Inconceivable Laughter
Do you remember the very first time that you received an envelope in the mail… an envelope with your name on it, not your parents’… promising you the opportunity to win a prize worth millions of dollars? All you had to do was to enter the sweepstakes. Do you remember how… as a young adult… you believed it could happen… and that it could happen to you? Do you remember the hope in your heart as you filled out the necessary form and sent it in… the hope in your heart as you checked your mailbox each day? Do you remember how you dreamed about ways that you would spend the money when the check came in? Day after day, you checked your mail, but the check did not come. Future mail deliveries brought more envelopes with more promises… and you filled out more forms… or subscribed to more magazines. Twenty-four years of empty promises later… twenty-four years of hurt and disappointment later… you don’t wait eagerly for the mail any more. You don’t fill out the forms any longer. You don’t even open those envelopes now. Million dollar checks are the stuff of young people’s dreams.
Does God have a sense of humor? I think most of us would agree that God does have a sense of humor. We might also add that we sometimes don’t appreciate God’s sense of humor. When our story begins today, it has been twenty-four years since God promised Abram that he would make him the father of a great nation. But Abram still has no children. Now, God reiterates his promise and… just to emphasize it… changes Abram’s name. So what? Well, in the Ancient Middle East, it was a big deal. Names were very significant. A name was more than a designation. It signified an identity, even a destiny. To change a person’s name was to change who that person was and what he or she would do or become. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. Abram means “exalted father.” Abraham means “father of many.” Yet, twenty-four years has gone by since God promised Abram that he would be the father of a great nation… and Sarai, his wife, has never been able to conceive. Now, Sarah was passed childbearing age when the promise was made. At that point, she was 65. Now she is 89. At this age, having a child is inconceivable! Inconceivable because Sarah was not able to conceive. Even when she was young, she was unable to conceive. Now, she is old. Was God laughing at this point? I don’t know. I do know that Sarah was not. She did not think it was funny. Yet, when the stranger promises that Sarah will have a child, she laughs. Why? What is it that makes any of us laugh? Why would Sarah laugh at the stranger’s comment?
Laughter and humor have been studied by many people from the time of Aristotle on and each researcher has come to his or her own conclusions with regard to laughter and what makes us laugh. Two elements seem to be common to all theories: incongruity and surprise. Incongruity is the juxtaposition of two or three apparently contradictory or unrelated ideas or situations. Surprise comes from the introduction of something totally unexpected or unanticipated. Incongruity and surprise are related to, and sometimes indistinguishable from each other. Both capitalize on the unexpected. For Sarah, to have a total stranger talk about her giving birth to a child, when everyone knew that she was barren and was now far beyond her childbearing years, the incongruity of his promise with what she knew to be true in her life caused laughter to erupt. Yet, hers was not a funny “Ha, Ha” laugh. It was a derisive “You’ve got to be kidding” laugh. “Ain’t gonna happen… Not in this lifetime!” laugh.
Of course, God is laughing, too, but God hides it well. After all, God is playing the straight man here. “Why is Sarah laughing?” God asks. “I’m not laughing,” she says. “Oh, yes, you are,” God says. And then God asks, “Is anything too wonderful for God?” The Hebrew word for “wonderful” here means “extraordinary”… “challenging”… “too difficult.” And the idea that anything is “too challenging” or “too difficult” for God is another incongruity… an unexpected question that also generates laughter.
Yet to laugh at a stranger… at a guest in their tent… would be rude. So, Sarah covers her mouth… and tries to stifle the sound of her reaction to this statement that is filled with incongruity and surprise. Despite her effort, God knows that she is laughing and that her laughter expresses her skepticism and doubt. But when she hears God speak of her laughter… her skepticism… her doubt… and she realizes that this stranger knows her better than she knows herself… and that his powers are far beyond the ordinary. This is God himself who visits her with a promise of a child to be born. In later years, it is the Archangel Gabriel who visits Elizabeth and Mary to tell them the news. But Sarah gets a visit from God himself. Elizabeth and Mary believe and rejoice in the news they receive. Sarah laughs at God’s words… not believing, but doubting.
What draws us into this story is that Sarah is who we are… where we are. We simply do not believe any longer… if we ever believed… that God can make the impossible possible. We have ceased to look for the check… ceased to open the envelope… ceased to dream of possibilities… all because we have been disappointed so many times. What if we begin to believe… and are doomed to disappointment again? Even when we hear the promises of God to his faithful ones, we, like Sarah, are impatient. Like the children of God from Genesis through Revelation, we wait for God to act. And, even in a day of instant entertainment… fast food… and Google… God makes us wait. Yet, in that time of waiting, God is not absent. You see, the way that God looks at it, what is as important as what we wait for is who we become… as we wait. Our faith and our character are molded in that time of waiting. So, Sarai and Abram wait… and, in waiting, they become Sarah and Abraham… different people… shaped and molded by God during their time of waiting.
How often has God made you wait for something that you have prayed for diligently… that you have worked for earnestly… and who did you become in that time of waiting? Did you become a cynical, skeptical person who laughs at God’s promises… or did you become a stronger, more faithful disciple? When I was in my final semester in seminary, I began searching for a call. Many of my classmates had a call before graduation, but it was almost eighteen months after graduation that Peggy Kenny called me. God made me wait. Why? How was I different eighteen months later? What changed in those eighteen months?
In those eighteen months, I learned to minister to the terminally ill and dying as a hospice chaplain… experience that has been valuable to me in my ministry here and in my own father’s death. In those eighteen months, I learned to be faithful to what I believed God was calling me to be and do… trusting more on God’s grace and God’s word than on the skills that I had learned in my earlier career in the business world. In those eighteen months, I opened myself to the possibility that God was calling me to be a solo pastor… for when I began my search, I was only looking at positions as an associate pastor. In those eighteen months, God was preparing me… and preparing you… for the partnership that we would share. And the list goes on. To make a long story short, when the church was ready, the call was issued. When the pastor was ready, the call came. Am I a better pastor for having waited? Yes. Did I want to wait? No. But it was God who knew best.
Sarah laughed at the inconceivable… and conceived a son… promised by God twenty-five years earlier. Isaac, whose name means laughter, was a child born of laughter… Sarah’s cynical, derisive snort… and God’s quiet, knowing chuckle… a child who brought laughter into one home so that its patriarch might become a blessing to many homes… many nations. In today’s skeptical world, many people laugh at religion… at faith in God… at the idea that the impossible is possible… and the improbable a certainty if God wills it. Do we have the patience to wait for God to act? And who are we becoming as we wait? Tired… cynical… joyless people… or faithful… believing… committed disciples? Do you know? God does. Amen.
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7