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Sunday June 19, 2005 - Proper 7, Year A

Jesus said
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For 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;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;

This
is not exactly the text from the bible
that we expect to hear
on Father’s Day.
Much more sensible to have something like the fifth commandment, to honor your father and mother,
or maybe a story about one of the great biblical fathers, say Joseph, or Zachariah.
But not this, a text about families being torn apart.
We expect the church
to be the great upholder of family values.
So what do we do
when Scripture
seems to undermine them?
To suggest that faith
rather than being the glue that holds families together
is like a wedge
that forces them apart?

The answer, I suspect, for most of us, is that we ignore the scripture verses.
We pretend that they simply don’t exist
as if someone had taken a razor
and carefully cut
those troublesome verses
out.

Bu the problem is that if you do that
here, and everywhere else there are difficult bits
what you end up with
is a tattered pile of paper
more like a cobweb than a book
and no clue at all
about what it might look like
to be a faithful.

God’s instruction book
is how the bible is sometimes described,
but really, it’s not a very accurate description.
Taken as a whole
the Bible is full of wise advice
but there are many places
where to just pull out a verse and take it literally
would make a mess of our lives.
Because the Bible is, fundamentally
a record of the dealings of God with human beings,
and a bunch of times
those human beings
don’t make very smart decisions.
Whether it’s Jephthah
vowing to sacrifice the first thing he sees when he gets home from battle —
and seeing his daughter rush out to meet him, feels obliged to carry out that vow —
or Abraham, sending his firstborn but illegitimate son out into the wilderness to appease his jealous wife.
They’re not exactly
good examples.
And then there are the times
when different places in scripture say different things — a classic example
is whether women should speak in church.
Sometimes good things come out of what seem like disasters,
but if we simply follow texts blindly
or model ourselves uncritically on biblical heroes
we’re likely to make
a lot of mistakes.
The bible is not simply an instruction book for our lives.
We have to read it carefully,
critically, looking to see what the circumstances were when things were written, what lessons they were trying to teach,
comparing other texts
so that what emerges
is a big picture,
each text or story
just a part of the whole,
a picture
that shows us what it looks like
to live a life
faithful
to God.

So what, then, do we do with this saying of Jesus that we heard today, “For I have come to set a man against his father.”
Did Jesus really come to break up our families?

First, let’s look at the ten commandments.
The one that’s most obviously relevant
is the fifth one: Honor your father and your mother.
It’s simple and straight forward.

But it’s also qualified. Because in the first commandment God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Nothing is to come between us and God — nothing. And that includes family.

So we have one the one hand, honor your parents, and on the other,
honor God
above everything else. Two things
that are both good in themselves
but have the potential to come into conflict.

There’s a conflict like that in the New Testament.
Remember when the religious leaders come to Jesus to complain that he’s not keeping the traditional law about washing hands?
He turns around and criticizes them
for not keeping the fifth commandment. Apparently some of them
had made it a habit
to squirrel money away,
arguing that they couldn’t support their elderly parents — this was before the days of Social Security, and one of the duties of a child was to provide for their parents in old age —
they argued they couldn’t fulfil that obligation to their parents
because that money they’d squirreled away
was promised to God.
Yeah, right.
Serving God
is no excuse for reneging
on your obligations.

On the other hand, remember the time when Jesus was swamped with would-be disciples?
One of them said, let me just go first
and bury my father.
Another family obligation. But this time
Jesus said, “Follow me. Let the dead bury the dead.”
They’re harsh words. But here Jesus is saying, if you are serious about following Christ, it has to take precedence over everything else, even family obligations.

The difference, I think, between the two stories, is that in the first the religious leaders are using God as an excuse for not honoring their parents; in the second
the man is using honoring his parents
as an excuse
for not following Christ.

Both times, there is no real conflict, just the manufacturing of excuses, so that the people concerned can go on about their lives without worrying about any demands God — or family — might be placing on them.

But in our reading today, Jesus is clear. There are times when following God
might indeed cause conflict in families. Because there are times
when what our families want
might get in the way of what God wants — whole hearted commitment.

I will never forget
when a friend of my brother’s
who had been brought up in a Jewish family
discovered Christ.
Her parents were angry and disappointed. When she was living at home
they forbad her to have any contact with her Christian friends, no phone calls, no letters, and certainly no visits.
When she moved out of home after college
they cut off all contact with her.
It was a clear choice. Family
or God.
And she chose God.
And that meant
dishonoring her parents.

But there’s another important piece to it all.
In one of his letters, the letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul gave advice to households about how to keep things running smoothly. And this is the advice
that he gave to children
and their parents.
“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.”

It’s not just up to the children. Children are to honor their parents,
but parents
are to treat their children in a way that make that honoring
relatively easy — leaving aside the realities of teenage rebellion —
and even more importantly,
parents, fathers especially
are reminded that part of their job
is to bring up their children to follow Christ.

If children
and parents
follow this advice
there’s a whole lot less room for conflict, at least where our honoring of both God and parents is concerned.
It is possible to put God first and to honor our parents
as long as we as both children and parents
are on the same page
about honoring God.
So what do we do
with this prediction of Jesus
that his coming will split families apart?
Is it inevitable?

I don’t think so. If we take Scripture as a whole
it’s easy to see where families can end up in conflict around God.
But it’s also easy to see how that conflict
can be avoided.

Christian faith can be something that strengthens our families. Our values are good for healthy relationships. There is some truth in the saying that
“A family that prays together
stays together.”

But it takes more than just praying together. It takes a commitment by the whole family
to put God first, it takes leadership
from parents to model to their children
what that looks like.
And it takes courage
to trust God with our families,
to allow God to lead each member, and to support them
wherever that takes them.

I am thankful
that my father taught me
that honoring God
should come first of all in my life.
At times
that’s caused conflict, when we haven’t agreed on what that should look like. He’s probably been frustrated
when I’ve made decisions to do with my faith and involvement in the church
that have meant there has been less time for him.
And it’s been hard, because it’s meant his daughter has ended up living on the other side of the world.
But we have a far deeper relationship because of it, because along with everything we share in terms of genetics and history, we share our faith, and that goes a long way
to keeping us close.

On Father’s Day
it’s a good time to remember the gifts our fathers have given us,
and to honor them.
But we’re also called — hopefully along with our fathers — to honor our heavenly Father, and to give thanks
for all the blessings
that have been given to us.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005