Sarah Laughs
A Reading from the Book of Genesis:
The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant."
So they said, "Do as you have said." And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes." Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent." Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?"
The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. He said, "Oh yes, you did laugh."
The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me." And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
And Abraham trusted in the Lord, and He reckoned it to his merit.
Faith is a funny thing. We often confuse it with belief or action, and certainly it is related to both of those things. But faith is not belief without evidence. Nor is it blind obedience to temporal or spiritual powers through brute fideism.
Faith is trust. That’s all it is. Faith is trust in the faithfulness of God.
Abraham’s story is designed to demonstrate this to us in the most extreme manner possible, honestly to the point of absurdity. God makes a ridiculous promise to this one old man. And it just keeps getting more ridiculous as time goes on. He tells a barren couple, a 75-year-old fellow with a 65-year-old wife, that they will be the parents of a great nation, that their descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky and the sands on the beach.
He then has them get up and leave on a ludicrous trek of a thousand miles and more, far from the land they have known, leaving behind all safety, support, and security. They fight battles and fool kings. They rescue relatives and dine with mysterious priests. At one point, Pharaoh seeks to claim Sarah for his own, lovely as he says she is. And this would seem quite incongruous, if indeed she’s a septuagenarian.
We might have here the confluence of separate traditions, stitched together into the Torah as we know it. Or it might be just one more extremity intended to make us laugh—as indeed, Sarah and Abraham both laugh at the extravagance of God. He made them that promise, as I said, when Abraham was 75. And God forever keeps His word. The promise of descendants is immediately fulfilled a mere 25 years later, when Abraham hits a century and his wife is lightyears beyond menopause.
That’s part of the joke too. Abraham keeps his faith in the faithfulness of God regardless of how long it takes. Sometimes he wonders, “O Lord, did You forget?” At which point God expands the promise, makes it even larger, more extravagant, and then sends Abraham toddling along his way with little more but “wait and see.”
It’s as though He wants to show that it’s impossible. Abraham and Sarah, “as good as dead,” far past the salad days of parenthood and youth, sans support, sans surrogates, sans anything but faith in God’s promise, continue on in hope. In one sense, they have nothing to lose. They thought their lives were ending back when this story began. But it’s for us, you see; that we might have patience, might have trust, might have faith that God will keep His Word and never break His promise.
So when that child comes at last, the child of their promise, what can Abraham and Sarah do but laugh, in both their disbelief and joy? “Isaac,” they call him: “Laughter.” God has done the impossible, brought life from death, joy from sorrow, youthfulness from age, so that there can be no question. God alone has done this. God has kept His faith.
See, the thing about a promise is that if you have utter faith, utter confidence, utter trust in the one who makes the promise, then it’s as good as having fulfilled it already. If someone were to say to you, “I’ll give you $20,” and you had no doubt whatsoever that they had the means, the intention, and the integrity to keep that promise to you, then for all intents and purposes that 20’s in the bank.
Thus is faith related to hope. If you trust in the promise, if you have faith in God’s faithfulness, then you already have what is promised, already and not yet. You already have salvation. You already have forgiveness. You already have eternal life, already and not yet. You have it in hope and in faith. You have it in things yet unseen. In eternity, it has been done; it is always already accomplished. And so we know where it leads, this hope, this faith.
It leads us to Christ. He is our destination, and our companion, and our Way. Like Abraham, we are old and tired, or perhaps I should speak for myself. Like Abraham, we face many trials, and we still have a long way to go. Yet we have the promise. And because we have the promise, we have the Promised One. What then can anyone do to us? Hurt us, shame us, kill us, imprison us? We know that won’t last. We know the life that conquers death, eternity here in time.
God always keeps His promises, my brothers and my sisters, yet rarely in the ways that we expect. His ways are eternal, and thus are ever new, ever renewed. And so to have His promise is rather like having a child, like the baby born here to the unlikeliest of parents. A baby is everything you want, and nothing you expect. You cannot prepare to be a parent, not really, not adequately. We’ve been having kids since time began, yet every single one is entirely new, entirely surprising.
Every child who comes into our life—every person, really—upends our expectations and forces us to grow. Children are explosions of pure possibility. Thus parenthood is nothing less than death and resurrection. “Have a bunch of kids,” I once heard someone say. “It’s the greatest thing you’ll ever do that’ll completely wreck your life.” And so Sarah laughs.
Trust in the promise, O children of Abraham. Have faith in the faithfulness of God. Live in the sure and certain hope that whatever may come our way, we are loved, we are forgiven, and we are going home. This is our hope, and our joy—our death, and our resurrection.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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