Laughing With God
God has brought laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me.
(Genesis 21:6)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, August 20, 2006
(Volume 1 Number 9)
First United Methodist Church, 605 West Sixth, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653
Many decades ago the fantastically successful humor columnist Lewis Grizzard made an exciting promise to a friend, that he would remember this special friend in his will. Mr. Grizzard passed away several years ago, but his unique brand of humor wasn't buried with him. Sure enough, in the anticipated reading of his will came the statement, "To Gary Hill, whom I promised to mention in my will, I want to say, 'Hi, Gary!'" Listen close. Listen, and you will hear laughter.
Perhaps Abram was beginning to wonder if God's promise was heading toward a similar conclusion. Many decades earlier God had made an exciting promise to Abram. He promised Abram and his wife, Sarai, that they would have a son. One can imagine the parents-to-be elatedly preparing for the blessed event. “You want a nursery added upstairs, Sarai? No problem.” Abram pounds the nails with youthful vim and vigor. The nursery is constructed, painted baby boy blue, and filled with stuffed camels and sheep. Abram and Sarai believed God’s promise. Why should they not have?
But the years rolled by, and the promise remained unfulfilled. “Any time now,” they surely kept thinking, “A baby boy.” Instead, nothing. Year after year after barren year. Nothing. Sarai remained childless. Had Yahweh reneged? Had God defaulted? Sarai’s biological clock long ago ticked past child-bearing age. How old was Sarai? Well, look at it this way. She had been getting the senior citizens’ discount for some thirty-five years. She was ninety. Nine zero. Moreover, by her own admission, not a spry ninety, but a “worn out” ninety.
Listen close. Listen and you will hear the neighbors’ laughter. “Old-timers, don’t you think it’s time to convert that nursery into a nice retirement den? Relaxing golds and avocados would be a more appropriate color scheme than baby blue. Make it comfy, because you’ll be spending plenty of leisure time in that room, since obviously won’t have a son to follow around to all those summer Little League practices. It’s just not in your destiny, Sarai, to be a Soccer Mom. Oh, but it was promised, you say? Yeah, right, Yahweh must have written that promise on a yellow Post-It note that fell under the divine refrigerator years ago.” Listen close. Listen and you will hear laughter.
Perhaps Abram came to expect a “Hi, Gary” message from God. "Hi, Abram. Listen, about that promise I made, umpteen years ago. You know, the one about the kid. In case you’re wondering by now, I was just kidding." Ah, but at long last God visits Abram. Will God apologize for his unkept promise? Hardly. Instead, El Shaddai tells Abram to give that nursery a fresh coat of paint. "As for Sarai your wife, I will bless her and moreover I will give you a son by her." More laughter. Do you hear it? "Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarai, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘O, that Ishmael might live in your sight!’"
Can God be serious? Yes, and to show how serious, God did some name changing. “Abram, you are now Abraham. Sarai, you are now Sarah.” It’s as if God meant new names to trick their wrinkled bodies into acting young again. “That’s wonderful Lord,” the newly named couple thinks. “We appreciate the neat new names. But if you want US to have a baby, you’ll have to change more than our names!” More laughter. Listen, and you’ll hear laughter.
Three visitors approach. Have they come for front row seats at the comedy? No. These aren’t three guests of the nomadic sort. Abraham seems to recognize among these guests a divine Presence. Yahweh himself is among this triad of strangers, and he tells Abraham that it’s time to send invitations to the baby shower. “I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” More laughter. Now it’s Sarah’s turn. She has overheard the conversation, and a grin breaks out over her face. "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?’"
Has God at last had enough of these laughing fits? Perhaps. Sarah's laughter does, in fact, become the topic of a fascinating dialogue between Yahweh and 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.’"
Now, having rehearsed the narrative surrounding the birth of Isaac, it should be clear that laughter plays a key role in the story. So prominent is laughter that Abraham names his son, Isaac (Hebrew, Yitzhak, “he laughed”). Who laughed? Well, certainly Abraham and Sarah laughed. Max Lucado suggests (and I love the idea) that God joined the laughter! "(Abraham and Sarah) laugh partly because it is too good to happen and partly because it might. They laugh because they have given up hope, and hope born anew is always funny before it is real. They laugh at the lunacy of it all. They laugh a little ‘at’ God, and a lot ‘with’ God -- for God is laughing, too. Then, with the smile still on his face, God gets busy doing what he does best -- the unbelievable.”
“But,” someone may object to Lucado’s take, “wasn’t God upset with Sarah for laughing?” That is, admittedly, the staple menu item offered by traditional commentaries on these passages. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Reading between the lines of the Hebrew text, I see God laughing in joy with Abraham and Sarah, delighting to work this miracle, delighting to surprise his children.
God, laughing with Abraham and Sarah? The thought might strike you as odd. The typical commentary presents Sarah’s laughter as irreverent, an evidence of disbelief, an inexcusable token of weak faith. One notes, though, in the commentaries, an inconsistency of interpretation. Though Abraham and Sarah both laugh, Abraham is generally excused, while Sarah is charged with rudeness and faithlessness. We are told, "Yes, they both laughed, but their motives were different. Abraham laughs in wonder and joy, while Sarah's laughter contains a measure of unbelief which God soundly condemns.”
