Sermon: "An Honorable Weight"

5th in the "Stone Tablets in a Wireless World" series.
Delivered July 5, 2009 by Ken Zeigler.
Sermon Text: Exodus 20:12

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Introduction by Rev. Schmidt: Well, I want to introduce the elder who is speaking today, Ken Zeigler. In this series we have elders speaking several of these weeks on the Ten Commandments. And Ken really stood out for me for this particular commandment because Ken has been a therapist for over 20 years. He's the founder of Well Spring Counseling, Well Spring Advantage. And he's the guy I go to when I have issues relating to how to treat people, leadership issues, issues that have to do with complicated things with people that I work with. He's the guy I talk to and has brought a lot of wisdom to bear on the ministry here at the church.

I want you to know that he has a manuscript so if he can't deliver this message, I will be able to, and if I can't, Debbie is still here. She's... where? Okay. It was sort of odd to hear that, you know, being a thousand miles away, to hear what last Sunday was like, but God is good. So anyway, we are delighted to have Ken lead us today. So Ken, come on up and lead us in the Word.

Ken Zeigler speaking:

It's like the home stretch here. You know, I am really happy to be here and this has been an amazing journey for me, and if you weren't in the first two services, I have to tell you that I have a very renewed respect for our pastors... John and George and Laura and Andy and anybody who has stood up here... boy, this is not easy. They crank these things out every week... week after week after week. So I will not take that for granted, John. And I encourage everybody else... don't ever take that for granted.

Now, being a rookie up here, we are going to get into the fifth commandment. And the fifth commandment, Exodus 20:12, "Honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land your God has given you." Now fortunately for me, along this path as I anxiously prepared myself, I was fortunate enough to run across an ordained Orthodox Jewish rabbi who also happens to be a psychologist. So imagine my luck... therapy for my nerves and a good Hebrew lesson.

I wanted to know what this word 'honor' means. I mean there are two parts to this thing, so honor has a root to it. And so in talking to this rabbi I understood that the root word is 'kabed' meaning 'heavy or weight... something of great significance and impressiveness.'

Now I have a movie clip here, start right off, from the movie Saving Private Ryan. So I'm going to set the scene for you. And the reason I chose this is because I think it really illustrates what we most often think about in terms of honoring. So in 1944, in a matter of days, three of the four brothers are killed at Normandy. And the US Army decides they're not going to let the fourth one, because that would be the most horrible thing for any mother to have to bear... all of her children dying.

So there's one company of soldiers who gets new orders just after they land on the beach in Normandy: save Private Ryan and bring him back home to his mother. So in their efforts to bring Private Ryan home, this unit is pulled into this epic battle to hold a bridge, if you recall. And the sergeant who is played by Tom Hanks is... most of the unit is killed... has one last order for Ryan, so here's the scene.

Video clip: Saving Private Ryan

Old James Ryan: My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me.

Ryan's Wife: James?

Ryan's Wife: Captain John H Miller.

Old James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life.

Ryan's Wife: What?

Old James Ryan: Tell me I'm a good man.

Ryan's Wife: You are.

Fifty years later he's still... that was Private Ryan, having recalled those words, 'earn it' that Sergeant Tom Hanks' character said to him as he's lay dying on that bridge. Fifty years and still that memory has not diminished in his own mind and in his own heart. The burden of honoring those who gave their lives just to bring him home to his mother. So that is the weight.

Honor has that connotation to it, that burden behind the honor in the fifth commandment. So there's no escaping that tension for any of us. We all feel it. So the idea behind the Hebrew word of honor, that person called to do the honoring feels the weight, the burden of conveying the significance and the importance of the role, position, the others hold in our lives. And to honor another individual is an expectation and call regardless of what our judgment of what the other person might be.

Weight looks like, if you've ever dug a footer for a deck or your house was on a foundation, that's what the weight is like. It is carrying that tension, holding that tension. The tension is what grounds us and reminds us of who we are and what we are to be, and that is a people filled with the glory and the majesty of the one true God.

