Sarah Laughed
Genesis 18:9-15
It is good to be home. I flew in yesterday from two weeks in Boston and two intense weeks of my doctoral program. Thursday night when our papers were all turned in and we were positively punchy, several of us MCC pastors sat around in the house we shared and told funny stories of moments as children when it had to be obvious we were gay. To protect the innocent I won’t share any secrets. Instead I grabbed my copy of the book “When I Knew.” See if you can identify.
1969. My father was watching the evening news. The announcer said that Judy Garland had died. I fainted. I was nine.
1959: I knew I was gay when the most exciting part of my Bar Mitzvah was meeting the party planner.
1963: At ten I was infatuated with Barbara Streisand. I bought black liquid eyeliner and I would lock myself in the bathroom and practice drawing her Nefertiti-like eye extensions. One day the maid knocked “Open up, I need the Comet,” she said. “Give me a minute.” I asked, both eyes fully done. “Open up now, I got work to do.” “Just a second I pleaded.” “I don’t have a second” she snapped. Clearly, she wasn’t going away. It would take too long to wash the eyeliner off. I was trapped. I opened the door a crack. Our eyes locked as I handed over the comet. “You should meet my nephew Bobby. You two would get along” she said as she turned back to work”.
“When I knew” is a hysterical collection of stories and photographs about that moment of revelation when we first knew and when everything changed.
When we hear or share these honest self revelations we often laugh. We laugh because often they’re funny. We laugh because we relate. Laughter is a secret handshake of knowing. We laugh because we can identify with the gravity of the moment and we laugh in solidarity with what happens next to the people in the story. Their story is our story. Laughing is good for us and it also says a lot about us.
In our scripture reading today, Sarah laughs- at God! She is not a young woman when she overhears God saying that she will have a baby next year. That’s pretty unbelievable because Sara was 90 years old and Abraham was 101.
Though she desperately wanted children, there were no fertility clinics in her day. Making matters worse, a woman’s worth came from her reproductive abilities. Sadly Sarah had probably given up a long time before.
So when God announces that by this time next year, she’ll have a child she reacts to the unbelievable by doing the unbelievable. Sarah laughs. Wouldn’t you laugh? Giving birth at her age was an impossible joke. Or was it an impossible dream?
The truth is, Sarah’s laughter was revealing. There were lots of reasons to laugh. She laughed at the thought of having a child at 90 and she laughed at the notion that Abraham was going to “know her”. (That’s Bible code for sex) It’s safe to guess that there hadn’t been any “knowing” going on for years. “Knowing” must have been pretty good back in the day because she said, “Am I to have pleasure at my age? “ She could have said, “At my age will I have to do THAT again?” Now if you will forgive the pun, our God is “all knowing” [groan] so its kinda funny that God asks her why she laughed? “Who me?” Sarah says, “I didn’t laugh.” “ Did so,” God says. “Did not” says Sarah. She did laugh but what she really didn’t want to admit to herself much less God was that she did not believe.
Even though this was Yahweh we’re talking about Sarah can’t wrap her aching heart around the possibility that God is that good and… that the desire of her heart just might be about to come true. Plus, Sarah was embarrassed that her faith was leaking oil. She forgot that nothing is too hard or too wonderful for Yahweh.
Anytime we don’t feel worthy of blessing, you could say that our faith leaks a little oil too. Sometimes it breaks down all together. Sarah felt literally worthless because it was her cultural responsibility to give children to Abraham. She took this obligation so seriously that she gave her servant Hagar to Abraham in order to fulfill her duty. Ishmael was the result of that union. Once Ishmael was born, Sarah thought that was the end of it. But here’s the clue. It wasn’t the end of it for God. No wonder she laughed. This is Divine humor, Divine irony at its best.
Divine humor happens when we attempt to judge the actions of God according to our expectations and then discover that our conclusions are dramatically wrong! Sarah does give birth to a son and names him Isaac. Do you know what the name Isaac means? Isaac means “to laugh.” Is that perfect?
Now, if this were a different kind of church, I’d sit down now; scripture read (check), lesson learned (check). NOTHING is too hard or too wonderful for God (check). Believe that God will bless you (check). Believe that you are worthy of blessing (check). All true. But let’s go deeper. Let’s queer this story a little further.
When else do we laugh? We laugh when we’re nervous. We laugh when we aren’t sure what to say. We laugh when we’re afraid and…we laugh when laughter is the LEAST appropriate response. We laugh out of a certain sarcasm when things don’t add up, when they are incongruent. And thankfully we laugh out of the joys of life. There was a time when it was frowned upon.
The Christian church has a haunted history around the topic of laughter and it had to do with the prohibitions against the body. The early church associated laughter with a lack of bodily control and sophistication. There were rules and warnings against laughter and then Aristotle came along claiming that laughter is a distinguishing feature of human nature. All they had to do was look in the Bible.
The Byrds set Ecclesiastes 3 to music with their song “Turn turn turn” To everything there is a season, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Conrad Hyers said, “If humor without faith is in danger of dissolving into cynicism and despair, faith without humor is in danger of turning into arrogance and intolerance.”
Proverbs 22:17 says a cheerful heart is good medicine. Easter means that God laughed at death.
This week NBC newsman Tim Russert died. As people have remembered him they remember his robust laughter. People also remembered that his favorite laughing partner was his father. Their laughter was linked to their love of each other and of life. Tim turned that joy into his integrity as a broadcast journalist.
So here is my question for all of us. What are we going to do with our laugh? When you laugh because you cannot believe what you just heard, will you use your voice and speak your truth?
When you laugh because what you have just observed is laughable, whether the unbelievable act is committed by a person or a political party or an institution, will you honor your own disbelief and again speak your truth?
When you laugh because the pain you see or you feel is so great that you feel powerless, will you remember that nothing is too hard or too wonderful for Yahweh?
And when you cannot laugh because your faith is leaking oil, will you remember that even Sarah in her old age hadn’t lost her sense of humor and God was standing by to bless her. Even against her disbelief Sarah and Abraham became the parents of the great nation of Israel.
Will you remember that a sense of divine humor is often like the clutch on a car? Sometimes we need to engage our humor in order to shift gears and go at life another way. Maybe we need to downshift, maybe we need to shift up? Whatever direction you go, God will be there to challenge you and bless you.
For Sarah and Abraham that moment when they knew their future was about to take a new turn changed history. They had a destiny just as you and I have a destiny. We are each God’s light in the world, a reflection with a purpose and a destiny that is ours and ours alone. No one can be you better than you can be you. If you’re tempted to laugh, pay attention to that feeling. Ask God to make your path more obvious.
1953. Brooklyn, New York. My dad and his friend Mickey Herzog are leaning against a car watching me play hopscotch and jumping around. Finally Mickey turned to my dad and said, “Ben, I think you got a problem.”
1971. Abilene Texas. My dad was tossing a football in the front yard with my brothers. Seeing me sitting alone on the porch steps my mother intervened and took my father aside. “Dub” she said, using my dad’s nickname, “I think Steve is feeling a little left out. Why don’t you ask him if he’d like to play.” So my dad came over and said, “Wanna throw the football some?” “I’d rather pick flowers” I replied. And we did. My father, a football coach, spent the rest of the day picking flowers with me in a nearby field.”
Your heavenly parent knows just what you need too.
Happy Father’s Day. Amen.