"Holy Humor" - Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Holy Humor
Pentecost 17
September 20, 2015
Grace, Mankato, MN
Genesis 18.1-15; 21.1-7

Much has happened since last week’s story on the creation of Adam and Eve, who are set to work in the Garden of Eden. God has shown them the garden gate because of their disobedience. One son in a fit of jealousy kills the other. God tries to do a reboot on humanity and all of creation with a flood. That doesn’t work, because humanity tries to ascend to God and so God disperses the nations throwing down the tower of Babel.

Finally, God tries another tack through the call of Abraham and Sarah, a most unlikely couple. God promises to make of them a great nation, a nation that will be a light to all other nations. But it’s been 10 years and the promise is wearing thin. Thus develops the incident of Sarah’s maid, Hagar and Ishmael, Hagar and Abraham’s son. Really, who can blame Abraham either for their doubt or their initiative?

Then three visitors show up and in typical Middle Eastern fashion, Abraham lavishes hospitality upon them. However, the party turns sideways when one of the guests asks about Sarah, known for her beauty. But anxiety quickly becomes incredulity when the guest tells them they are going to have a son. Now, Sarah and Abraham are not ignorant folk. They know where babies come from, who can and cannot have them. At 89 and 99 respectively, Sarah and Abraham are long past what it takes to have babies. They are in that sense “dead.” So Sarah laughs.

This past Wednesday evening, we speculated a bit on what kind of laughter this was. Was it an embarrassed laugh born of strangers speculating on the state of her womb? Was it more of a guffaw, like “you’re kidding!? Or was it a laugh born of disappointment now turning to tears? Whatever it was, the visitor, now identified as the Lord, with perhaps a twinkle in his eye and a smile twitching at his lips says, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Then the Lord promises them a child in due season. Indeed, Abraham and Sarah do have pleasure, a baby is conceived and a son is born.

Now the laughter turns joyous and in an act befitting the situation, they name him Isaac: “he laughs.” Abraham and Sarah will have their joy, but the laughter will cease a few years later when God asks Abraham to do the unthinkable: sacrifice Isaac back to God. It’s only at the last minute that God provides a ram instead. One wonders: what did Sarah think? I’m guessing there wasn’t any laughter. What kind of God would do this, asking someone to give up their precious and beloved son? Many people see in the Isaac narrative a foreshadowing of another story of another Beloved Son.

Fast-forward 2,000 years: a Jewish rabbi tells his followers he is destined to die and rise again. So, imagine the kind of laughter from theme. There may have been embarrassed laughter that wonders if someone has gone crazy. It might have been the guffaw as in “you’ve got to be kidding!” But the laughter doesn’t end there, because there is the mocking laughter of those determined shut him up because his message of love and mercy are too dangerous to hear. I also imagine that Satan was laughing while Jesus was hanging on the cross, thinking he’d won. But then there’s the incredulous and even skeptical laughter of those same followers who welcome him back, just as he said.

You see, God not only gets the first laugh but God always gets the last laugh. For some reason God delights using broken and imperfect people to accomplish his work. As on medieval mystic said, God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. Another more recent commentator says it this way: “God does some of his best work with the most unlikely people.” Or, as the writer Ann Lamott, who knows from personal experience, says, “He’s such a show-off.” But the best thing God delights in doing is to bring life out of death and hope out of despair. God is working in our lives and in the world to do the same, just as with Abraham and Sarah. In a few minutes we’ll gather around the table where we will encounter God’s very being in, with and through the bread and wine of Holy Communion. I don’t think God would mind a chuckle or two as we eat. Amen.