presence and commanded us. God is love.” under the protection of Dutch U.N. so-called “peacekeepers,” were slaughtered by the Serbs in field “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may and warehouses.. be long in the Land which the Lord your God gives you.” -the years of iron-fisted oppression under Tito’s atheistic communism. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the -the refusal of many local Muslims, Catholics and Holy Spirit. Amen. Orthodox in towns we visited even to talk to one another to this day.

All those horrors flooded over me, my eyes flowed with tears as I walked forward, and then the connection, with the i Ex. 20:12. ii music of Mozart playing in the background. Mt. 1:2. iii Gn. 49:33. The words of “Ave Verum Corpus,” are these, iv Martin Luther, Larger Catechism, quoted in The Truth About God, Stanley Haurerwas and William Willimon, p. 68. “Hail, true body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, v John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, quoted in Haurerwas and that truly, sacrificed upon the Cross for mankind. Willimon, ibid, p.69. vi From whose pierced side flow water and blood, Quoted in a sermon by J. Howard Edington, “When Family Comes First”, preached 5-8-88, First Presbyterian Church, Orlando, FL. I am grateful to That unto us a foretaste of our death we may behold.” Howard for a number of illustrations used in this sermon and for the overall development. Walking forward last Sunday, I felt God’s connection vii Ex. 20:12. with me and with this poor suffering world. Jesus Christ has viii from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption.” shown us the way. Defeating death and evil by his own death and resurrection. Reminding us “things in this world are not carved out of gray stone.”viii