Abraham had been promised by God that he would be the “Father of a multitude of nations.” Imagine hearing that… a father of a multitude of nations. In the chapter right before the reading we heard this morning, Abram and God have a chit chat on Abram’s 99th birthday – truth be told, it’s a very powerful conversation: God promises to make a covenant between Abram and his people, and that then Abram would be the father of all nations. A smidge more than a chat over tea. To mark this promise God gives Abram a new name, Abraham, and will make him exceedingly “fruitful”, establishing through Abe, a covenant with the generations. Hearing all this, Abe responded in the most human way possible – he fell on his face, laughing.
Was it a giggle of surprise? A guffaw of disbelief? A belly laugh of awe? Hard to tell. We’ve got to wonder though, for at the ages of 99 (Abraham) and 90 (Sarah), the newly named couple were well beyond childbearing years. They had spent decades hoping and praying and dreaming of a child, but it hadn’t worked out for them and they had grown old together – deeply fond of each other, with the lingering disappointment hovering in the background. Any thought, any thought or hope of pregnancy at this time in their lives was not on the list for how these two were going to live out their remaining years.
But then, three men show up and approach Abraham who was sitting by his tent by the oaks of Mamre. In an act of hospitality, Abraham offers the three water and food; and as the four men sat together in the late afternoon, the guests told Abraham again that he was going to be the father of a child. Sarah, tucked away in the tent preparing things as was her routine, over hears this proclamation and laughs out loud. It’s an incredulous laugh as Sarah is well – or way – beyond menopause. It’s a laugh of derision – “Do not fool with me God! I am too old for teasing like this!” It the laugh given in response to a good joke, which, if you notice, Sarah denies doing when Abraham asks her.
I mean really, can you blame her for laughing? All of us know what it is like to have our bodies change due to age. Things don’t work the same way they did five or ten or twenty years ago. And here is Sarah, at 90, saying to God: “Look, Yahweh, I’m old, I’m tired. The arthritis in my back is awful, and my knees don’t bend the way they used to. Are you sure this is a good idea now?”
But, as Rev. Patricia de Jong writes: this is when we encounter the marvelous wonder of God, at that very vulnerable moment – when the improbable is mistaken for the impossible, at the moment when we actually believe that our spirits are wasting away, as our bodies are, and God couldn’t possibly have any more surprises in store for us, at that moment when we have settled into things the way they are, instead of the way they can be through the hope of God.
Take a moment and think about George Burns, born in 1895… married for 40 years to his wife Gracie Allen, who died in 1964. People thought he would retire then, but he kept on acting, winning an Oscar in 1975 for the movie The Sunshine Boys which he did at 80. He entertained until his death at 100. Arthur Rubenstein, gave the most remarkable recital in history of Carnegie Hall at the age of 89. He played, unable to see well enough to read the music or see the keyboard, relying on memory and touch. Or what about Anna Mary Moses who switched from embroidery art to oils because it was better for her fingers; or Margaret Mead who returned to New Guinea at the age of 72 to restudy her original study that she had done 48 years previous.
And don’t for one moment think that it is only the famous who handle aging well… take a look around you right now. Here at Westworth we are surrounded by those in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who are living vibrant, creative, and dynamic lives that have nothing to do with their chronological age and everything to do with their spirits, which are ageless.
Maybe the point that God is making with Sarah and Abraham is about the way God keeps promises and the way we humans are called by God to hope and keep hoping all through our lives. Abraham and Sarah give us a lesson how to respond when we are called out off our of ordinary, comfy patterns into new adventure, into new hope. These two help us to understand what it means to let go of our expectations and to trust in God’s presence as we fumble into the uncertainty of the unknown future. The amazing piece of Abraham and Sarah’s story is that when life changed dramatically for them, God gave them a laughing hope.
And that is how life happens sometimes… Settling into retirement, and your spouse decides to, you know, go to seminary or just as life as a single person becomes settled and comfortable, a new romance blossoms unexpectantly. Or your summer plans are all laid out and you receive news that changes everything. Life goes in completely different directions sometimes, and I wonder what Sarah was feeling when she crawled into bed with Abraham that night, pondering the news she received. Life is full of surprises, right? Sometimes we’re ready for those surprises, and other times, well, all we can do is laugh.
Barbara Brow Taylor wrote a sermon called “Later Bloomer” where she imagines what was going in Sarah’s mind as she crawled into bed that night. She writes:
It’s a hard thing to believe in a promise – to live by it, day after day, to see it in the night sky and hear it in your name and see it again in your lover’s eyes. It’s a hard thing to believe in a promise with no power in it to make it come true. Everything will happen, by and by, but in the meantime, how do I live now?
Brown continues: And yet, what better way to live than in the grip of a promise and a divine one at that? Who in her right mind would give that back? To wake every morning to the possibility that today might be the day. To remain wide awake all day long, noticing everything -the way the shade of the olive tree processes from west to east, and how the smell of the fields changes from green grass to yellow hay as the sun heats up overhead. To search the face of every stranger in case it turns out to be an angel of God. To take nothing for granted. Or to take everything for granted, though not yet grasped. To handle every moment of one’s life as a seed of the promise and to plant it tenderly, never knowing if this moment, or the next, may be the one that grows.
To live this way is to discover that God is always, always blessing us. It’s not some future thing that will come only if we have patience to wait. It hasn’t already come to the elders among us having lived more life than others. The blessing and the promise of God are NOW. Those blessings and promises may not be fully realized right now but we live with laughing hope.
That’s what Abraham and Sarah found in their late years – that in life and its stages, God is there. This is the dynamic growth of holiness and wholeness; and it can go on and on and on throughout all the ages of life. Oliver Wendell Holmes saw this truth in the life of the chambered nautilus, the sea creature that as it grows, moves from one chamber to another, closing off the old chamber as it moves to the new and bigger one. Holmes wrote: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a doe more vast Till thou at length are free Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
Abraham fell on his face laughing when God told him he was going to be a dad. Sarah giggled and then laughed out of control when she found out she was going to be pregnant. Even though God’s promise was met with the laughter of disbelief and surprise, that laughter changed to that of joy as the baby was born. Abraham and Sarah, despite laughing at the news, trusted and believed God’s promises and dared to hope.
We are promised God’s presence in all the stages and moments of our lives. And because of that we can dare to hope. And hope is what we need right now.
May God’s blessings and surprises bring laughter and hope to your journey. Amen.
This is a sermon adapted and inspired by one written by Rev. Patricia de Jong in 1996.
