Online Worship Service Sunday June 14, 2020
“Abraham, Sarah, and the angel,” Jan Provoost, 1520’s
Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
Series: “Back to Basics”
Sermon: “The Absurdity of Grace”
Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka
Today we’re continuing with our short stint through a few of the foundational stories in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
And today’s foundational story begins in chapter 18. Here we have three angels in the guise of weary travellers. They come seeking the hospitality of Abraham and Sarah, two very old people.
When these angels in disguise arrive at their campsite, Abraham and Sarah show the most incredible hospitality. They give them water to drink and a shady place to rest. Cakes made of their finest flour and to cap it all off, for the main they butcher their finest calf. And they do all of this without the faintest clue as to who these holy guests actually are. This story is part of the core curriculum teaching Christian hospitality to the stranger. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament interprets this passage as saying that in welcoming the stranger we may be “entertaining angels unawares.” Treat a stranger well, the teaching goes, because for all you know this person could be God in disguise. Abraham and Sarah pass the test.
The test they don’t pass, however, is in how they receive the news that these angels come to deliver. How Sarah receives the news, specifically.
Abraham and the guests are hanging out, sharing their succulent veal under a shady tree. Together the guests ask him where his wife Sarah is and Abraham points to the tent. Little do they know that past his finger Sarah’s got her ear shoved up against the canvas, eavesdropping on their conversation.
And this is where one of the guests shares a startling revelation. “I will surely return to you in due season,” he says. “I will return to you and your wife Sarah will have a son.” By the time I head back here in nine months, he says, y’all are gonna be proud parents of a newly delivered baby boy.
Now, you’ll remember, though, that Abraham and Sarah are old people. Like, really old people. In their nineties, in fact. God promised that her and Abraham would have more descendants than there are stars in the sky. But so far no luck. Now Sarah’s a half-century or so late on the biological clock. So as she overhears the angel’s familial forecast, she does exactly what you or I would do. She laughs. She has herself an inward chuckle. He’s old, I’m old. We’re both worn out, physically and spiritually. And here this guy wants us to put on our party hats and start planning a baby shower. Ha ha. Very funny.
Even funnier though, in my mind, is how God’s suddenly there in the next sentence, talking away. Sarah’s laughing suddenly ceases and God’s like “why’d Sarah laugh?” And Sarah’s like “nuh uh.” I mean, the last thing you wanna do is laugh at God. But God’s like “yeah you did. I know it, being God and all. I know it might sound crazy,” God says. “But is anything too crazy, is anything too wonderful for the Lord? This time next year I’ll be back and Sarah’s gonna have that baby.”
It takes a few chapters, but that’s exactly what happens. Nine months later, little baby boy. Right around the time of Abraham’s hundredth birthday. What a gift. And there’s more laughter, but it’s a different kind this time around. They decide to name the baby Isaac, which in Hebrew means ‘laughter.’ “God has brought laughter for me,” she says. “God’s brought me laughter, and everyone who hears’ll laugh with me.” Whoever woulda thought that a woman in her nineties would ever need an appointment with a lactation consultant. Might as well name the baby hee hee haw haw because when anyone else hears this story laughing’s what they’re gonna do. Cuz it’s ridiculous. It’s crazy. But nothing’s too wonderful for the Lord. Apparently.
Now, our first reaction in hearing this story is probably like Sarah’s. Pfft. Yeah right. Like that could happen. It’s as hard to believe in nonegenarian pregnancies now as it apparently was back then. Can stuff like that really happen?
Maybe it could. I mean, strange stuff happens all the time. Life’s far more mysterious than modernity has had us believe. So I like to keep an open mind.
But the issue at the heart of this story is not so much the miracle itself. No, there’s something more, something deeper at stake. It’s more about what the miracle represents. What it points to.
You see, for Abraham and Sarah this baby doesn’t represent a childhood dream of parenthood. It doesn’t represent the innate need for a species to reproduce. For ancient people like them children not only represent a legacy. They’re the only way your life could extend past the present one. Children are the closest you can get to immortality. Children are literally their future. God promised them that they’d one day have more babies than the stars of heaven. But here they are, in their nineties. No kids, no legacy, no future.
The first time she laughs at God for suggesting such a ridiculous thing. The second time she laughs at herself. And her own cynicism. Sarah laughs the first time, because the angel prophecies a future when all evidence suggests that their lives are at a dead end. She laughs the second time out of pure joy. That the future she thought was impossible’s somehow now a reality. She’d given up. But it comes to her as an absurd gift of grace.
So the issue at heart here is not the proposition that “ninety-year old women can get pregnant.” Or “Your great grandma better make room in her pension budget for diapers.” What this text is doing is delivering us good news, getting back to one of the basic messages of Christianity.
Like Abraham and Sarah, we see the world a certain way. As fixed, as determined. A rigged game. No room for the miraculous. No room for newness.
In our personal lives we’re confined by past mistakes. We’re imprisoned by our inability to forgive others, or to receive forgiveness ourselves. Bad childhoods, failed marriages. Depression, anxiety. Addictions to drugs, sex, money, stuff and so much more. And in our world we’ve not only got a pandemic that we just want out of, we’re burdened by massive inequalities. By the ever-lingering sinful power of racism, and the prospect of climate catastrophe. All seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Our future prospects can just seem so impossibly grim that sometimes, like Sarah we gotta laugh just to keep from cryin’.
But this text, along with the broader witness of the Bible, tradition, and our own experience, tells us that the universe is neither closed nor as fixed as we always imagined. In fact, the cross, the core symbol of our faith is a testimony to God’s power to bring a future when the present doesn’t have a chance. That in weakness there is strength. That in loss there is gain and that in death there is resurrection. For every worn down Sarah whose given up and given in, there’s an Isaac waiting to be born. There’s joy… there’s laughter on the way.
So take this good news to heart. When our lives hit a wall, when your life is at the end of its rope. When our world looks like it’s worked its way into a dead end, the good news is that God makes a way out of no way.
Meaning we don’t have to give up. It means we don’t have to give in to the way things are. Instead of snickering cynically at the prospect of changed lives and a better world, we can laugh it up like fools who’ve been let in on some great divine joke. That not only is there a God. But that there is a God is God who is faithful to the point of absurdity. And because of who God is it means the future that you’d already given up on, the one you think is impossible, wrote off as ridiculous… it’s already in utero. Already on the way. Just waiting to be born.
So if you’re gonna laugh, you might as well laugh for joy. For there is nothing too good or too beautiful. There’s nothing too wonderful for the Lord.
Amen.