EVERYONE MUST HONOR EVERYONE’S FATHER AND MOTHER
Matthew 3:8-10 : “Therefore produce fruit worthy of repentance! Don’t think to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
ABRAHAM is recognized by all churches, even by the Islam as the forefather in Faith, as the Book of Genesis reads: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
In order to get this particular blessing there is a pronounced way as God said in the Bible, that: “ I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who treats you with contempt. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
Beside this recommendation or rather commandment why we should bless Abraham's name? Why he should be a central figure of the humanity? Why must he be blessed by all, by all the nations.
According to the Bible there was ten generations from Noah to Abraham. But all these generations after the flood also kept provoking God, by idolatry, by burning their first born children, by heavy slavery, adultery, murders, wars. According to the tradition of the sages, God did not talk to anybody of these wicked ten generations after the flood, except Abraham. At the time of Abraham, on the whole surface of the Earth there was only one but one man, who was righteous.
The book of Genesis in 14:13 calls his name Abram the Hebrew. Abram means the exalted father, Ha-Ivri, in his case meant, he who is on the other side, as the whole world was on one side against God, while he was on the other side, on the side of the true God.
The whole world was engaged in idol worship, dark wizardry killing and revenge, except Abraham.
The tradition says that his own father did not teach him for the better, as his father had an idol shop, selling idol god statues and images. One day Abraham seized a stick, and smashed all the images in his father's store except the biggest one, he put the stick in the hand of the statue. When his father returned, he asked his son that who did this to the gods? Abraham answered that this big one statue here got angry and smashed all the others.
His father said: are you making sport of me? They can not do anything. Abraham answered : You said it with your own mouth that they are nothing. There is only one God, the king of the Universe, who has no image, for he is invisible to the eye.
His father was so aggravated that he took his own son to the wicked king, Nimrod.
Abraham was cast into a great fire on the order of King Nimrod. But the fire was not able to harm him. Just as the prophet Daniel and his company walked out of the oven unharmed. At the time of the tower of Babel, Nimrod was considered the King of the world, the single ruler of the united empire. Only one man stood against him, Abraham, in the name of the only true God, the Creator Grandfather Spirit, in Heaven. The Holy One said to Abraham:
“Get You out of the country. Go over there I send You. Whoever will bless You I bless him, whoever curse You, I will curse him.”
We must withstand all the wicked Empires and man made laws, but we have to stick strictly to the Laws of the Creator God, the Grandfather of all, until the very end, where a descendant of Abraham, we believe, the returning Jesus, will come to Earth to destroy the might of all empires, to make peace, justice, equality and compassion rule the Earth.
Abraham is recognized the father in faith of all believers.
The modern Father's Day celebrations began in the early 20th century. It was established on the wake of the Mother's Day, when Sonora Smart Dodd, who along with her five brothers, was raised by her father alone, after attending the Mother's Day celebration at a church in 1909, she convinced the so called Spokane Ministerial Association to help make Father's Day a worldwide feast.
Thus the modern they acknowledgment of the father’s role in raising the families is officially barely 100 years old. Still we have to go back to the moral imperativus written in the Ten Commandments more than 3000 years ago, when the Lord commanded the Jews and all the nations that You shall honor your father and your mother.
According to the tradition, the Mount Sinai commandments were offered to other nations, but they did not want them. Only the Jews said even in advance without knowing the details that we will do it, whatever the Lord says. It does not really matter what the Lord will say. Please Lord, just tell us what you want and we will do it, anything.
Regarding honoring our parents the whole commandment goes like this: " Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you." Honoring the parents is a personal and also a social commandment.
It is not enough that I, myself, shall honor my parents, but everybody else shall honor one’s own parents in the society, and ultimately on the planet.
AND not only that, but everybody must honor all the parents in the whole society, including all elderly, even those who happen to have no children. This commandment is not a private family matter, which may privately depend on the culture or the mood or the moral sensitivity of different families respectively, because the explanation of the commandment is clear that if you obey it, you will have longevity and peace and prosperity in your land. If you breach this law, then there will be violence and chaos in the land, and the land will be also lost shortly, for certain.
That is why, it was so important that Mother's Day and Father's Day became internationally recognized celebrations, practically honoring the Commandment of the Lord, where the honoring of the parents is one of the pillars of law and society.
The Bible says many times that we all are the children of God, just as the Apostle Paul wrote about it repeatedly and also in his letter to the Galatians that “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”
It gives almost the ultimate dignity of humanity, that our ultimate parent is God. God does not have any biological gender, thus the dignity, which was given to humanity, is exactly as it is, that we are all equal children of God, and our ultimate parent is God.
We can see, that the Biblical commandment is not partial but complete, when God told to the Israelites, that honor your father and your mother, together.
Maybe we can extend the understanding of the commandment to reflect on its universal nature, that, we, all nations, we must honor all fathers and all mothers and all the elderly for the sake of God, in order that we do well on Earth, by following of the footsteps of Jesus, our brother and master, being immersed in the Holy Spirit,
AMEN