So the weight, the expectations behind God's call for us to honor our parents is tough to ignore. We can't. It's... even though many of us do and for others all that much more difficult to carry out. So parenting is an awesome and a weighty responsibility. It's a natural instinctual role that most of us long to experience. And while the ability to procreate is natural, the art of parenting isn't. And for those who may be single or even those who are childless, the task ahead of you is to be mindful that relationship that you have had with your own parents.

So whether parents are with us or whether they have passed away, what is their significance to you in your life? How do you think of them today? What tensions might exist between you and them? What impact, or what lessons did you learn from them growing up? What impact do these lessons learned have on your life today? That's what we're going to be talking about.

In Genesis, God said, "Go forth and expand on my creation. Make more of you," he says. "Give blessings to your children and your children bless your children." We have a divine appointment to be moms and dads. That's how huge it is. That's how holy it is. So my point of view with the fifth commandment acts as a bridge from the first five to the last five.

If you notice that the first five have everything to do with our vertical relationship with God, so we've heard, "I am the Lord your God. No other God is before me. Don't take the Lord's name in vain. And make the Sabbath a holy day." And the fifth commandment bridges us in to what's next which is our horizontal relationship with one another. To get into that land which he has set aside for you and for me, he says these are the guidelines ahead of us. "Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't covet. Don't become an adulterer."

So this commandment has a huge impact on that vertical relationship with God and then a horizontal relationship with each other. This is how we're to live in the land together. So it's like if we don't honor our parents then we're going to have a hard time not only loving God, but loving one another. So mothers and fathers can't escape the significance of the roles that have been divinely appointed.

So as parents we're the very reflection... we are the very reflection of the great I Am. We are the mirror of his image to future generations. Keep that in mind. Remember that. That parent-child relationship is emblematic and symbolic of the eternal relationship between God the Father and us, his children, his creation. So that's what makes it a holy, holy model.

Now there's a very good chance that there are plenty of you sitting here today who can't stand to be in the same room with your parents. Likewise, there are plenty of you children who don't think you would like to be in the same room with your folks. The idea of honoring these people is so far from their reality that they can't even get their heads around it. So honor them. "Do you know what they've done to me, or failed to do for me?" But when we turn away from this burden or this weight of honoring our parents, in deed and in will and in heart, we lose a huge part of ourselves to more fully understanding the fatherhood of God.

So I have a story about a friend of mine that I think helps bring this around to all of us. He grew up in a home with an angry, very verbally abusive father. From an early age he learned that if he was going to survive in that relationship at home, he had to sever in his head and in his heart all ties with his father. Even though they lived in the same house, my friend has to protect his heart by creating a fabrication of himself that he thought his father wanted, like putting more effort into sports, or trying to please his father through ignoring his own interests while hating the choices he made.

The cost was losing touch with his original sense of himself. Little did he know that when he became an adult that he would so dislike conflict he would intensely avoid it at any cost. So years later at a conference on healing that father wound, he had a revelation that as long as his father was dead to him in his heart and his mind he would never fully come to grips with who he was and who God made him and intended him to be because he rejected the father God had given him at a very deep emotional level. He had rejected himself more importantly.

He began reaching out to his father to rebuild that relationship. It didn't happen overnight; however, for the first time in his adult life he showed enthusiasm and energy for that relationship. He took interest in his father, initiated. And what he noticed was that his father started to let down his own barriers. And what he realized was a natural desire in his own heart began to emerge, and it existed between the two of them. It did as well for his father. And though he started out loving his dad, he did it as an act of his own will and he found that for the first time he started to like his dad. He enjoyed being with him.

So here it is, the relationship had become good, and only because the son made a decision in himself, not because he waited for his father to change. And because of his faithfulness, God moved that relationship closer to what God had intended it to be.

So I wish I could say this is a formula, and I wish we could pop up three things up there that would say, "This is how it goes." But this is not how it goes. It's not that easy. If you have similar road blocks in your relationship with your father and your mother, just follow these three things... it just will not go that way. But here is how it does work... God will honor those who honor Him, so when we decide to respond to the idea of weight, the weight of honoring our parents, or the weight of parenting our children, then we're directly in touch with the very weight... remember this... the very weight that God the Father, the tension God fulfils in his relationship with us. Now that's mind blowing to me.

