11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18: 1-15; 21: 1-7
June 15, 2008

Justification by Laughter

Andra and I have different philosophies regarding expiration dates – what the Brits call "sell-by dates." She takes a jar of mustard out of the fridge and looks at those little numbers on the bottom of the jar: "Use by June, 2005." To me, that’s a helpful suggestion. To her it’s a command come down from Sinai. "Thou shalt not eat that mustard." I figure, if it’s still yellow and doesn’t smell too bad, it’s worth a smear.

What’s the expiration date for a promise? Six months? A year? Longer? At what point do you stop waiting for a promise to be kept and simply get on with your life?

When I was a neophyte pastor I got a call from a church member who lived not far from the manse. It was a Saturday afternoon around three o’clock, and the caller was a young mother whose husband had moved out a few weeks before.

"You’ve got to come down and talk to Susan," she said. "Today’s her 5^th birthday and her Daddy promised to come and take her to Lynchburg for pizza. She’s been sitting out there on the front step for hours now, and I can’t bear to tell her the truth. You’ve got to come down and tell her that her Daddy’s not coming."

As long as I live I will never forget the sight of that little girl in her party dress and black patent shoes sitting on her doorstep waiting for her daddy to keep his promise.

Long ago God made a promise to Abraham. It is such an important promise that it comes in several versions. The first appears in Genesis, Chapter 12. "Go," God tells Abraham, whose name at the time was Abram. "Go from your father’s house and from everything that is secure and familiar, to a land that I will show you." And with that command came a promise. "I will make of you a great nation, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Abram obeyed the command, the story goes, because he relied on God to keep God’s promise.

That’s the expurgated version of the story – the version that would appear in the campaign ad if Abraham were to run for high office. A fact-checker would soon discover chapters 13 through 17, which tell a more complicated tale. Over and over, Abraham behaves as though he doesn’t trust God after all.

On one occasion Abram, in order to save his own skin, offers his wife Sarai to the Pharaoh of Egypt. (Abram, it appears, was no gentleman.) On another he fathers a child by Sarai’s maidservant Hagar. By that time Abram was 86 years old and figured he couldn’t wait any longer for God to come through with Plan A. He’d go with Plan B, and make Ishmael his heir. God (not to mention Sarai) would have none of it.

God’s promise comes in yet another version in chapter 17, when God makes a formal covenant with Abram. In the process Abram is renamed Abraham and Sarai Sarah, but still no sign of a baby on the way.

And then, in Chapter 18, there appears yet another version of the story. This one is more dream-like, even whimsical. Abraham is camped by the oaks of Mamre when three visitors appear. Abraham launches the household into a frenzy of hospitality – fresh baked bread, roast beef – the works. Over their postprandial cups of coffee the three visitors ask where Sarah is.

"Oh, she’s in the tent."

"Well, when I return next spring, Sarah will have borne a son."

From behind the tent flap laugher is heard. Perhaps it was a guffaw. Perhaps it was a stifled giggle of the sort that hadn’t passed Sarah’s mouth since she was young girl. Perhaps what she said was "Yeah . . . right" but the storyteller couldn’t bear to put it that way, so he called it a laugh.

Abraham heard it, though he pretended not to. And so did the visitor. "Why did Sarah laugh? . . . Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?"

By this time Sarah has composed herself. She comes out of the tent, no doubt with a tray of shortbread.

"I didn’t laugh," she tells the stranger.

"Oh yes, you did laugh," the stranger replies.

I read this remark not as a reprimand, but as an affirmation that the promise the visitor has just made on God’s behalf is nothing short of outrageous. Given Sarah’s age, given the wrinkles in her once-unblemished face, given the hopes she harbored long ago and long ago abandoned, given the way of the world and the general nature of things, it is an outrageous promise.

Perhaps Sarah didn’t laugh. Perhaps she cried. Perhaps she laughed to keep from crying.

How long do you wait for God to keep a promise? What’s the expiration date for faith?

