Laughing with God
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7
June 15, 2008
Gordon Pace
For those of you unfamiliar with my background, part of my life was spent in Tucson, Arizona where I worked on the U.S.-Mexico border, and where I first met my wife. One of our most potent memories from that year in the desert, and one of the reasons I fell in love with Lisa, was a game we played in our volunteer house. There were 8 volunteers with the Presbyterian Church that year and we all lived together and worked in rather stressful environments, contacting poverty, illness and deprivation on an almost daily basis.
There were times when the grind of living constantly with the social illnesses of the border situation ground down our very souls. Unconsciously, I believe, we developed a game to counteract work that was frequently done without the laughter that makes living worthwhile. This game was simple. Learn the habits of the other volunteers in the house, hide yourself appropriately, and pounce on them when they least expected it. Our house turned into complete chaos at times. People were hiding behind doors, under tables and beds, around corners, in hallways; screams of fright followed by roars of laughter filled our house, drowning out the emotional pain of some of the work we participated in. Laughter was a necessity for our bonding, for our overcoming emotional pain and for our persevering through turbulent times.
Somehow, Lisa and my games of scaring, which we infrequently play to this day, have been picked up by our cat, who, and this is not lie, hides behind doors, in boxes, under newspapers and under the bed, and waits for one of us to walk by. When the time is right, and her feline instincts compel her, she jumps out of her lair, paws raised to frightful heights, and grabs our calves. After really scaring us good, she trots away haughtily, tail and head held high, proud of her efforts and acting as if it was the simplest thing in the world. So, if you ever drive by our home and hear screams echoing through the neighborhood, be comforted knowing that it is only a 9 pound cat on the hunt for a good laugh. Laughter is a part of living that can keep us honest, reveal our true selves, and help us bond with others and live with joy in God’s good and blessed world.
Laughter that springs from joy is truly a gift of God. But, we must also recognize, however, that there are other types of laughter that speak from a very different part of our souls. Laughter, as brilliant as it is expressing our happiness, can also help us express the heartaches and emotional pain that we may not be able to relate with words. And it is this type of laughter that first erupts from Sarah in our passage from Genesis.
Our story begins today with God—or a representative of God; the passage is rather vague on this point—speaking to Abraham, proclaiming to him that a miraculous birth will happen and that he shall have a son by his wife Abraham. Though the conversation was meant to be secretive, Sarah is rightfully interested to hear what these visitors have to say. So she creeps up to the entrance of the tent behind the visitors and Abraham to hear the proclamation of the Lord for herself, with her very own ears. Her response is one of shock and disbelief. She laughs to herself saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” God responds not directly to Sarah, but strangely to Abraham asking him why his wife laughed and if she doubts the wonderful power of God to grant great blessings to the people of the earth. Sarah, surely feeling belittled and afraid denies her laughter directly to God, who then addresses Sarah in a Gotcha! fashion: “Oh yes” God says, “you did laugh.”
Now, what is significant about God’s words here is that there is no direct condemnation of Sarah for her laughter. Yes God, does question Sarah about whether there “is anything too wonderful for the Lord” to do, but God does not condemn her emotional response. Sarah is reminded of the power of God, and surely after this episode she will not be able to forget the power of God’s purposes for the world, but she is not condemned for laughing and God’s promise for her child is not revoked.
I was a history major in college and one of the phrases we were told to always keep in mind as a historian is that the past is a different culture. The expectations and realities of life centuries ago are so different from our own today that we need to be cautious when we try to understand cultures so vastly different. I think Sarah’s response of laughter to the miraculous promise of God is similar to this. While God has imprinted the divine image upon each one of us, there is still a vast chasm between human understanding and divine understanding.
To communicate directly with God, as Sarah did, is no straightforward proposition. Prayers don’t always offer clear answers. We can’t always comprehend the miracles and plans of God. Sarah, in her laughter at God’s promise of a son, seems to be experiencing a disconnection between her own human perceptions and the perception and power of the Divine. I think many of us can relate to this feeling. The laughter of Sarah is laughter of misunderstanding, jaded by Sarah’s own 90 years of barrenness.
To understand how deeply and to what extremes Sarah’s passionate desire for a son directed her life and decisions, we must remember previous stories in Genesis. Remember that Ishmael, Abraham’s only son at this time, was not born by Sarah but by Abraham’s slave girl Hagar. And if we remember back even further in Genesis we find that Hagar was taken as a mistress to Abraham at Sarai’s own insistence because she wasn’t able to bear children herself. Sarah’s desire for a son and a future for her family was indeed a powerful emotion.
