Rule of Respect June 16, 2019 First UMC, Carroll

Rule of Respect

June 16, 2019

First UMC, Carroll

 My father taught me everything I needed to know.

My Father taught me LOGIC: "If you fall off that swing and break your neck, you can’t go to the swimming pool later,"

My Father taught me MEDICINE: "If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to freeze that way." And the famous cure-all “Rub some dirt on it”

My Father taught me TO THINK AHEAD: "If you don’t pass your spelling test, how will you ever get a good job!"

My Father taught me HUMOR: "When that lawn mower cuts off your foot, don’t come running to me."

My Father taught me about GENETICS: "I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!"

My Father taught me about the WISDOM of AGE: "When you get to be my age, you will understand."

My Father taught me about PATIENCE: “Just wait until we get home.”

And the all-time favorite thing my Father taught me, JUSTICE: "One day you will have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you. Then you’ll see what it’s like!"

I’m joking, of course. But my father did teach me so much… he died 4 years ago August and I miss him very much. Treasure your fathers while you have them.

 I have another Building Bock for Christian Families this week. I chose Father’s Day to talk about respect because most people think that the Bible’s instructions on respect are all based on the fifth commandment: “Honor Your Father and Mother”. We see that reflected in many scriptures

•            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), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

•            Colossians 3:20  Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

•            Proverbs 23:22  Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.

•            Leviticus 19:32  “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

•            Exodus 21:17  “Whoever curses his father, or his mother shall be put to death.

•            Deuteronomy 27:16 “‘Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

The Hebrew word used for honor – as in honor your father and mother- means to give weight. The image being of a scale… that being your parents or being your elders, they get some extra weight to tip the scales toward honoring them rather than dishonoring them. Giving them the benefit of the doubt.

 That’s all fine and good. But there are other scriptures… honestly not as many, but they are there that turn the tables. One is our Ephesians passage today.

It starts out just as you might expect. “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.”

OK kids, teens, step children, adoptive children, adult children… that is your job to respect parents, grandparents, elders of all kinds because that is the right thing to do.

Elders, that spells out our rights, right?  But with every right comes a responsibility. If you expect to be treated with that kind of respect you also must go onto the next verse.  “And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Hmm fathers and mothers of all kinds, grandparents, caretakers, teachers, Sunday school teachers, pastors: this is the one for us.

“Do not provoke your children to anger.”

I don’t know about you, but when one of the kids pushes my buttons, my instinct is to push back. Robyn accuses me of adding fuel to the fire when one of the kids, or today Noah, does something I tend to react rather than respond. That does not work all that well for my family.

You know, it’s things like if Noah doesn’t want to go somewhere, my instinct is to say something like, “Well you can stay home, but I’m taking your Xbox with me so don’t plan to play with that while we are gone.

You see what she means? I’m trying to get him to comply, but really, I’m provoking him. (adding fuel to the fire.) Now I will say in my defense when we confront a big issue I can be as cool and reasonable and supportive as anybody.  It is the day to day little stuff that pushes my buttons.

Paul writes don’t be like that. Don’t pour fuel on the fire. Don’t provoke them.

Then Ephesians goes on to shed light on where Paul is coming from. “Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.  Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.

“And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.”

Did you catch that? Slaves obey your earthly masters… as you obey Christ.

Masters, do the same to them, stop threatening them… and here is why… both of you have the same Master in heaven and with him there is no partiality.

 What is Paul saying?  Paul’s logic is pretty simple. Working from the bottom of the passage up, he is saying

1. we are all precious and beloved children of God.  And God does not love the master more than the slave, or the parent more than the child, or the pastor more than the people. We all have the same master and with God there is no partiality.

2.  God treats each of us with love and respect.

Then, in this passage which s fundamentally on respect, Paul says we are to 

3.  treat one another as God treats us. How is that? Without partiality…

4. Therefore, we are to treat all people with love and respect.

And then still working from the bottom up, we see Paul apply this specifically to slaves and masters, and masters and slaves. To parents and children, and to children and parents.

No matter what your role in the family. No matter what your relationship to the other person. We are to treat them with respect.

 This is a corollary to “love your neighbor as yourself. // Or Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. // Or to turn that around you get the harvest principle, from Galatians 6:7: “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”

You want your employees to respect you, you respect them.

You want your students to respect you, you first must respect them.

You want the neighbors to respect you, first you must respect them.

You want the clerk and dollar General to respect you, well first you must respect them.

