CORBAN

“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

Deuteronomy 5:16 (New International Version)

As a preface to what I want to write about, I’ll start with a little bit of personal experience.

Like most people, my experience with the poor and downtrodden, particularly the homeless is a bit checkered. When Nancy and I lived in New Jersey, for example, my duties with FedEx would often take me into New York City. From where we lived, the best way to get there was either by bus or train. I usually took a bus that would go directly from Parsippany, where we lived, to the Port Authority bus terminal on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Back in the late eighties and early nineties that trip was quite an adventure. Any time I’d get to the main terminal I was greeted, so to speak, by hordes of homeless men and women panhandling, the smell of urine and rotting human feces wafting through the air, and cops wandering from storefront to storefront rousting the homeless out of what always appeared to be their assigned spots on the floor. This first few times I encountered them I felt sympathetic, but after after several encounters the ordeal started to wear thin and I became like the average New Yorker. I would either step over or around them, muttering under my breath, “Get a job, will you!” I wasn’t always that cold-hearted, Years before I’d had my own brief encounter with homelessness. I was going through a very painful divorce and I was completely out of resources. I had absolutely nothing but a beat up old Ford and a job in downtown Kansas City that provided me with enough money for gas, child support, alimony, and barely enough food to last from payday to payday. One night, in the dead of a bitterly cold winter, I found myself on Pershing Avenue between the main Post Office and the Riss Building, where I worked. At about midnight I crawled into the back seat and laid down. For me, this was going to be the end of the road. I tried to sleep, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t. I felt a wave of cynicism and grief sweep over me. “So this is it, Lord,” I prayed. The cynicism and grief morphed in to plans. “If only I had a bottle of sneaky Pete to drown my sorrows.” “Maybe I could mug some little old lady in the street come morning.” Somehow I managed to fall asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but there was a sudden sound of knocking on my car window. I looked out and saw a cop. He motioned for me to roll down my window. I complied. “You okay, buddy?” he asked. “Are you sleepin’ off a bender?” The only response I offered was “I’m okay, I’ll be alright.” He knew things weren’t alright and he pressed me. “You got any family or friends that may be worried about you?” “Do you have a place to stay?” “I’d really like to help you.” It’s strange. His offer of help troubled me more than it comforted me. I wondered if he was going to take me into the jail to sit around with other homeless people and derelicts. That was something I did not want, so I told him I did have a place to stay and I’d drive over there was soon as he was done with me. I’m not sure if he believed me, but he did let me go. I spent the rest of the night driving around, from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, across the Lewis and Clark Viaduct and back. Morning finally came and I made my way to work, looking disheveled and defeated.

That was one of the lowest points in my life. Thankfully, God had mercy on me and I found a place to start living with a young friend from the church I was attending. 

There’s not a lot more to say about that encounter. It was painful and, yet, somehow providential. I learned that the things we sometimes think we see clearly aren’t nearly as clear as we think they are. 

This brings me to what I really want to write about.

I had a brief encounter a few mornings ago on my home from a bi-weekly Parkinson’s therapy group. I had stopped at Sam’s Club to fill up the gas tank and to get some paper towels. On my way out to the street I noticed a woman sitting in the island near the traffic light. She was panhandling. She was holding up a crude cardboard sign that had the word “Help” printed on it. I stopped, rolled down my window, and asked her to come over to my car. As soon as she got close enough I could see that she appeared to be in her early forties. She was short, a bit dumpy in appearance, and had a matronly look. She was wearing thick glasses. My original intent in stopping was to give her five dollars and be on my way, but my curiosity got the better of me. “Are you alright?” I asked her. As soon as she opened her mouth to answer I could see that two of her front teeth were missing. She half-smiled through the gap in her teeth and responded – “I’m just a bit down on my luck, that’s all. I’m gonna’ be alright.”

“Are you homeless?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m really okay. I start a job on Monday and I’m gonna’ get myself on my feet.”

I tried wrapping my mind around what I was seeing and I was having great difficulty. “How can things like this happen?” I started asking myself. Then the words just came out. “Oh, mother, mother, don’t you have any family who can help you?” I pleaded. “Not really,” she responded meekly. “I do have a son, but he’s too busy now in college.” 

I wanted to ask what “too busy” meant, but I found myself getting angry. How could a son, whose mother is homeless, be too busy to take care of his mother who was living in desperate straits. It just wouldn’t compute.

I gave her the five dollars I’d taken out of my wallet earlier, said a brief payer for her, and went on my way.

Could I have done more? I’m sure I could have, but I felt I’d tried my best. I’ll leave it at that.

I started writing again so that, as a Christian, I could make occasional statements about the things that I see in a culture that appears to have lost its moorings. What I encountered this morning was a perfect example of that untethering.

Early on in the Old Testament, God gave Moses, the man who had led the “children” of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt to the land he had promised to give them.In addition to the land, God also outlined his expectations for his liberated people.. Those expectations came inscribed on stone tablets.  We know them as the Ten Commandments. Each of those commandments was supremely important, but the one I want to focus on in this essay is the fourth commandment. “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you.” That would be more than enough, but this commandment is the only one that has explicit seeds of blessing planted in it. “So that you may live long and that it will go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

I suppose one could ask what it means to honor one’s mother and father. How should a person do that? Could that homeless woman’s son make the argument that by going to college he was honoring her desire for him to succeed in life? After all,  doesn’t any parent want their children to succeed in life? Could it have been that this woman hadn’t been a good parent? Possibly. Were there grievances that had caused a rupture between son and mother so deep they couldn’t be healed? Again, that might be possible.

With each question raised, however, there came an objection from heaven. There is no escape clause in the fourth commandment. It simply says we are to honor our mothers and fathers. We are commanded to honor them even if they haven’t been the best parents. We are to honor them even if it means we might have to sacrifice some of our goals and dreams to act on their behalf. There’s no line of demarcation, nothing that says we can honor them up to a certain point and abandon them when things get trying or difficult.

These are strange and difficult times in America. Our economy is booming. Our 401K’s are exploding. Yet, there are legions of us living on the streets. Are they all just down on their luck? Are they all worthless vagabonds? That’s not a question I can answer.

My mind keeps going back to that woman. She didn’t look like a vagabond, nor did she looked like the type of woman who would abuse her child. She simply looked desperate.

I find myself wondering how often we find excuses so that we can avoid doing what God expects of us. 

There’s an encounter between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day recorded in  the seventh chapter of Mark’s gospel. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7&version=NIV The story begins with the religious leaders chiding Jesus and his disciples for not ritually washing their hands before they ate. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what they wanted. Jesus was furious and he let them have it. The full response follows:

“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”  And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[e] 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—  then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

What Jesus was referring to in this passage was Jewish tradition called “Corban.” It was a tradition that allowed someone to set aside assets that would/should be used to take care of a parent and use those assets instead to avoid their responsibility. They brazenly called it a “gift to God.”

I’ve given thought to that woman since our encounter, I wonder what the modern day equivalent of Corban might me. “I’ve got to go to college.” “I’ve got a career and a life ahead of me to consider.” “She and I didn’t get along. Honestly, she drove me up the wall.” “The money is needed as part of the church building program.”

You can fill in the blanks from this point on. I’m done. I’ve said that I’ve said and that’s that.