In my opinion, the Hebrew text simply does not bear out such a dramatic distinction between Abraham’s and Sarah’s laughter. (In the For-What-It’s-worth department, if ever a case could be made for sexist commentary in favor of men in the history of Christian commentary, this is it. The idea that Abraham's laughter is holy while Sarah's is tainted with disbelief, is an argument neither strong nor conclusive.) Hebrew synonyms are used to describe the couple’s laughter. Abraham laughed to himself (Hebrew, belibbo, "in his heart"). Sarah laughed to herself (Hebrew, beqirbah "within herself"). Not much difference. If anything, it appears to me that the opposite is true. Abraham’s laughter was more outrageous, more expressive. He “fell facedown” laughing, while Sarah’s laughter seems quieter, more private.
Moreover, Abraham’s words clearly show that he was the one who was prepared to direct God to a different solution. "Oh that Ishmael might live under your blessing!" The meaning of that statement is fairly obvious. "Oh, come on, Lord. Stop joking around. Let's forget all this stuff about needing Huggies around here. Just use Ishmael, my son through my concubine, Hagar. He’s already potty trained and I’m too old to go through that again. It's okay, God. I've accepted the reality that Sarah and I are just too old to have a child. I can live with that arrangement. It's not all I had hoped for, I admit, but it's okay."
Sarah’s laughter doesn’t go as far as Abraham. She makes no attempt to divert God to Plan B. All she says is, "After I have grown old and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" The Hebrew word Sarah uses to describe herself as old is beloti, “worn out.” Karen Hodges wrote to Reader’s Digest about a group of moms who gather regularly at her church for fellowship. They call themselves by the acronym for Handling Energetic Little People – H.E.L.P.! As Sarah, at ninety, faced the prospect of following a toddler around, Handling an Energetic Little Person, she confessed to feeling beloti, "worn out!"
It's not unusual these days to hear about "Welfare" Moms. But when’s the last time you heard about a "Social Security" mom? Imagine Sarah telling her friends, "All I know is that I’m the first lady in town to pay her pediatrician with a Social Security check!" Just as you laugh at the thought, so did she. So did Abraham. As Sarah envisions her living room knee deep in Huggies and shopping at Toys-R-Us next Christmas, it’s just too much. She laughs.
Did God chide Sarah for laughing? If so, it was a mild reprimand. "Oh, yes, you did laugh." Hardly what you might call a scathing judgment upon unbelief. I wonder, though, if God spoke those words with a frown or a smile? It makes a huge difference. The typical commentary imagines the text as if God spoke with a frown. "I'm disappointed with you Sarah! You are very impolite. Abraham, why did your silly wife laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Is Sarah so faithless? Mark my words! I WILL return next year, and you WILL have a child, whether you like it or not." God exits the stage, angry at Sarah, ready to show her who’s boss.
Yet, what if God spoke those words with a smile? "Yes, Sarah, you did laugh! You need not deny that. I know the miracle I'm about to perform is hard to believe. But, my child, believe it. Nothing is too wonderful for me! Yes, you are surprised. I delight to surprise my people. Yes, you laughed, Sarah. But that's okay. I'm laughing with you!"
Twenty years ago, when our girls were 10 and 7, Sherry and I promised them that we would go to Disneyworld. Year after year passed. Vacation after vacation. Disneyworld somehow never made it into our plans. Year after year after Micky Mouse-less year, we made excuses. Too expensive. Too little time. Too far from our home in Michigan. We only get two weeks vacation, so we need to take the cheap route and spend that time with family in Arkansas.
It got to the point that every time we mentioned the possibility of going to Disneyworld, the girls doubted it would ever happen. Finally, some four Springs later, we called the kids in to our summer planning session and announced, "Kids, no more putting it off. We're going to Disneyworld THIS summer." Well, we asked for it. Page and Ashley's response might have been expected. They laughed. "Yeah, right, mom and dad! Thanks for mentioning it again, but we’ve heard all that talk before. It will never happen."
This time, though, they were wrong. To Disneyworld we went. Now, let me invent an imaginary conversation in our car as we at last drove under the Mickey Mouse welcome sign, all those gorgeous hotels coming into view. "Well kids, we're really here. You didn't believe us when we told you we were coming. You laughed! But here we are."
"No, we didn't laugh," they say.
And we respond, "Oh, yes, you did laugh!" Speaking these very same words God spoke to Sarah, would we have been frowning? Or might we have been laughing right along with them? "Yes, you laughed, and we are laughing with you!" Love for our children desired to see them surprised and happy. Is it so inconceivable that God was any less loving as he sprung such a wonderful, long-awaited surprise on his children?
Perhaps that’s why Sarah says at the birth of Isaac, "God has brought laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me!" Was Sarah ashamed of her laughter now? Hardly. She laughed. God laughed. And she invited all participants in this drama of God’s love to laugh with her. Lucado comments, "(God) changes a few things -- beginning with their names . . . But their names aren’t the only things God changes. He changes their minds. He changes their faith. He changes the number of their tax deductions, and . . . He changes the way they define impossible."
With that I close. Let’s change the way we define “impossible,” opening our eyes to what is possible when our plans are conceived in God’s will and nurtured in faith. Sarah said, "I'm beloti. I’m worn out." Individuals can feel worn out. Churches can feel worn out. Entire denominations can feel worn out. Indeed, entire nations and cultures can feel worn out, used up, hanging on. Let’s open our eyes to the possible, dreaming big dreams and tagging our hopes with the name Isaac, “he laughed.”
And, if we listen close, we’ll hear God laughing with us.
Sources and notes:
A brief devotional written by Max Lucado, “Paying the Pediatrician,” in the NIV Men’s Devotional Bible, Zondervan, 1993, provided the original spark for the development of this sermon.