Since Before Your Borning Cry

Sermon

That laugh of Sarah’s has been bugging me all week. If it’s true that “laughter is carbonated faith,” then why do so many biblical scholars characterize Sarah’s laugh as cynical ingratitude? Those two oldsters (Abraham and Sarah) have waited 24 years for the fulfillment of a promise made six chapters earlier—a promise of place, progeny, and presence. As nomads, they have yet to possess the promised place, but they’ve wandered in and around it in the meantime. God’s presence has been evident at every turn—in all the places, in both conversation and mystical signs. What’s been elusive for them is the progeny part of the promise. Not that they haven’t tried to get a substitute, but that was a non-starter for the Promise Giver. And now, what with the vicissitudes of advancing age, time is running out. Not to mention, when the Holy One reaffirms the covenant renaming the two in the previous chapter, Abraham seals the deal with his circumcision. At the age of 100. And THEN the couple is supposed to undertake the activity necessary for progeny.

Then one drowsy afternoon, the couple receives three mysterious visitors. The entire household rushes around in the full expression of nomadic hospitality, replete with rich baked goods and fatted calf. As the attentive host hovers over the trio, he hears an announcement. It’s not “news,” and the last time he heard it, Abraham laughed. This time, the promise is time-specific, and Sarah laughs. Who would not laugh at the notion of a one-foot-in-the-grave crone taking natural childbirth classes? Is her laugh, as some say, ingratitude and disbelief? Had she trusted in “the order of nature” rather than God? The hole in her life, the wound that has defined her, is about to be staunched. Over the years, her laugh has hidden the hurt as other (perhaps less deserving folks) reaped the rewards of what had been denied her. That laugh came out of despair. This laugh reflects a decision—part belief, part permission. She will concede to God one more surprise. And with that laugh, Sarah turns again toward faith, as if the proverb about laughter and faith being partners is true. Only the laughers can believe, only the believers can laugh. Sarah finally understands, the only thing worse than waiting is waiting without laughing.

I’m told by people who know how to tell a good joke that “funny” combines surprise and incongruity. Incongruous is elephants painting their toenails red to hide in cherry trees and that you know their favorite sport is squash. Surprise is when you didn’t see that coming! It’s finally answering the knock-knock joke with “orange” instead of “banana.” It’s Betsy the Interrupting Cow interrupting the knock-knock punchline. Sarah has lived with the predictable emptiness of her wound for so long she is long past surprise. She knows for a fact that one foot in the grave means no foot in the maternity ward. She laughs, but the humor is absent for her until the surprise when she hears, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

Reinhold Niebuhr said that humor is the prelude to faith, but I wonder if humor can also be the outcome of faith. In the world in which we currently live, recognizing humor in a situation can be disarming, especially when the situation is populated with pretention and phoniness. This might be why autocrats don’t get jokes and try to suppress comics.

What if humor is our best form of resistance these days? I know a trans woman who still wears a full beard. She laughs and says it’s an act of resistance, and she has a good laugh about it. There were so many clever puns on the signs at the No Kings and Hands Off events. Then there’s the popularity of Weekend Update on SNL, when nothing is too precious to have some fun poked at it. I enjoyed the protest parades in Madison in the 1980s with people wearing old, worn-out, band uniforms, carrying boomboxes. It’s no accident that the human capacity to invent hilarity makes the oppressors angry. Laughter is an equalizer; it brings us together; it points to the surprise and incongruity of hope.

In his sermon on this story, Lewis B. Weeks talks about the importance of HOW one waits for the fulfilling of a promise, because the waiting is, ultimately, about transformation. Sarah and Abraham have been tried and transformed as they wait. Hope has changed from the chipper sunshine of their beginning to a dull overcast at this late date. Maybe anger heated their evenings around the cooking fire for a time. Maybe, in the dark desert nights, hope had developed a cold, stony despair. But today–! Finally, there it is, the laughter of wonderment and appreciation at what a great sense of humor God must have on behalf of two old geezers. Laughter isn’t a bad way to be transformed. Transformation for Sarah and Abraham was about letting go of the thing and coming to trust the One who makes the promise.

This is an old joke, but it’s a good illustration. Three kids waiting for Christmas, eyeballing three beautifully and identically wrapped gifts. As Christmas morning arrives, each child unwraps the same gift: a box of manure. One child suspects it’s a punishment for something they’ve done, and besides, these are such mean parents, so what do you expect. The second child is crestfallen by the gift, but the wrappings are beautiful and there’s a big ribbon, so they decide to use them in an art project, so the gift isn’t a total waste. The third child is ecstatic with gratitude and rushes off to look for the pony that surely comes with all that manure.

I wonder if Abraham’s laugh is about running off to find the pony. But Sarah’s laugh–. Does she finally get God’s joke? Has she finally understood she’s more than her wound, more than “that old childless woman”? I would like to believe that Sarah’s laugh helps her see that her wound is not what defines her. That when she laughs, it is at this preposterous God and the preposterous “gift” of a nonagenarian’s fertility. Incongruity and one more surprise up the Divine sleeve. I wonder what it would take for us to laugh—not to make light of what’s happening, but to acknowledge that the wound is not who we are. We are more than business failure, chronically ill invalid, divorcée, foster child, unemployed, depressed, estranged.

The cover of your bulletin today is a photocopy of the famous icon depicting the three visitors to Sarah and Abraham. If you look closely, you will notice that, on the front of the table around which the trio sit, there’s a small rectangle. When Rublev originally wrote this icon, there was a mirror there. It was meant to be an invitation to literally place yourself in the story as the fourth guest. Or maybe as the host. I wonder if that makes a difference to the promise, to the healing of your wound.

Today we baptize a baby. Every baptism is an affirmation that WE (the congregation) make. God has promised presence to Joni since before she was born. It’s not a promise of magical utopias and an easy way in the world, but it is a confirmation that, even in the midst of life’s messiness, God will always remains faithful. Grace comes first for Joni as she receives these waters. Grace came first for Abraham and Sarah, and grace came first for each of us. God will always remain faithful. There’s nothing we can do to bring grace to a fuller expression. It is simply a gift. And it’s not about us. It’s about the Giver. When we can get past the WHAT of God’s promise, when we laugh in the beautiful joke of it all, we find the Giver, who always has one more surprise for us: we are more than our wound. And that is worth a good belly laugh!