The truth is most of us as parents are a mixed bag. We are wisdom, and we're foolishness. We also can tend to be a category-five hurricane. It has been my experience over the past 20 years that our perceptions of God are largely based in the messages and perceptions we've developed throughout childhood. Wouldn't it make sense that these experiences we have growing up with our families, our peers, and the environment that we live in would shape the perspectives we have about ourselves, about others, and more importantly, about God?

Children are excellent sensors. They are horrible interpreters. I don't know if you've figured that out yet. The very same scene that they experience with us, we see it differently because the brain of a child just isn't fully developed until they're about 25 or 26. So those of you who are young adults out there that think that, hey you're 25 or 26, you're an adult now, you're still a teenager. Give it another year or two.

If your dad or mother were remote and disconnected then the temptation is to see God in the same light. If he's angry or harsh, parental experience often translates into a God who is never satisfied, always disappointed. If your parents were unpredictable or inconsistent, you got it... it's hard to imagine a God who is there and keeps his promises and is steady and unchanging.

I remember one particular moment, or one particular argument actually I had with one of my children one evening. Near the end of the argument, it came to a screeching halt when I heard very familiar words that some of you may have heard already, "Dad, you're never satisfied with what I do. I wish you would chill out, Dad. Let me figure stuff out for myself. It's not about you, Dad." I don't know about you, but the wind just left my sails when I heard that. And she was right. I push, and I push, and sometimes simply just don't allow her to have her own space and to be her own person. I don't want her to think, I don't want her to go away thinking that she can never satisfy me. That's not my intention.

So when we don't learn from the conflicts we have with each other, what remains is contempt and separation. In its extreme form, personal and social deviance plays out. That's what God's guideline here is for us, is to have this relationship right, or mending anyway.

As parents, we struggle with all the ways we fell short, and as kids, we struggle not only with all the ways our parents may have let us down, but we also struggle with how we failed to respond to them and lift them up. God wants us to avoid all this fallout. So here are a few principles I wrote down, and maybe they'll come up on the screen here, but a few things to keep in mind about us humans, just from the start.

One, we have instincts when we're born and a few raw skills that leave us yet helpless, fragile, and amazingly adaptable to our environments. We also have that intrinsic motivation to be loved and to love. The last one, which is probably the most difficult for any of us to accept, is that when we are born we are self-centered. You don't have to teach a child to put their needs in front of everyone else's. It just comes naturally. That's not an option.

So you can see why God himself had such a tough time throughout the history of man. Even he wanted to quit at times. Remember the flood? Remember that story? So what I see each and every day in my practice is, we each have a profound ability to hurt our parents just as our parents have a limitless ability to wound us. So our task is to raise our children to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and to raise them to love others, to work hard and prosper. That's what living long means in that commandment. It's not material, it's living long that gets prosperity, and to take care of others in their fragile states.

So we're to accomplish this task with naturally self-centered children, of course, while being attentive to our own natural tendencies to be self-absorbed. Sounds like a winning deal. We have the same nature as our children. Teenagers or kids are selfish... self-centered nature that drives us crazy, that same nature resides in us. It's all about us. It's just that as parents, we've had a little more time to mellow, like a good wine or a good cheese.

Parents, children, adult children... if you're aware of the tension that's out there between you and your own parents, or you and your own children, conflict between, decide to change it. Like the Sabbath, it's not too late to keep it holy. Just don't get in the way. Face that nature of yours. Be responsible for it. Remember the hurts... face that nature of yours that wants to only remember the hurts and instead robs you of the relationship that you will have that you will forever long for. Trust me, you'll long for it.

So if you recall my earlier argument with one of my children that was a big lesson for me, and I made a shift in my thinking and my actions in that moment. The shift I made was to pay attention to giving my children room enough to blow it from time to time... blow it big, blow it small... as well as give them ample room to voice their own thoughts and beliefs. Their beliefs simply don't have to be like mine. For me and my house we'll serve God, but how we serve God sometimes doesn't have to be the way I dictate it to be. That's not what loving my children is about. I'll only build resentment that way.

