Abraham and Sarah: Genesis 18

So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?"  Genesis 18...click here to read the whole story

Exhibit A is when Ethan walks out with a mischievous smile on his face and says, “Dad why are jokes about Minnesotan’s so short?”  And I say, “I don’t know, why?”  And he says, “So Iowans can remember them.”  (Insert rim-shot here)

Exhibit B is the story of an angel who went around visiting congregations.  At first, the angel stopped by the Methodists who were so nice, invited the angel to a potluck meal featuring hot dishes and a whole table of Jell-O desserts.  The angel reports all this to God who was pleased.  The next day, the angel visited the Baptists, whose enthusiastic worship was infectious and left the angel singing all the way home.  Again God was pleased.  So, the next day, the angel visited a UCC church.  But the angel did not return that night with a report.  Nor the next night.  Nor the next.  So, God was concerned, went out and found the angel cowering in a corner of the Fellowship Hall.  After God comforted and calmed the angel down, God asked what happened.  Well, the angel says, they have this group called the Nominating Committee here.  I guess UCC stands for United Church of Committees.   (Insert rim-shot here)

Exhibit C is the sound of your groans at my lame above attempts to make a joke.  

Laughter is a gift.  An author once wrote, that laughter breaks us out of the small world of somberness and seriousness.  When was the last time you laughed so hard your side ached, tears dripped from your eyes, and you gasped for breath?  My hunch is that it was not at church.  But such deep laughter lets oxygen into our soul that can clear away cobwebs,  Deep laughter beautifully shatters our need to appear completely in control.  Laughter invites and invokes.  Or as one author says, you cannot love a person until you’ve laughed with her.

  

Exhibit D is this story above about the patron saints of laughter, Abraham and Sarah and their soon to be born son, Isaac, whose very name means laughter.  Yet, my guess is you did not laugh when you clicked on the above link to read the whole story.  So, let’s try this again.  Abraham is sitting at his tent door in the middle of day.  We are talking hotter than Florida in September kind of heat, where the sun shines unmercifully, searing all that it touches, and sending up waves from the sand.  You can imagine Abe getting a bit sleepy, his eyes heavy, when suddenly appear three people before him.  Now, as the ones eavesdropping on this sacred moment, we know that it is the Lord, Yahweh, God.  But it is not clear if that is how Abraham sees his guests.  All we know is that he bursts into full scale Martha Stewart and Bobby Flay combined with a dash of Usian Bolt.  He starts running around.  Picture that.  His feet touching the hot sand, so he is kind of running on his tip toes like you do when going to the beach.  He has his robe yanked up so he can move faster.  His first stop is Sarah’s tent.  He yells to make cakes and has the audacity to tell her how to make it.  I am pretty sure Sarah had made bread before.  But before she can respond, Abraham is off to get a calf, milk, and curds that he will put into a delicious Jell-O mold served on a lettuce leaf.  And while it doesn’t say it, he probably made a dolphin ice sculpture and folded the napkins into the shape of a swan.  

He serves all that to his guests.  I have to wonder if they even picked up their forks to poke at this feast.  Because the visitors didn’t seem to come for the buffet,  Rather they ask, “Where is your wife, Sarah?”  I can just see Abraham confused and flummoxed, stammering out his words, “Um, in the tent?”  All the while thinking, “Why in the world are they asking that?”  And suddenly the promise that was echoed to Abraham under a star-filled sky in chapter 17, a promise that Abe himself fell on the ground and laughed at, circles back.  Sarah will have a baby.

The next part is one of the funniest moments in Scripture.  The narrator gives us an aside.  Now Abraham and Sarah were old.  And as the listener, I am all, “Okay.”  But it keeps going.  “They were advanced in age.”  And I am all, “Right, heard you the first time, I get it!!”  And finally, "It had ceased to be with Sarah the manner of women."  And all I can think is, “Yup, and I thought people shared too much on Facebook.”  So, Sarah and Abraham are promised a child.   

Unfortunately, too often, the lingering residue of sexism has been woven into this passage.  We been taught to hear the visitor’s response to Sarah’s laughter as confrontational at best or condemnation at worse.  But maybe there is another way to read this and say our past interpretations were wrong.  I think the visitors are laughing along with Sarah.  Of course, Sarah laughed.  Just as hopefully you are laughing now.  Can you read the, "Oh yes you did laugh" not in an angry tone, but as the guests laughing so hard they can barely get the words out?  This is such a profound, beautiful story.  I love that God comes to Abraham and Sarah in the midst of the mundane and ordinary of a Tuesday.  I love that lingering question, “Is anything too wonderful?"  Or that could also be translated, 'Hard for God?' And that is not rhetorical, that is our question.  Every person reading this is dealing with some kind of barrenness, brokenness, given up on ever experiencing grace.  We have moments of God-forsakenness.  And in the midnight of our soul, laughter is a prayer.  Not a prayer that everything is going to be all chocolate rivers and rainbows, but that even when the lingering chaos that first swirled at creation comes roaring in, there are still traces of grace.  

But it is hard to see the trace of grace through the blur of tears of grief, loss, brokenness, stresses and strain.  In moments when we’ve given up all hope and God’s promise feels empty, laughter is a prayer that can echo in the cavernous parts of our soul, awakening us to something new.  And finally, this story has so much to teach us about stewardship.  Abraham promises water, rest, and shade, and ends up giving them a feast fit for royalty.  Abraham thinks all he needs to offer is tangible gifts, but God is there looking for Abraham and Sarah’s whole life.  Stewardship is about recognizing and responding to God from whom all blessings flow with all we have.  Our offerings to God are not only about money, be we offer the blessings of laughter, blessings of someone’s shoulder to cry on, blessings of someone who will listen, someone to be angry on your behalf and share in the ups and downs of life.  Someone to reach out to the lost, lonely, left out, those on the edge.  You see for all that we could philosophically talk about whether anything is too wonderful for God, the real question is, how do we live trusting in that truth?  How do we leap each day into knowing that God will show up sometimes with the most seemingly unbelievable ideas?  

Offering our whole life, trusting in the radical promises of God’s presence every day, and sharing laughter, that sounds like the kind of person I pray I can be and the community I would give my whole life to.  What you say, all in favor, signify by laughing.