"They Laughed" - Sermon for Pentecost 2
Sermon
Text: Genesis 18:1-15,21:1-17
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ who gives joyous laughter.
This summer and fall we’re going to be walking our way
through the Old Testament, particularly the story of the Israelites, we start
with Abraham, we’ll move through Isaac, Jacob, and Moses and end with Joshua
and the beginning of Judges.
We start
with Abraham already into the midst of his story, which began in Genesis 12.
We’ll be trying to go through it section by section.
Genesis 18:1 – The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks
of Mamre.
We’ve just started and it’s already got a lot of
interesting bits. Abraham at the very end of chapter 17 goes through the
covenant with God, to paraphrase a whole chapter, God promises to give Abraham
a multitude of descendants, to become the ancestor of a multitude of nations,
and your name shall not be Abram, but Abraham, the father of many nations. And
the sign of the covenant is this, you shall circumcise yourself and all the
males with you, and all the males of your descendants shall be circumcised. So,
Abraham does this, he circumcises himself, and all the males with him. It’s
little wonder that what he then does is goes to rest under a tree. And it’s not
just any old tree he’s resting under. It’s the tree where when God first sent
him to Canaan he stopped and built am Altar to God under. This is where the
covenant is formed with Abraham and the Israelites, it’s Holy Ground.
And while Abraham rests there, recovering, the LORD
appears to him. A note, when we read LORD in all caps like it is in our lesson,
it’s the representation of the name of God, Yahweh, Jehovah, or the Hebrew
letters for JHVH, yod hey vav hey. In Hebrew these letters are not said,
instead they will say the word Adonai in its place, Adonai meaning Lord. So,
this sets up the story here. When the travelers appear in the next verse,
that’s the LORD appearing to Abraham.
Abraham looked up and saw three men
standing near him. The Hebrew seems to say that they just suddenly appeared,
one translator likes to put it as, viola’ they appeared! Abraham jumps up, even
in his recovering state from his circumcision, he runs to welcome them and
offer hospitality. One commentary said, then there are snacks and fellowship, they
have cakes, they bring water, a calf, curds and milk, a feast for these visitors,
who are complete strangers to them, and Abraham stands with them as they eat.
Abraham offers full hospitality to these strangers.
I think that’s a powerful lesson for
us, while we know these three visitors are the LORD, Abraham does not. It reminds
me of when Jesus talks to the disciples about welcoming and caring for the
poor, the needy, the imprisoned, the naked. And when they ask about it, ‘Lord,
when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you
something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw
you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And
when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’” Jesus
responds. ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these
who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ We should
treat all we meet, everyone, as if they were God, as if they were Christ. As we
heard last week, we are all created in the image of God.
It recalls our Gospel lesson for
today, to not be people who turn away the disciples, who will not suffer the
wrath as Sodom and Gomorrah. Ezekiel even calls Sodom’s sin the sin of
inhospitality, from Ezekiel 16, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she
and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not
aid the poor and needy.” Abraham’s story calls us to hospitality to everyone,
even to those we do not know.
Our text then shifts away from
Abraham to Sarah. She’s been part of this whole process of God moving them from
where they had lived to the promised land of Canaan, her own name was changed
from Sarai to Sarah, which means princess. She will be the princess of those
many nations. But, she doesn’t really believe, or know how that will happen. So,
she’s listening to what’s going on from inside the tent, and when the means to
how Abraham will become the father of many nations comes up, that she, Sarah,
at an advanced age, well after menopause, our text says “after it had ceased to
be with Sarah after the manner of women” that’s what it’s referring to, when
Sarah hears all this, she laughs to herself, What? I’m Old, my husband is Old, it’s
not gonna happen God. That’s hysterical, unthinkable, impossible. There is no
way God can do this through me. And well, as we know, God hears everything, and
the LORD rats her out. God asks Abraham, why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too
wonderful for the LORD? In a year, I’ll come back, and she will have a son. Sarah
denies that she laughed, I didn’t laugh, but God tells her, Yes, you did laugh.
Now, before we throw Sarah under the
bus for laughing, the last chapter God tells Abraham that he will become the
father of many nations and he himself laughs at the prospect, “Abraham fell
facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a
man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”
Come on God, be reasonable.
Both times, God promises that these
things will indeed come true, and as our reading concludes we see that Sarah
does bear a son. Which in response to both her and Abraham laughing at the
idea, is named Isaac, which means “He laughs.”
There are a couple things I want to
pull out of this section. How often is it that we laugh in the face of what God
declares to us. Where we hear God’s promises and we dismiss them as impossible,
and hysterical, and unthinkable. From our reading, “Is anything too wonderful
for the LORD?” God can do the impossible, God can accomplish the unthinkable.
God is full of doing the impossible. God has Sarah at an old age bear a son,
God has Elizabeth at her old age bear John the Baptist, God has Mary, a virgin,
bear the Son of God.
God takes our laughter of derision
and impossibility and makes of it the joyous laughter of Easter. Where God
again does the impossible. God takes death, and makes life of it.
In the ultimate of impossibilities,
God is born to us in Jesus, a birth even more miraculous than Isaac’s to Sarah,
and then dies and then is resurrected. The laughter in that moment, is not ours
but it is God’s in the face of death and sin.
Where God has done the ultimate
impossible thing, and given us the results. A promise of a resurrected life,
both in heaven, and here on earth as we work to bring about God’s kingdom,
knowing that God is with us.
Amen.
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