If you want your children to respect you… what do you have to do… respect them

And children, if you want your parents to respect you… what do you have to do.

And teenagers… I know this is a tough lesson, if you want your parents to show you respect… what do you have to do.  That’s right show them respect.

This rule of respect kind of builds on the last sermon I preached here about modeling.

Your family will only be as respectful to you as you are to them.

BUT IT IS A TWO-WAY STREET it is true for parents, for kids, for teens, for grandparents and everyone else.  If we don’t understand that, our relationship deteriorates to the lowest common denominator of barely tolerating each other.

The principle is a very important one for marriage too. In the preceding chapter of Ephesians Paul writes, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.”

But this is two way also… “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

If you treat your spouse rudely, or use words that sting, or put them down, or tease them mercilessly… what can you expect?... certainly not respect.

If you serve your spouse, or partner or fiancée or boyfriend or girlfriend, if you hold their hand, if you offer to help them, if you say kind and affirming things, if you give them gifts, if you give them time… you will receive love and respect. Emmerson Eggrichs has written a book called THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE AND RESPECT in which he argues that women crave love and men crave respect… that is true as far as it goes, but every person wants to be and frankly deserves to be treated with love and respect.

So how do you develop a respectful household?

 Follow along on your insert or on the screen.

R is Respect God. That is the fundamental relationship in each Christian’s life. Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength. You shall have no other gods but me, God says at the beginning of the 10 commandments. Worship is a way of showing respect. So, respect God.

E is for an Environment of respect at home. You know from our talk about modeling that our behavior is contagious. Because I tend to speak about politicians disrespectfully my children and grandchild tend to do the same. On the other hand, because I speak about our neighbors, or the poor, or teachers respectfully they will tend to speak respectfully.  In all your language look to create an environment that nurtures respect in each other.

S stands for Support self-respect. It is pretty hard to respect others if we don’t respect ourselves. Many of us have a bad habit of saying self-deprecating things about ourselves. One of mine is “I guess I can’t do anything right.” Guess what one of Noah’s go to phrases is when he is in trouble.  Yep… our words come around to bite us. We have to support an environment that builds each person up, so they will have self-respect.  That will actually be the topic of the last building block.

P stands for Promote mutual respect between adults. You may have observed that divorce seems to run in families. It is a fact that children of divorced parents have a higher rate of divorce themselves. In spite of a very interesting 2017 Swedish study that argues for a genetic basis for divorce , Most experts say that children who see their parents struggling to manage conflict or lacking the necessary commitment for marriage, grow up to internalize that behavior and replicate it in their own relationships. When I am counseling couples before marriage one of the most interesting questions is,  :How do you want your marriage to be like your parents. And what do you want to do differently in your marriage.” Our parents are our primary role models and we will tend to have relationships like we have seen.

E is for Encourage mutual respect for everyone- parents and children, children and children, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and yes… even the in-laws.  You have to practice respect for your in-laws too. Everyone needs to be respected and learn to respect others.

C is for Consider,  that  “what you sow is what you reap.” If people treat you badly, ask yourself how you contribute to that. If you keep losing jobs, ask yourself how you might be sabotaging yourself.  What great models you could be if when you hit a rough patch instead of blowing it out of proportion, you might say something like “That felt unloving is there something I did to cause you to feel disrespected?  Scow those kinds of seeds of respect and see what comes back.

Finally, T is for Teach by word and example.  Probably don’t need to say much more.  We have talked about modeling several times. Just remember that we are all teachers. Not just what we say, but what we do.

The building block of RESPECT makes all the difference in our families.

I started by talking about my dad. I wish you could have al known him. I have often said, if I could be ½ the man he was I will be accomplishing something. But it was not a one-way respect. He often affirmed me and praised me, he always supported me even when he told me that I was making a poor decision he could make it feel supportive. 2 weeks before he died. Al the family was back, and we didn’t know how long dad would have. So, some of us took the opportunity to have a private moment with him to tell him how much we loved him. His response to me means the world to me.  And in the last 4 years I have often longed to hear him say it just one more time. He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m proud of you boy.”  I always knew it, but for him to chose words of pride and respect as the most important message he had before he died meant so much.

 For my part I have tried to tell my kids more often that I am proud of them. I still have a ways to go. None of us is perfect. None of us loves our family perfectly. But in his masterpiece  Anna Karenina  Tolstoy writes, “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” Think about that… none of us loves perfectly but choosing to build your family with love and respect can make all the difference in the world.

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”