"She Laughed" given June 18, 2017

I have to wonder if she knew-- this tough old woman, veteran of so many grim decades wandering through the desert and the foothills-- crouching now behind the tent flap. She knelt there, eaves-dropping on her husband's conversation-- no doubt her wifely privilege as she saw it. But did she have any idea at all who it was speaking this outrageous piece of nonsense? Bring forth a son at her age, indeed!

These strangers feasting on her fresh-baked loaves, curds and milk and roasted calf might be anyone at all. Merchants, bandits, wanderers from oasis to oasis. Granted there was something out of the ordinary about them, something strangely noble about their bearing, something almost lordly about the way they had approached. Otherwise, Abraham wouldn't have had her prepare such a feast-- hardly the "cup of water and morsel of bread" he had offered the strangers in the first place.

What had happened? Who might these mysterious three be-- Angels traveling in disguise? Three kings coming bearing gifts to grace the birth of some royal progeny among the cities of the West? Bandits? Whoever they were, they had no business meddling in her personal affairs. How dare they talk of children! How dare they pry loose the scab that had still not fully formed over the wound that had festered for so long between her and her husband!

For who knows how long, she had to put up with the airs of that haughty Egyptian Hagar concubine and her half-breed son. And before that-- to have been passed off in fright as her own husband's sister, shoved into Pharaoh's harem just to save Abraham's neck. Hadn't she borne enough humiliation over the years without this final cruel insult from strangers?

A son indeed! Now? When all the fun and frolic of the marriage bed was a wistful memory and she herself was a dried up stick? Once her beauty that had once caught the eye of Pharaoh—now she was withered up into wrinkles, skin and bone.

How absurd, a son indeed! As absurd as the promises of that crazy God who travelled with them. That same God they had followed away from a prosperous life and a stable home in Haran to these endless, arid lands, where tents and flocks moved on from year to year, where one never settled down.

Maybe that's who was behind this mysterious visit-- Yahweh, Abraham's God who promised land and sons and kindred like the stars of the sky. Poor Abraham, doddering old fool-- deceived again. Poor old Abraham, still believing after all these years of endless disappointment.

Well, Sarah would not fall for it this time. Abraham could mumble all the promises he wanted to from his precious God, but she wouldn't risk it, wouldn't believe, wouldn't allow herself to hope again. It couldn't be done. All she had to do was look at herself. The very idea-- at their age. It was enough to make her cry-- or laugh. And so Sarah laughed.

Those old patriarchal stories from the dawn of time don't on the whole, show women in a very favorable light. Poor old Sarah here seems all too much like Eve, an accessory, a scapegoat, someone who at best, is in the story in order to portray the more foolish, willful aspects of humanity--laughing at God.

And yet, there's something about Sarah-- a saving grace-- something we can all relate to. Despite his all-too-human failings, Abraham is hard for me at least to identify with. I don't find his behavior or his slippery morality very admirable. And his faith is too hard, too cold, for me. A man willing to sacrifice his own child is not my idea of a hero of faith.

But it makes me smile to think that Sarah laughed. It gives me hope that the mother of all the Biblical faiths, the wife and companion Abraham cherished (most of the time)m and who cherished him through thick and thin, betrayal and heartbreak, could still chuckle at the absurd promises of their God—land, descendants, a place to call their own.

And they are just as absurd today-- incredible to say the least. A world of peace when all around are wars and rumors of war? A world of truth when lies are the commonly accepted currency between people? A world of justice when exploitation and oppression are the daily lot of most? A world of beauty when the pall of smoke and pollution defaces more and more of the surface of the earth? A world of love when fear and hate has caught the human heart within its icy grasp?

O yes, we all should welcome Sarah in this story, with her harsh, despairing laughter. Because the truth is, if there is room for laughing Sarah in God's plan, there's even room for us, who laugh at God with our behavior in our own time.

We watch someone we care for sicken and die. We hear the promise of life beyond the grave proclaimed and we bow our heads. But deep within us there's a hollow laugh that says, "I wish it were so. I hope that’s the way it will be,That's a lovely promise, but can it really be that way?"

We listen to the preacher go on about Faith, Hope, and Love... And we nod our heads and rise to leave. But deep inside we hear that hollow laugh, that voice that mockingly tells us, that life doesn’t always work out like that.

We gaze with wonder upon a sunrise. We listen to the sweep of a symphony. We weep and rejoice at the beauty of a novel or a play or an idea. Yet all the time, that cynical laughter within calls out to us that things don't really work out that way.

And so Sarah laughed to herself. And then, she found herself laughing again, nine months later, when she bore a son to Abraham. "God has given me good reason to laugh", she joyously proclaimed, "and everybody who hears of this will laugh with me."

For the laughter Sarah had known, the laughter of deep pain and uncounted tears had been transformed beyond all hoping into new and clean and holy peals of laughter in the life of the one they called "Isaac". (Isaac you see means, "the laugher" or "the one who laughs").

And many, many years later, another woman, a young woman this time—a virgin, probably terribly young, heard the messenger of Yahweh God tell her that she would bear a child, a son, named "Emmanuel" which means "God with us". And she said, in the face of all her tears and fears and turmoil,

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior."

I can recall when I was told that I was going to be a father for the first time. I was young, so young, I had absolutely no idea what lay before me. But at that moment, my heart filled with joy and I found myself laughing-- out of surprise, joy, astonishment, relief, simple wonder at the miracle, or all of the above-- I don't know. But my heart was full and I laughed. In the 126th Psalm we read,

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those in a dream.

Then our mouths were filled with laughter

and our tongues with shouts of joy.

I recall once in Jerusalem, sitting in the outer courtyard of the Dome of the Rock, traditional site of Solomon's Temple, and third holiest place of Islam. There was a group of us sitting together resting, maybe a dozen or so, Ray Rhodes our former Superintendant, said something witty--I forget what it was, but it was not in any way disrespectful. And somebody laughed-- not a rude guffaw, just a mild chuckle out loud.

"This is a holy place! No laughter here!" Screamed somebody from a couple of hundred feet away.

He had it wrong. There is room for laughter in a holy place. There is honest laughter in our God. This religion business does not have to be-- should not be a grim and desperate undertaking. Our God is not interested in the survival and purity of faith at any price.

Faith in the God of Sarah and Abraham--and that includes Judaism, Christianity and Islam-- is meant to be a faith of freedom, a faith of life and affirmation. The Biblical faith is meant to be a faith that can and will transform even the bitter laughter of despair into the radiant joy of birth into New Life.

And our faith is a faith that teaches us, through pain at times, that all the sufferings of the present are not really worth comparing to the glory that is held in store for us--for all in God's design.

That's the word that Sarah brings to us in her sad laughter at the tent-flap. And that's the word she brings to us in her full and joyous laughter at the birth of her son. This we know, through God's own Son, the child of Mary, the child of promise, the child of laughter, Jesus Christ our Lord.. And so Sarah laughed to herself. And likewise you and I have room to laugh as well.