“God’s Humor”                                                                   Nancy J. Cormack-Hughes

Genesis 18:1-15                                                                 First Presbyterian Church, SLC

Psalm 126; John 16:20-24                                                                                                    May 7, 2006                                                                                                                                                             

Have you ever been asked what your favorite Bible passage is?  Which story or psalm or sonnet or statement says something particular to you?  A couple of years ago, I was asked by a friend to share my favorite Bible story at a special service.  And I had to think long and hard as to what was my favorite Bible story?  I flipped through my Bible, of course from back to front, (I started with Revelation) … I came across passages on love in I John, classic statements in Romans (“neither life, nor death, nor anything…”), of course the parables of Jesus, the Christmas story, the prophets, the Psalms, well… to make a long story short, it was when I came to Genesis that it clicked!  Genesis 18 … the story of God surprising Sarah and Abraham by telling them they are going to have a baby when Sarah was 90 and Abraham 100 … and Sarah just laughing at God for such a preposterous idea.  I love this story!  It’s so earthy, so humorous, so human, so divine…in the fullest sense of the term. 

Did you like it?  Did catch some of the humor in it? 

To really catch all that is going on, it’s important to remember some of what came before this story.  (As I said before,) in Genesis 12, when Abraham was 75 and Sarah 65, God promised that Abraham would be a great nation.  And…

…the promise was not fulfilled.

In chapter 15, God told Abraham that his offspring would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky.  And…                   

…the promise was not fulfilled.

Abraham and Sarah waited, and waited, and waited… and all they received were seemingly empty promises …Been there? 

They probably felt very let down by God, and now it seemed as though it was too late.

Then, 25 years after that first promise, we come to the story for today… Genesis 18.  It begins with Abraham sitting by his tent in the heat of the day … and he looks up and sees these 3 visitors standing near him.  Then “Old Abe” starts acting really strangely … I give the guy credit that he recognizes these “men” as messengers of God—angels in the truest sense of the word—but then he gets all flustered, he gets kind of nervous, he wants them to stay, because he knows that if they stay … God will have a special message for him.

So, he tries to be the good host, invites them to have a drink, to rest, and then says (and I quote), “Let me bring you a little bread…”  And what does Abraham do?  He runs into the tent to Sarah, and asks her to make some bread, and make it quickly!

Now I hate to say this (and please forgive me, men) but it is so typical of a man—invite someone to stay and then ask his wife to cook!  And to make bread  … quickly?  Please!  These were the day before Rhodes dough and bread machines!

Now I am not sure what to make of this, but I do wonder what Sarah said to Abraham.  I’m thinking the conversation went something like this:

Abraham says, “Honey, I just promised these guys bread…could you quickly bake some for us?”

Sarah replies, “I don’t have time to bake bread, I’m in the middle of cleaning up this tent…it’s a mess…they are your guests, you make your own bread!”

Abraham concedes, “Well, maybe we’d be okay with bread…”

I have read this text a hundred times, but it was only recently that I noticed some interesting details (vs. 8), “Then he [Abraham] took curds and milk and the calf he had prepared, and set it before them...”  The only food that Abraham brought to the visitors was curds and milk and veal.  Did you notice there was no bread … the bread that he asked Sarah to make?!

While they were eating, the visitors ask about Sarah.  It seems they have something they want to say to both of them, but either Abraham never invited her out, or maybe she was still mad about the bread-thing.  Even when the visitors specifically ask for Sarah, Abraham still does not invite her to come join them for this little discussion!

The visitors finally share the message with Abraham, and by default with Sarah …she was no fool, she knew these visitors were important, and even though maybe she was mad, she was listening from the door of the tent.

And the message was:  Sarah is going to have a baby.

Remember, Sarah is 90 and Abraham 100; it is physically impossible for these two to have children.

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best lines of the story (v 11):  “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.”  That line alone tells me it must have been a man who wrote down this story…a male who could not get the word out; he just could not say that Sarah had gone through menopause!

Of course Sarah knows she’s infertile, and she knows that Abraham is infertile too, and it has been that way for a long time.  So Sarah laughs and laughs…and it’s written she says, “Shall I have the pleasure?” 

Pleasure?  Excuse me, but I think that male author may have added that word.  Somehow I don’t know if pleasure would be the word I would use for having a baby at 91 years old.  One writer humorously describes the scene as Sarah having a baby and Medicare picking up the tab!

But Sarah gets caught in her giggling, and the Lord says to her, “is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”  Sarah tries to get her wits about her, tries to pull herself together, when the Lord confronts the issue, “Why did Sarah laugh?”

And Sarah, knowing that she was caught--but afraid to admit it--denied that she laughed.