Love's not an emotion. It's a continuous decision that we make, making that decision with love doesn't come easily unless you practice it and you practice it often. So we aren't that source of love though. Jesus is that source. It's not until we come to the end of ourselves and our efforts that we can be weak enough to allow him to love through us. So our nature is naturally disconnected in our separation from the source of that love. We more naturally demand love out of the panic of not being loved.

Just think about that. So you remember the story of Adam in the garden. After having his eyes open, he was now aware of sin and evil, love and hate, those paradoxes, so he hid out of his own shame and out of his own fear. God was looking for him, though. God was looking for him.

It's so tempting to manipulate our children, guys, into obedience and submission. It's so easy, by shaming them with Scripture verses, or reminding them that God is disappointed because they've done something wrong. That's not it. I was fortunate enough to be raised by parents who didn't choose to do that. They didn't correct me that way. As a result, God is not the first one that I doubt or fear that I'm not going to measure up to. When my faith turned a corner late in high school, I didn't show my folks the same respect. I criticized their faith. After many conversations in my adult years, I think we've mended fences pretty well, but man I was tough on them.

Some of you know what that's like. So parents, we're not to blame for everything. I think most of us certainly don't set out to injure or even get in the way of our children's individuality, but the point is we just do. As it happens the rest of the world is reinforcing those messages that get created that our children receive or even interpret on their own, and this is what the world does. The world is not kind. Our children most often become rigid and agitated, frustrated as we attempt to mold them and craft them into beings that we can feel proud about rather than what God has intended them to be.

So I think this is what is meant by this passage... is parents, don't provoke children to anger. Our job is to release them and at the same time provide the foundation that comforts them, inspires them, and believes in them for their futures, just like the prodigal son, if you remember that story, the father receiving him.

So we have to balance that relationship with each other otherwise we motivate our children by creating an atmosphere of tension, aggression, fear, anxiety rather than mutuality between us. So we have to release them and encourage them to have their own thoughts and feelings as well as the voices that speak them. That's a beautiful tension to have. If we keep this in mind them we set the stage for our children to respect who they are, who we are, and we offer others the best God has to offer the world by accomplishing that.

Turning the corner here, we have one more clip for you. Some of you know The Kid movie with Bruce Willis. The premise of this movie is about a very cocky image coach that no one can stand but no one can do without. It's like your local therapist. He meets this little boy for some strange reason, and part of himself... that little boy part that he had long ago forgotten because he resented who he was as a little boy. So this little thing pops up, so we're going to pick up the story in a scene where Bruce's character is starting to get it and is watching this little boy part we experience a very familiar childhood experience that he had long forgotten. So take a look.

Video clip: The Kid

Rusty Dritz: Mom... tag me.

Rusty's father: Gloria. What are you doing?

Rusty's father to Rusty: Are you out of your mind?

Rusty's mother: I'm fine.

Rusty's father: Come on, dear.

Rusty's father to Rusty: You stay there.

Rusty's mother: Please don't scare him. He's had a hard day.

Rusty's father: Gloria, the doctor said you're not to leave the house.

Rusty's father: What is the matter with you?

Rusty: I'm sorry.

Rusty's father: How could you do this to your mother? What are you trying to do... kill her faster?

Rusty: What... ?

Rusty's father: We're going to lose her. How could you pull some stunt like you did today? You're killing her!

Rusty: I found the screw, Dad. Here's the screw.

Rusty's father: Stop crying.

Rusty: Here's the screw, Dad. Look! Here it is! I found it!

Rusty's father: Stop crying.

Rusty: Please... Dad.

Rusty's father: Stop crying.

Rusty: Look at the screw, Dad, here it is!

Rusty's father: Stop crying. Stop. You've got to grow up... now. Do you understand?

Rusty: Yes, sir.

Rusty's father: Grow up... grow up!

Rusty: Mom's dying.

Russ: I know.

Rusty: Soon?

Russ: Yeah, before your next birthday.

Rusty: Did I do it?

Russ: No. No, you didn't do it. It's not your fault. Dad was just saying those things because he's scared... because he knows he has to raise you alone, and he doesn't know how to do it.

Rusty: I thought you never cried.

