honor and life
We're going through the Ten Commandments at Holy Trinity Anglican. Every Sunday a different one; this last week's was "honor thy father and mother."
The pastor, Chuck, said something arresting: in trying to define and enact "honor" (simply obey? simply love?), one thing you might do is to finally forgive your parents. Wow! It's true that some folks go through life never having forgiven their parents for all the wrongs or imperfections visited upon them (generational legacies appear earlier in the Ten, when it's mentioned that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons, a harsh-sounding but psychologically accurate fact of human life and society).
This struck me, not because my parents were so gosh-durn awful (though human and flawed, they were pretty much exemplary: I can't think of a single Big Thing they got wrong), but because I was thinking about Moses' audience. In giving us these laws, I think God was speaking not only to the vast audience of humankind, but also to the Chosen People, Israel; and not only that but also to this specific group of people waiting (or not particularly waiting) at the foot of the mountain.
Think about it: the people of Israel were only moments away from being starkly divided into two groups. There were those with a future in the promised land, and there were those who were carcasses. Remember? Everyone knows the Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years, but not everyone recalls why. Only weeks after Mount Sinai, they sent spies into the promised land; the spies found enemies; most voted against going in; Joshua and Caleb were confident that God's promise was true; they were outvoted; boom, we're not going in. So God says to his people that everyone over 20 will in fact die in the wilderness, and people under 20 and yet to be born will be the only ones who will actually make it across the border and set up shop in that conflicted land.
His actual words here are, "But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness." Ouch.
Just as the people are processing this list of rules they've been given, they commit this great act of unfaithfulness, and everyone over 20 now has no hope of ever seeing the place they were escaping to. (With two conspicuous exceptions: Joshua and Caleb.) Meanwhile, there's everyone under 20. What then do you say to your parents? How do you treat them, and their peers, and your grandparents, and their peers? They just made it so that you have to be a nomad for 20 years (more than the length of your entire life up to that point). God himself has already condemned them, called them corpses. What do you call them, in your unguarded moments?
And right here, there's been a new law handed down. Along with the unsurprising rules (no other gods but Jehovah) and shoo-ins (no murder; no stealing), there's this law that comes attached to a promise. After all, the whole thing says: "Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Twisty promise there, yes? Your very longevity in the land is explicitly tied to honoring those who have just kept you out of it.
This overlooked dimension — these two words from the same Jehovah, the stark word of condemnation for an entire people except for their youngest generation (things never change!) and the stark order for that generation to honor the condemned, the double-edged message that vengeance belongs to the divine and the divine alone — this overlooked dimension could not have been invisible to those people at that time. It had resonance for them, and it has resonance for us.
The pastor, Chuck, said something arresting: in trying to define and enact "honor" (simply obey? simply love?), one thing you might do is to finally forgive your parents. Wow! It's true that some folks go through life never having forgiven their parents for all the wrongs or imperfections visited upon them (generational legacies appear earlier in the Ten, when it's mentioned that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons, a harsh-sounding but psychologically accurate fact of human life and society).
This struck me, not because my parents were so gosh-durn awful (though human and flawed, they were pretty much exemplary: I can't think of a single Big Thing they got wrong), but because I was thinking about Moses' audience. In giving us these laws, I think God was speaking not only to the vast audience of humankind, but also to the Chosen People, Israel; and not only that but also to this specific group of people waiting (or not particularly waiting) at the foot of the mountain.
Think about it: the people of Israel were only moments away from being starkly divided into two groups. There were those with a future in the promised land, and there were those who were carcasses. Remember? Everyone knows the Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years, but not everyone recalls why. Only weeks after Mount Sinai, they sent spies into the promised land; the spies found enemies; most voted against going in; Joshua and Caleb were confident that God's promise was true; they were outvoted; boom, we're not going in. So God says to his people that everyone over 20 will in fact die in the wilderness, and people under 20 and yet to be born will be the only ones who will actually make it across the border and set up shop in that conflicted land.
His actual words here are, "But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness." Ouch.
Just as the people are processing this list of rules they've been given, they commit this great act of unfaithfulness, and everyone over 20 now has no hope of ever seeing the place they were escaping to. (With two conspicuous exceptions: Joshua and Caleb.) Meanwhile, there's everyone under 20. What then do you say to your parents? How do you treat them, and their peers, and your grandparents, and their peers? They just made it so that you have to be a nomad for 20 years (more than the length of your entire life up to that point). God himself has already condemned them, called them corpses. What do you call them, in your unguarded moments?
And right here, there's been a new law handed down. Along with the unsurprising rules (no other gods but Jehovah) and shoo-ins (no murder; no stealing), there's this law that comes attached to a promise. After all, the whole thing says: "Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Twisty promise there, yes? Your very longevity in the land is explicitly tied to honoring those who have just kept you out of it.
This overlooked dimension — these two words from the same Jehovah, the stark word of condemnation for an entire people except for their youngest generation (things never change!) and the stark order for that generation to honor the condemned, the double-edged message that vengeance belongs to the divine and the divine alone — this overlooked dimension could not have been invisible to those people at that time. It had resonance for them, and it has resonance for us.
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