Yet God, the One who can do miracles that we say are impossible… the One who can do things that we can only laugh at,… God caught Sarah in her laughter and said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

And though we did not read this part, this wonderful story ends with the birth of a child:  Isaac, in Hebrew pronounced, Yitzak, which means none other, than, “the one who laughs.”  The promise is finally fulfilled.  Indeed the “great nation” has begun.

[I saw this cartoon once that showed a senior citizen couple—clearly Abraham and Sarah—leaning over a baby—Isaac—in his crib, and the woman is picking up the baby and says to man, “Here honey, your great nation needs a diaper change!”]

The story reminds us of how God can make us laugh, how He can surprise us.  It’s important to know that the story isn’t the end and wasn’t the first of God’s surprises.  Throughout the Bible God surprised people, He made them laugh… I bet Noah laughed when God called him to build the ark.  I bet Moses laughed when God called him to lead the Hebrews out of slavery.  I bet Jonah gave one of those laughs, a snide, “Ha!” to God when God told him to go to Nineva…

For that matter, I bet Mary laughed when God announced that she was to be the mother of God’s son!

God is in the business of catching us off guard.  Just like Sarah laughed when God told her she was going to have a child after all.  I think God has plans in store for all of us, that if, and when we hear them, we would laugh.

Now I’m not just talking about big, life-changing surprises.  I am talking about the nitty gritty of human life…and of the church.

Sometimes things are hard.  Sometimes death will claim the life of one we thought we could never live without… Sometimes relationships we thought would last a lifetime are broken apart by divorce… Sometimes children whom we always considered so good, have made poor choices, and found themselves addicted to substances… Sometimes the job that seemed so perfect years ago, has become dull and dry… or maybe been lost altogether.  Sometimes the church, or the pastor, that at one time seemed almost god-like, now has greatly disappointed us—even hurt us.  Maybe things have happened that have made us wonder if following Jesus is worth it … if I’m just going to get let down anyway.

And in time such as those

[it is easy to remember different days, when times seemed better, easier, when it seemed like God had ‘plans’ for us… and now we wonder what happened to those plans.  We are not unlike David, who in Psalm 126, asks God to restore Israel.  Listen to the way that psalm is translated in the Message:

And now, God, do it again—

Bring rain to our drought-stricken lives

So those who planted their crops in despair

Will shout hurrahs at the harvest,

So those who went off with heavy hearts,

Will come home laughing with armloads of blessing.

“Those who went off with heavy hearts, will come home laughing with armloads of blessing.”]

…We remember Sarah felt like a failure because she was unable to have children.   We remember the time between God’s promise to Abraham and the birth of Isaac was 25 years!  That’s a long time between promise and reaped blessings.  Sarah went off with a heavy heart, yet she came home with armloads of blessing.

You see, God never stopped working. God never gave up on Sarah and Abraham, even though Sarah and Abraham gave up on God.  And then when it realistically seemed too late for God to keep his promise, God surprised Sarah and Abraham…and what did they do?  They laughed!  No way, God…not now…you’ve waited too long…it’s physically impossible…  And God said those famous words which I think every Christian, every church, should have posted in some visible spot, (18:14) “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”  Some translations say, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

God does have plans for each of his children.  I don’t know exactly how God is going to bless us even through such tragedies as death and broken relationships and foreclosing loans and churches without a pastor.  But I do know this:  God made us a promise, that “nothing is too hard for the Lord,” that those who go off with heavy hearts will come home with armloads of blessing.  We may have given up on God, but God has not given up on us!   God will never give up on us…

In a few minutes we will share in the Sacrament of Communion.  We may have heavy hearts, we may have joyful hearts, we may have confused hearts…  But we can bring to the Communion table…we can bring to God:  our hurts, our sins, our doubts, our anger, our honesty.  We come open to God, open to His forgiveness, open to His healing, open to His surprises. 

Indeed, God may surprise us with something we think is simply impossible.  You know in Jesus day, the people expected God to send his Messiah as a glorious king, a wealthy ruler who sat on a throne, but instead He sent a seemingly ordinary man, born of a virgin, and raised as the son of a carpenter.  He had no royal robe, no holy throne, they laughed at him… and then just as many were catching on who he really was, he was meekly crucified, like a lamb let to slaughter, and he died.  And the people doubted God again…Yet this time they weren’t laughing, but instead were crying…until again, God surprised them and raised Jesus from the dead.  Physically impossible, yet, “is anything too wonderful, too hard for the Lord?”

God may ask you to do something, God may surprise you with ideas or people or changes that you just laugh at.  But watch out, if there is anything we learn from my favorite Bible passage—this wonderful story of Sarah and Abraham—it is that God always gets the last laugh.