Russ: Not since my eighth birthday. Guess I'm starting up again.

Rusty: How come?

Russ: Because I just figured out where I got that twitch from.

Rusty: Somebody call the waah-mbulance.

Now that's me I see in that scene. I'm that father. I'm that little boy, and I'm that adult son. You're the same. We've all been there. Not one of us has escaped a scene like that. I have broken areas in my life just because life alone is hard. Being parented and parenting is even harder. Except not all of our experiences are tragic and painful. There are good memories if we look for them. It's the painful ones that we harbor deep inside. Those are the ones that we must resolve.

So Bruce's character got caught up in his parent's drama, no fault of his own, and not because his father was intending to react to him or cause him hurt, but because, as you saw, his heartache was there for the fear of losing his own love in his life. His dad lost focus in the heat of that moment of that pain. That's what happens to us. That's what separates us.

So some of us have unfinished business in this room... unresolved hurts, distorted perceptions, reactive behaviors with the parental figures of our childhoods, where with those we expected to love us differently. Unless we accept responsibility of these wounds or broken areas in our lives, we will be vulnerable to react to life and to our relationships with others in a manner that only serves to perpetuate that hurt in ourselves and in those who live around us.

In Malachi, the very last book of the Old Testament, the last verse, God says before he goes silent for 400 years, he says, "He will restore the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of their children to their fathers." That's the other promise. Some of the commentaries have suggested that living in the land was the other promise, but this, I think, is the real promise... a promise to be restored.

So we have to participate by being available to having our eyes open to the truth about who we are and our hearts softened and have a heart of forgiveness to restore the natural mutuality that was designed by God for us as well as able to be living freely in the land that he's giving each of us. In my office the other day, a young man got it very quickly. I was very surprised. He said, "If I take ownership of this hurt in me that is spilling all over my family, I'll repair my relationship with my wife, with my kids, and in doing so have the desire to restore my relationship with my mother?" I said, "Yeah, that's right. That's how it works. That's how it works." It's God's natural medicine for you and for me.

I want you to listen as I read two prayers here, one for us parents, if they can get it up on the screen there for us, written by Marian Edelman in a letter she wrote from Broken Tablets. Here's what she says to her children.

"I seek your forgiveness for all the times I talked when I should have listened, got angry when I should have been patient, acted when I should have waited, feared when I should have been delighted, scolded when I should have encouraged, criticized when I should have complimented, said 'no' when I should have said 'yes' and 'yes' when I should have said 'no.' I often try too hard and wanted and demanded so much, and mistakenly sometimes tried to mold you in my image of what I wanted you to be rather than discovering and nourishing you as you emerged and grew."

Parents, I want you to think on that, to pray on that. I want that for you. I want you to have the energy to initiate between you and your children.

Now for us children, and us adult children, here's a prayer for you.

"Open my heart to the natural and deep bond that is to exist between me and my parents. Restore to me the natural freedom and permission you wish me to have, Lord, that I may have the confidence to live life authentically and openly, taking in love and giving love to those around me, lead me in a way of forgiveness towards those that hurt me, confused me and controlled me. See if there's any hurtful way in me and give me the strength to be the original self you had designed for me from the very beginning. Forgive those that had the charge to be your ambassadors in my life that I would eventually hear your voice and respond to your call. Forgive me for the ways I acted out in search of my own voice and my own identity in life."

I'm going to close here in a moment as we prepare for a time to share in the restoring blessing of God's... of the Lord's sacrifice that restored our relationship to him. Consider where your heart is in relationship to your father and your mother this morning, to yourself, and to those around you. To live long in the land that the Lord is preparing for us, I want for you to know... what is your next step in preparing your heart for that promise? I want that for you. I want you to experience that resolution, not to run from the tension, but to embrace it and to move into it to heal.

Let's pray: Father you are the healer and the restorer of all broken areas. Mold us into your image. Give us the strength to face those areas that we so seem afraid of at times, and help us to embrace and look harder for those places to remember where we can celebrate who our parents are, who we are, who our children are, that we may love others and be available to them. So Father, thank you for this morning. We praise you in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Ken Zeigler
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org