University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

Galatians 3:23-29, Genesis 18:1-15
A Sermon preached by Anna Pinckney Straight
University Presbyterian Church
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
June 13, 2010

Galatians 3:23-29

23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Genesis 18:1-15 

1 The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on--since you have come to your servant." So they said, "Do as you have said." 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes." 7 Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. 8 Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

9 They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent." 10 Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" 13 The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' 14 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." 15 But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. He said, "Oh yes, you did laugh."

It is the final punch line of the text...  God is God, and nothing is too wonderful, nothing is too much, for God.

This story started simply enough, when God invited Abram and Sarai to move.  God promised them.  "Go, and I will make of you a great nation (Genesis 12: 2)."    At that point, they were young, healthy, and prosperous-up for the adventure.

But it's been years.  Years and years since God first promised Abram a son, a land, a nation.   Years and years, and a great deal of water under the bridge. 

Abram and Sarai have moved.  Encountered famine.  Introduced themselves as brother and sister in order to get food.  Seen their extended family divide and choose to live separately.

And after all of this, in case Abram and Sarai were wondering if this was REALLY what God had in mind for them, God reminds them...

 "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted (Genesis 13:16)."

More years go by.  Abram continues to flourish, in every way but in the descendents way.  Abram goes to war, not to gain more, but to save his nephew and his nephew's household from a conquering kingdom who has taken them as a war trophy. 

He is faithful to what God asks.  But how is God fulfilling God's promise?  Openly wondering about how God's plan will work if Sarai remains childless, Abram asks God, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless...  You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir. ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' Then he [God] said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be (Genesis 15:2-3,5).'"

More time passes.  Abram continues to hear God's plan for his offspring.  The plan of prosperity.  The prophecy that his descendents will, one day, go to a foreign land and be enslaved, that they will not be forgotten by God and will some day be led out of slavery into freedom, into the promised land.

It's all there except for the children.  And Abram and Sarai are not spring chickens anymore.  And so Abram and Sarai take a secondary route to having children.  Unable to conceive themselves, Abram has a child with Sarai's slave, Hagar.  A relationship Hagar could not choose for herself nor deny if she had wanted.  And she has a son as a result of the offspring.  Ishmael.  Born when Abram is 86 years old. 

Years go by.  And when Abram is 99 years old, God appears to Abram again.  Establishes the promise, again.   "I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you (Genesis 17:6)."

 God changes Abram and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah.  God establishes the covenant of circumcision.   

Abraham goes along with it.  He is secure.  Ishmael is on the scene!  Abraham can see it all playing out before him.  God's words are true!

Until God elaborates.

"As for Sarah your wife.... I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her."  Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child (Genesis 17:15-17)?"

Abraham, laughs.

Abraham's laughter ends that conversation, until three visitors come to Abraham, the text for today, read a few minutes ago. 

We know that Abraham is entertaining God, but Abraham doesn't have our gift of hindsight.  In the moment, all he knows is that there are three strangers counting on his hospitality.  Counting on his hospitality.  In the day of Abraham, hospitality was more than a nicety, it was a keystone, enabling travel.  commerce, news, community.... 

Quickly, these travelers differentiate themselves from other travelers.  For one, they know Abraham's wife's name, and then, the promise they make, the promise of a son, is not something you would typically promise an elderly husband and wife.¹ 

When Sarah hears it from the strangers, she laughs, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?"

She laughs, not as Abraham did, at God directly, but at these foolish strangers.  She has no way of knowing that they are, or at least one of them is, God.

Yahweh then addresses Abraham directly.  Why did Sarah laugh?

What a ridiculous question.  Why does Sarah laugh?  Why did Abraham laugh?  Because he is almost 100 years old.  She is 90 years old.  While we're not exactly sure what ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women means, nor are we sure 90 years means the same things to us as it meant to Sarah, it is clear to everyone in the room (or in the tent) that she is WAY too old to have a baby.  Abraham is WAY too old to be a father.  Abraham and Sarah are WAY too old to raise a child. 

Do we need to explain comedy to God?

Why do they laugh?

Maybe they laugh because the notion of a baby is ridiculous.

