Looking to the future facing backwards

Looking to the future facing backwards

{This sermon was based on the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Sunday, 7 November 2010. Although I would hope the sermon makes sense in any context, it was preached to my congregation which I leave in 3 weeks and which is still facing uncertainty regarding my successor}

Text: Luke 20:27-38

This is quite an interesting story, but one which we can easily gloss over, saying to ourselves that it's not relevant to us in the 21st century. We might even read it and be a little disgusted by the idea of a brother being compelled to marry his dead brother's wife!

It is however one of the laws that is set forth for us in our Bibles. It is called the law of levirate marriage and it is set out for us in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. The law is basically that the brother of a man who dies without children is expected to marry his brother’s wife in order to maintain the family line, and this is exactly what the Sadducees set out in verse 28 of our text. The first born son of the new marriage would count as the dead man's child for inheritance purposes. Should the brother-in-law refuse to marry his brother's widow, Deuteronomy 25:7-10 provides for a ceremony which both humiliates him and releases the widow from her obligation to marry him. The stories of Onan and Tamar in Genesis 38 and Boaz and Ruth in Ruth 4 are respectively biblical examples of levirate marriage and of the refusal to marry. Both these women appear in Jesus’ genealogy of ancestors, which makes them great great great etc grandmothers of our Lord.

Interestingly, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel today has declared that levirate marriage is now banned; so a brother may not marry his brother’s widow. It's interesting, isn't it, how we adapt the Bible to suit our modern culture; so we read the Old Testament and say "thou shalt not kill"…. Ahhh, that's a good one, we’ll keep it, and then "thou shalt marry thy dead brother's widow"… no, let's ignore that one….. and all those laws about homosexuality….. we’ll keep those….. but those laws regarding how much of our money we must give to God… no, we won't bother with those.

The Sadducees were a somewhat disgusting and disgraceful bunch of people who picked and chose what they would use from the Bible and what they would discard, and so they were hypocrites of the first degree, obviously constantly at loggerheads with Jesus and so, unsurprisingly, Jesus calls them (on various different occasions) wicked, hypocrites, and a generation of vipers.

One of the things they felt particularly strongly about was that there was no resurrection from the dead. Full stop. Finish and klaar. The fact that the Scriptures, our Old Testament, seems to suggest that there is a resurrection from the dead, was rejected by them and their interpretation of the Scriptures. The fact that resurrection from the dead had actually occurred in their history….. (both Elijah and Elisha’s ministries included resurrections which pointed to, and prepare us for, with Jesus’ resurrection miracles, the glorious hope, which is now fact, of resurrection)… the fact that these heroes of Jewish Scriptures had opened a doorway to the possibility of a resurrection from the dead, did not deter them from rejecting outright the belief in a resurrection from the dead.

The Pharisees on the other hand believed absolutely in the resurrection of the dead, and so, theologically, the Pharisees and Sadducees were theological enemies of each other.

I'm going to wonder a bit now, but it's very amusing to see how Jesus and his followers would use this enmity between the Sadducees and the Pharisees when it suited them. Here's just one example: in Acts 23, Paul is on trial and listen to verses 6-10:

When Paul saw that some of the group were Sadducees and the others were Pharisees, he called out in the Council, "Fellow Israelites! I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees. I am on trial here because of the hope I have that the dead will rise to life!"
As soon as he said this, the Pharisees and Sadducees started to quarrel, and the group was divided.
(For the Sadducees say that people will not rise from death and that there are no angels or spirits; but the Pharisees believe in all three.)
The shouting became louder, and some of the teachers of the Law who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and protested strongly: "We cannot find a thing wrong with this man! Perhaps a spirit or an angel really did speak to him!"
The argument became so violent that the commander was afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces. So he ordered his soldiers to go down into the group, get Paul away from them, and take him into the fort.

Quite amusing isn't it, how enemies “become friends” because they share another common enemy? But let's get back to our text.

So the Sadducees bring this hypothetical situation to Jesus of seven brothers who can't have children. Now the real lesson here is that this family needs to visit an adoption agency or a fertility clinic, probably both, but for them the point is that Moses, who gave these laws, obviously did not contemplate any resurrection, because if he did, his doctrine leads to the absurdity which they mention.

And I think this is where the message lies for us today….. the Sadducees, living as they did in the present, interpret or predict the future based on the past. To put it another way:
They look to the future facing backwards

I don't want to go into Jesus’ answer to them whereby He indicates that there is, in fact, a resurrection [in other words life after death] because the truth is that in Judaism at the time of Jesus there was no clear doctrine on the issue of life after death, hence the deep divisions in Jewish scholarship on the issue at the time of Jesus. The Old Testament on its own is not that clear on the issue of eternal life.

So I won't point a finger at them for their position on the resurrection of the dead, but I will point a finger at them for looking to the future facing backwards, thinking that the only determinant of the future, is the past. I will point a finger at them for not listening to the God who spoke through the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah in particular, and called his people to be a people always on the lookout for the “new thing that God is about to do”.

Of course, we will only take the speck out of their eyes when we have made sure there is not a log in our own eyes, so let’s look into our own eyes in this regard:

Do we look to the future facing backwards, or do we look to the future ‘facing forwards’, looking expectantly and hopefully for the new thing we believe God is about to do? This applies in all walks of life: in our homes, our marriages, our careers, in our church as we wait for a new minister, in all these areas,…. do we look to the future facing backwards, remembering the past and the way things have been, or do we face the future looking eagerly and expectantly,… and then preparing in faith for the new thing our God is always ready/willing/and able to do?

The Sadducees (and many/perhaps most in Judaism) could not see Jesus for who He really was, God with them, Emmanuel,…. because they were not looking for the new thing that God was already doing in their midst,…. because they were so fixed on the past,… and interpreting the present and expecting a future based on that past. Let’s not be like them.

Look, hopefully and expectantly,… in your marriage, your home life, your work situation, your church, your country, etc, etc, etc,… for the new thing that God is waiting to do, or perhaps is even already doing.

Remember, our God is not the God who was, He is the God who is and the God who will be.

May that truth bring you hope.

Another fault of the Sadducees that we must not fall into in 2010 is just this: they were silly…… we see it in their argument… they took things to a silly, absurd, extreme. We are often tempted to do this.

“Feed the hungry!!!???......., well if I feed every hungry person I will soon be among the hungry on the streets of Parow begging for food and asking you to feed me!

or

“Give the thirsty something to drink… it won't be long before they want water to wash their clothes or bath their babies and then I'll have a whole neighbourhood at my tap

or

“Welcome strangers… they are all just on the bum you know, and too lazy to work, always looking for something for nothing, and as for giving money to the beggar (the Bible calls it giving alms) we don't give money because they just spend it all on booze and cigarettes you know!”

We can be tempted to take things to the extreme, and then to live in a present which is based on the worst of the past and thus condemn ourselves to a miserable future. This is what happens when you look to the future facing backwards.

And so the Sadducees present this clever but silly argument. What they are really saying is this: “We won't change the way we think just because of you, Jesus”

Do you and I say this?

And they go on: "So we will devise sound but silly arguments, to show you why it makes sense to us to disagree with you and therefore not follow or believe your teaching."

Do you and I do this?

And so, in conclusion, they were… Sad… you… see… (Gettit?) …Sadd…u…cee…!

And you and I will be as well if we don't learn to be people who believe in and then look for, the new thing that God is always doing and waiting to do, in our midst.

Face the future…Face your future....looking forwards.