“The Last Laugh”

Genesis 18:1-15

June 12, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

Two qualities characterize our scripture lesson for this morning in this story about Abraham and Sarah. You do not hear these two words often when preachers talk about faith. These two words are not ones that we often use when we teach our children about the virtues of life. The two words are simply laughter and imagination.

Laughter is all over this story. God has sent Abraham and Sarah on what seems like a wild goose chase. God promised them a land, but so far no sold signs have gone up. God has promised them descendants, but so far, there are no children and the prospects for that are decreasing by the day. God promised them a blessing, but right now they don’t feel blessed. In fact, if you were to ask them, they probably would tell you that they feel cursed. Abraham and Sarah think that it is too late for anything now. When God first called them to leave their comfortable lives, they were in their seventies. Now Abraham is nearly one hundred and Sarah is ninety. In the chapters between this week’s lesson and last week’s lesson, a lot has happened.

Abraham has tried to pass his wife off as his sister to protect his hide. They have taken having children into their own hands with a slave girl and that was a disaster. All they have now are their memories, some good and some not so good. But what do they have to look forward to?

Abraham, most likely, feels snookered by God and so he complains to God. And what does God do with the complaint? God makes Abraham another promise. It’s this one. Sarah is going to have a baby. Abraham falls on the ground, on his face, and laughs. You can read about that in Genesis 17. And so when the three strangers come to their tent, in the wilderness, a chapter later, Abraham falls all over himself and welcomes them as if they were long, lost family members. They just drop in and Abraham acts as if it is Sunday dinner. With the meal in front of them, maybe one of the strangers says how good the food is, how great a cook Sarah is. Maybe another of them talks about what a great trooper Sarah is because of all the disappointments, the travels, the uprooting that she has had to endure. Abraham would have had to agree with that. They had faced a lot together.

All the while, Sarah is listening on the other side of the tent flap. She is eavesdropping. No one knows that she is there, or at least that is the impression that you are supposed to have. And with a voice that is louder than necessary, with a voice that is also intended for Sarah, one of the strangers says, “Next year, about this time, you and your wife will be knee deep in diapers.” Sarah hears that. She cannot help but to hear it because the words were intended for her. When the words cross her ears, she laughs out loud. It was a surprised and amazed and unbelievable and spontaneous cackle. She could not help it. She couldn’t stop it. The news was so unbelievable given her age and her husband’s age. After all, could you imagine that?

The speaking stranger’s eyes meets Abraham’s and He asks why his wife is laughing. “Doesn’t she believe me? Sure it’s impossible. Of course it is too good to be true, but let me ask you this, Abraham. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Sarah of course denies it. Our Bibles tell us that she was scared when she realized that the stranger had heard her laugh. And so she did what we often do when we’re scared. She lied about it. She denied it. It is the kind of thing that my little daughter has started doing when we have caught her doing what she is not supposed to do. When she gets caught doing something she is not supposed to do, she lies, because she thinks that she will be in trouble. Little does she know that she gets in bigger trouble for lying. Sarah denied her laugh because she thought that she would be in big trouble. Her lie is followed by one of my favorite lines in scripture. Sarah said, “I did not laugh.” But the Lord said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

As it turns out everyone is laughing a year later because the baby does come. They name him Isaac, which in Hebrew means, of course, laughter. What else would you name this child? It’s a funny story. A royal joke is being played on Abraham and Sarah and, as it turns out, God gets the last laugh. God usually does.

Sometimes we take things so seriously. I am guilty of that. We take our church lives seriously. We take ourselves seriously. We take our lives seriously. There is nothing wrong with that. But when we take them too seriously, then there is a problem. That is why, I think, God sends us friends and families who know better and who can remind us to lighten up from time to time. I have a sketch in my office at home of Jesus laughing. I think that I have told you about it before. It was given to me by someone who told me to lighten up and to not take life so seriously. It is a great picture of Jesus. There is a twinkle in His eye. His mouth is open. You can see His teeth. By looking at the picture, I get the idea that a disciple, maybe Peter, or perhaps Andrew, has just told him a great joke. Jesus loves it and so he laughs out loud.

Now I know, I know. I know that there are times when laughter is not possible; times when it is not appropriate. There are things that we should never laugh at. There are things that God would never smile and laugh at. Things like sorrow and injustice and suffering. Those things are no laughing matter. The writer of Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are times for everything under the heavens, time for laughing and for crying and for mourning and for dancing. Sometimes we cry when we ought to be laughing and we mourn when we out to be dancing. Maybe we ought to do them all at the same time. I am not sure.

How can we laugh at a time like this? How can we laugh in a world like this? We can because we know that God has the last laugh. The promises of God won’t be broken, and God has promised us some wonderful things and a few surprises along the way. You can smile in the face of sorrow because you know, by the grace of God that sorrow will not last. You can even smile in the face of death, though not at first. At first, it is no laughing matter. I understand that in the Greek Orthodox Church there is a tradition that on the day after Easter, they gather to tell jokes. They do that because of the joke that God pulled on Satan in the Resurrection. The devil thought that he had won, smiling to himself, having the last word. So he thought. Then God raised Jesus from the dead and life had the last word. Death never has the last word and that is something to smile about.

So there is laughter in our lesson, but there is also imagination. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? The question hangs up in the air for a while. It lingers. It begs to be answered. Here is what I think. I do not think that the question lingers because it is a story about babies and birth stories. It lingers because it is a question that we should all ask ourselves. It lingers because it begs to be addressed. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

It just makes me wonder what wonderful things God may be waiting to bring to miraculous birth among us. Things that we think might be impossible now, dreams too good to be true. Daydreams that are only that, day dreams. The truth is that it is easy to come up with reasons why things are impossible, even improbable. We can imagine the things that will go wrong. What about imagining the things that could go very right? Why do we not ask ourselves more often, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Fred Craddock is one of my favorite preachers. He is a Tennessean who tells of something happened to him when he was a kid. One star filled night, he and his dad laid in the grass in their yard. They looked up at the glory of the stars. Fred’s dad asked him, “Son, how far can you think?” Fred said, “What are you talking about, dad?” His dad answered, “Just think as far as you can up toward those stars.” Now he understood. He focused his eyes and squeezed his brain, he imagined. Then he said, “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.” His dad said, “Think as far as you can think, son, and when you get there, drive a stake there. In your mind drive down a stake at that point. Have you done that, son?” Fred said that he had. His dad said, “Good. Is that as far as you can think?” He said that it was. His dad said, “Now, what’s on the other side of that stake?” Fred said, “Well, more stars and sky.” His father said, “Right. Now move your stake, son. Move your stake.” Fred said that they spent the rest of the evening moving his stake among the stars. Fred said this, “It was a crazy thing to do, but I will never thank my dad enough for it.”

It is the kind of thing that God said to Abraham and Sarah. Two people who had their stakes set too close to where they were, stakes that were set in concrete or stone. Move your stake. How far can you think. There is more sky out there. Don’t you remember that God promised that he would make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

Funny, isn’t it? I mean, you have to laugh. A ninety year old woman has a giggly baby boy. A bunch of slaves run free and become a nation. Unemployed fishermen and tax collectors become the church. A stranger from Nazareth who claims that God loves everyone is killed for saying such a thing. But then God raised him from the dead so the he could say it over and over and over again. Can you imagine that? Isn’t that funny? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Let us pray.