And the emotion that Sarah was experiencing is highlighted even further in Sarah’s own words to God, when she says “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” Here the Hebrew word for “pleasure” relates to fertility and has the same root as the name “Eden” that is used to describe the fertile area of humanity’s first home. Sarah is asking for her own pleasure, hoping for her own Eden, and after decades of barrenness, is it any wonder that a laughter full of complexity reverberated from depths of her soul?
We are emotional beings. God knows it because God made us this way. Our emotions are the wicks to our soul, drawing from our innermost haunts, joys, pains, and love and laughter is but one way to tap the reservoir of our own deepest realities. Sarah’s laughter draws her soul to the surface, exposes it to the world and makes her, just like you and like me, simply human.
The painful laughter from the soul revealed in Sarah is also echoed by the Rolling Stones in their song, “Laugh I Almost Died”. Can you hear the cry of Sarah in these words about a man suffering with the laughter of lonliness?
Rolling Stones – Laugh, I Almost Died
Living in a fantasy but it's way too far
But this kind of loneliness is way too hard
I've been wandering, feeling all alone
I lost my direction and I lost my home...Well
I'm so sick and tired
Now I'm on the side
Feeling so despised
When you laugh, laugh
I almost died
(Been traveling far and wide
Wondering who's going to be my guide)
It is easy to envision these words falling from the lips of a laughing, downtrodden Sarah waiting, hoping for the fulfillment of her maternal desires.
And what of the father in this story, Abraham? Well, when God visits Abraham in chapter 17 of Genesis the Lord promises to Abraham a child by his wife Sarai. And what is Abraham’s response? It is even more dramatic than Sarah’s. Abraham, the stalwart patriarch of the Book of Genesis, not only laughs, but falls on his face with laughter. It’s as if God had been hiding around the corner, waiting for Abraham to pass by, at which time the Lord leaped out with a gigantic “Boo!” knocking Abraham’s emotions and body off kilter with the stupendous promise of child by his own wife at his age of 99.
Up until the birth of Isaac God had promised Abraham at least 6 different times that an heir would be born of Sarah, but they had yet to see the results. It seemed as if Abraham’s lineage, one that traced its roots to Adam and Eve, survived the flood with Noah’s family and the dispersion of peoples at Babel would end. But God fulfilled those six promises made to Abraham and created out of nothing a child whose descendents would number more than the stars of the heavens. This is indeed cause for laughter!
And what about the joyful laughter that God has gifted us? At the end of our passage we find that God has transformed the doubtful laughter of Abraham and Sarah into laughter of joy. In Genesis 17 God even instructs Abraham to name is his son Isaac because the name Isaac means “he laughed” and God wants Abraham to remember his own laughter at the announcement of his son’s birth. Sarah’s explanation for the name of Isaac is similar as she says that God “has brought laughter for me” and “everyone who hears [of this story] will with laugh with me.” The name of Isaac should remind us to this day of the integral importance of the entire range of laughter to the human experience.
It is strange to me that this specific word for laugh only appears in Hebrew 12 times in the entire Old Testament. Already this week here at Southminster I’ve experienced far more than a mere 12 episodes of laughter and for that I am profoundly thankful. Whether it was office jokes with Barbara and Dick, casual visits by new church friends, the lunch bunch gathering on Friday, or fun-loving softball games last night, I am truly thankful for the joyous laughter and welcome of this congregation in my first week in the Southminster family. And I suspect, and I sincerely hope that during my time here I will experience all the various forms of laughter with each of you—laughter from pain, laughter from joy, laughter from comedy—you just better remember to look around corners and under desks, if you don’t want to experience laughter from fright!
And finally, let us not forget the role that laughter can play in our lives on this special day that recognizes the importance and value of fathers. Sarah and Abraham’s story of laughter is a family story. One that was told among Israelite families for centuries and one that has been passed down to us today. So on this Father’s Day may we all remember the stories of our fathers and our families that wick joy to the surface from the very depths of our soul.
Laughter is a gift from God. It is part of who we are and how we relate to fathers, to brothers, to sisters, and to mothers. We are created in the Divine image and part of that image is laughter. And if we think about laughter in this way then perhaps we can see that laughing with each other is, in a way, laughing with God. Amen.
