By: The Rev. Briane K. Turley
For centuries around the time of Moses, as many of the nomadic tribes cris-crossed the Middle East wilderness, these wandering families required those with disabilities and the elderly to leave the caravan and sit along the side of the trail where, abandoned and alone, they died. In those days, perhaps the majority of these tribes believed that those no longer deemed fit to help out were to be sacrificed for the greater good of the family or group. Bearing this context in mind, Jesus’ elevation of the fifth commandment as among the most important for kingdom life takes on renewed meaning. Moreover, it helps us better understand why this commandment comes to us with this blessing: “so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
In our reading from Mark, Jesus reminds a wealthy man that we are duty bound never to, in any sense, abandon our fathers and mothers along a path where they wither and die alone. And who is our father and our mother? Surely Jesus is speaking about our adoptive or biological parents and grandparents. Yet we gain deeper insight into the mind of Christ when we read Jesus’ words found earlier in Mark 3: 31-35: “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers came. They stood outside and sent a person in to tell Jesus to come out. Many people were sitting around Jesus. They said to him, ‘Your mother and brothers are waiting for you outside.’ Jesus asked, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ Then Jesus looked at those people sitting around him.
He said, ‘These people are my mother and my brothers! My true brother and sister and mother are those people that do the things God wants.’”
By no means was Jesus denigrating his relationship with family members within his household. Rather, he was expanding what we mean by our “family,” including a mother and a father. Our Lord requires that we welcome and nurture every condition of human life. The word he uses here for “to honor” is a verb and, therefore, requires right action as our elderly grow weaker. As we discovered last week, our celebration of life begins at conception and continues until natural death.