Elsewhere in scripture, Abraham is held up as a paragon of faith. Certainly the Apostle Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews regarded him as such. Paul writes of Abraham in chapter 4 of Romans:

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." (Romans 4:20-22)

And the writer of Hebrews says,

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going . . . By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old - and Sarah herself was barren - because he considered him faithful who had promised. (Hebrews 11:8,11)

Well, with all due respect to the old boy, Abraham’s faith seems to me to very like yours and mine. Strong at times. Weak at others. Committed to Plan A while the organ is playing and composing Plan B before he hits the bottom of the church steps.

It’s not that Paul and the writer to the Hebrews were wrong; Abraham did have some faith – enough to go when God said "Go," enough to keep moving in the direction God was showing him – but when I picture Abraham, I can’t see him wearing one of those T-shirts that says, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."

That’s not faith. That’s grandiosity. That’s ego dressed up as faith.

If there is a paragon of faith in this passage, it’s got to be Sarah. She’s the one who acknowledges how truly outrageous the good news really is. It shatters all realistic expectations. It brings life out of barrenness. Confronted by this preposterous word from this preposterous God, Sarah laughs out loud. Her laughter is more genuine than many a creed, and it seems to me that God reckons her laughter as righteousness just as God does the same for Abraham’s less- than-consistent faith.

At least Sarah gets the joke. Unlike so many of us, who think of faith as something we must generate from within, by dent of hard work and clean living, Sarah grasps right away that faith comes as a gift – like a kick inside a once-barren womb, like a ray of light through a prison cell, like a baby born in the geriatric ward.

The great threat to faith in this story is not Sarah’s laughter. It’s the very real possibility that Abraham and Sarah have become accustomed to their barrenness, resigned to a closed future. The danger is not just that they have forgotten God’s promise, but that they have ceased to expect anything other than the same old same old.

To lose hope – to lose any expectation that things will change – that is the greatest threat to faith. Not laughter at the absurdity of a God who makes and keeps promises. The opposite of faith is not doubt; it’s despair. And that is why the angel asks "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?"

This Friday I leave for the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I was a commissioner to the General Assembly once before, back in 1983. That was the year of reunion with the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A. – what we used to call the "Northern Church." The two Assemblies met in Atlanta. Adam was three months old. I was a commissioner from Blue Ridge Presbytery in Virginia and my father was a commissioner from the Presbytery of South Louisiana. The whole family marched behind the bagpipes when the two denominations flowed together in a parade down Peachtree Avenue.

I was so hopeful on that day that the Presbyterian Church would grow from strength to strength – that we’d forget the disagreements of the past and work together to build God’s kingdom, to bring God’s justice, to seek God’s peace in this nation and the world. Pushing Adam’s stroller down Peachtree Avenue, walking next to my father, I thought we’d finally figured out how to be a faithful church.

As it turns out, our record was about the same as Abraham’s. Impressive at times. Cowardly at others. Long spells of pointless bickering interrupted by flashes of pure grace. Did you know that Presbyterians have built more Habitat for Humanity homes than any other denomination? That our Disaster Assistance Program is one of the most respected? That in quiet and unpublicized ways we are doing Kingdom work?

At the same time, we remain mired in a debate over human sexuality that saps our energies and distracts us from the essence of the gospel. This is a barren debate that guarantees a barren future. We must not allow it to become "normal" for us. We must open our ears to God’s promise of new life before we loose the capacity to recognize that nothing is too wonderful for the Lord.

The God who came through with a little boy named "Laughter" for Abraham and Sarah might pull off an even greater miracle by teaching Presbyterians to get over ourselves long enough to get the joke.

There is yet hope for our church, but only if we can still hear Sarah’s laughter. She thought that God had finished with her, but she was wrong. She thought that God had given up on her and Abraham, and there was nothing to look forward to but the same old same old, but she was wrong. She thought that God’s faithfulness to us had an expiration date, but she was wrong.

It’s enough to make you laugh out loud

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