Ephesians 6:1-4

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—this is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Sermon Text

The reality of our world is that family is not guaranteed to be good. People have children who have no ability to raise them or no desire to care for them. Children can grow up and, regardless of raising, make decisions that are cruel or uncaring, or that simply break a parent’s heart in any other number of ways. C.S. Lewis once said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and in the case of family we are already made vulnerable by our relation to one another. The pile of complications only grow deeper as the tangled mess of our own choices, and the choices of others, pile up on top of each other.

One of the most dangerous things we can do as a Church is stand up and read scripture without reading the world around us. The words of God are indeed unchanging, and they contain truth that is valuable to us at all times, but without a willingness to engage them directly in our own life, we will lead ourselves astray. No verse is more fraught that the one we read today. “Honor your father and mother,” is something that has been used as a weapon for centuries. No matter the offense, no matter the horrific things done to a child, this verse is pulled out as if it magically makes all things better. A child is reduced to their parent’s property and the consequences of the parent’s bad behavior erased… All by those few words.

The context of scripture is twofold. Firstly, that those scripture was being written to were always oppressed by the powers and people around them. There was an understanding that if you went out on the street and offended a Roman Citizen, you could be dead that same day and you had no legal right to do anything about it. If they found out you were a Christian, forget it!

The teaching of the Church, therefore, was that in a world where you are going to be oppressed by the powers that be, it is better to suffer and to die at their hands, and show the insanity of their cruelty, than to resist them. A Christian was to be all forgiving, all loving, and all suffering, on behalf of the people who would kill them without a second thought.

There was a second context for these writings though, the community of the faith. Within this community, Christians were called to be all loving, all forgiving, all sufferings… Together. In other words, a person could not abuse another person and expect forgiveness without consequence, because as a member of the Church they were responsible not to hurt that person in the first place. The early Church would expel people for violating the trust of the community, for mistreating their family, for failing to act as Christ called them to act. A Christian is not allowed to sin and then ask for forgiveness without changing their behavior, because they know better.

Our families, an extension of our reality as Christians, are likewise meant to be reciprocal places. If a parent has no love for their child, or that love becomes destructive, and that parent does not change – then the child cannot be expected to suffer. The parent is not given a universe excuse to do their child harm because scripture tells their child to “honor their mother and father.” Likewise, a child who is old enough to know better cannot hurt their parents and not expect that their be some amount of distance or consequence. “Parents, do not provoke your children to anger,” is not an excuse for them either. We are all trying to figure out the right way to act, to be, to live.

Today, as we come into this room, we are taking time to acknowledge the hard things about our family situations. Maybe you had a parent that never treated you right. Maybe a child who has grown distant. Maybe one who is making all the wrong choices and you cannot help them. I’m not here to baptize those situations and call them secretly good. I’m not here to tell you that you have to ignore those very real problems in the name of Jesus. I’m not here to tell you why things are the way they are… I’m here to tell you that it is ok, that things are not ok.

As a Church, we often let ourselves become absorbed into a terminal positivity. We cannot say one negative thing without following it up with, “But that’s fine!” We feel like we need to make everything a lesson, everything must have a cure, a punchline to take away the sting… Yet, we know that’s not true. Scripture, likewise, knows it is not true. The Bible is full of chapters, and books, and entire tracts about how human suffering is real, and bad, and it does not always make sense that things happen the way they do. So what does the sum of those scriptures lead us to understand?

Firstly, that we have ever right to weep, to mourn, to be upset about the way things are. Don’t feel like you need a mask of positivity to cover every bad thing in your life… Let the bad be bad, and feel that fully. Secondly, God listens to our tears. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus was rejected by his family, and Jesus prays for us still today. Let God know that you are upset, there’s no point hiding that fact. Finally, and most importantly, there is always hope. Things may not come back to what they once were, or what we ever wanted them to be, but God has a way of finding us reaching something new, and different, and often better.

Sometimes we get a second change to set things right – to make amends to the children we’ve hurt, the parent’s we’ve wronged. Sometimes people set things right with us – they come and seek forgiveness and truly do change, or at least actually try to… Sometimes, the situation is just what it is… All these things are blessed, not because they are good, but because God sees, hears, cares, and gives grace for us to face them. Offer up your troubles to God today, and ask for direction on what you can do, or should refrain from doing, but more than anything… Just say it to God, and be set free. – Amen.