Frederick Buechner, writing about the Gospel as Comedy²:

The place to start is with a woman laughing.  She is an old woman; and, after a lifetime in the desert, her face is cracked and rutted like a six-month drought.  She hunches her shoulders around her ears and starts to shake.  She squints her eyes shut, and her laughter is all China teeth and wheeze and tears running down as she rocks back and forth in her kitchen chair.  She is laughing because she is pushing ninety-one hard and has just been told she is going to have a baby.  Even though it was an angel who told her, she can't control herself, and her husband can't control himself either.

...they are laughing at the idea of the baby's being born in the geriatric ward and Medicare's picking up the tab.  They are laughing because the angel not only seems to believe it but seems to expect them to believe it too...

Maybe they laugh because the notion of a baby is ridiculous.

Or maybe, maybe they laugh because they think that God has shorted them.  Forgotten the promise made to them in their youth.  And so their laugh is not humor, it is tragedy, hurt, and disbelief.

Ben Patterson writes:³

Incongruity and surprise go together in humor. But-and this is the crucial point for us in understanding Sarah's laugh-it is possible to have humor that deals only in the incongruous and is completely without surprise. That is Sarah's humor. She can laugh at the preposterousness, the incongruity of an old bag having a baby, of having one foot in the grave and the other in a maternity ward. But that is all she can laugh at: its incongruity. She expects no surprises from God, no novelty, no violations of the world she has grown accustomed to living in and, as a result, her laugh can be only bitter and cynical. She can hear the Lord say, "your wife will have a son;" and she can crack up in her bitterness. She cannot hear God say, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" If she could, incongruity and surprise would come together, and she would really throw her head back and laugh as she has never laughed before-and she wouldn't cover her mouth when she did. She would be laughing and weeping at the same time.

Maybe, Sarah laughs because she believes God has cheated them

Maybe, but I think this laughter is something different than these things.  Not comedy.  Not bitterness.  But something more complicated.

If you know a man or woman who has wanted a child, felt called to be a parent and for whom that has not become a reality, it's my experience that if you ask them about it, you will hear words of pain that are deep and frequently kept beneath the surface.  The dream is too distant, too far away to dare to think that it is close by.  The potential for hurt is often too great.

And so, it is the most difficult thing in the world to ask them to dare to dream that their hopes would become a reality, when time and time again those hopes have been held close only to be taken away.  It's too hard.  Too vulnerable.  Too raw.

For Sarah and Abraham, who for most of their life together have been told that they will have what they want most in the world, only to have the years pass by, I imagine that the laughter is fear.  Not so much doubting God as not daring to believe.  The Hebrew word here, (sawhock)tsehok, qxc,⁴ doesn't give us too much to go on.  It means what you think it means.  Laughter.

Esther M. Shkop suggests that laughter used here, in this form, this tense, in this context, "always implies laughter with a twist, laughter that hides what one is trying to repress."⁵

What one is trying to repress.  For Sarah, hope beyond hope that her dreams would be fulfilled, promises kept, that she would be the one thing that she wanted more than any other.  A mother.  And it is being promised to her by this stranger, just as it has time and again by God.

How did she know that this time she was within a year of having that prayer answered?  That God would do as God had said he would do.

Sarah.  She spent most of her life waiting, learning to trust and follow.  Was it a lesson she needed to learn or simply the hand she was dealt?

Sarah and Abraham.  Did they doubt that God would do what God had promised, or did they just not dare to believe that something so wonderful could become true?

And how about us?  How about us?

When do we laugh at God?  When do we doubt that God can do what God has promised?

When do we not dare to believe because the promise-peace, abundance, a new spirit, forgiveness and love-seem too wonderful to be real and true?

For what have you been waiting, waiting, and waiting to receive from God?

What call from God have you, as of yet, declined to accept?

Yes.  You did laugh.  Yes.  We do laugh.

What Good News do we not dare to believe?

Today we are reminded:

Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season.

Thanks be to God.  Thanks be to God.

  ¹Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, YEAR A, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995) page 365.

 Wallace Alston, Interpretation, 42 no 4 O 1988, p 397-402.

  ² Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, pp. 49-51.

  ³Ben Patterson.  Direction.  Fall 1989.  Vol. 18.  No. 2 , pages 86-94

http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?639

  ⁴http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/kjv/tsachaq.html

  ⁵Esther Shkop, "And Sarah Laughed." Tradition, Volume 31, Spring, 1997. http://www.lookstein.org/articles/sarah_laughed.htm