Abraham 2: A Laughing Matter

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"And Sarah said, ‘God has made laughter for me; every one who hears will laugh over me.’"

-- Genesis 21:6

I intend to preach a series of sermons this summer on a theme from the OT, as I did last summer with David and Solomon. I had thought to concentrate on the prophets, but I find that the lectionary has already launched us on a journey with Abraham, and so I intend to follow his path more or less to its end.  For this reason last Sunday’s sermon on Abraham’s bold decision at the age of 75 to answer God’s call and set out on a new adventure is “Abraham 1;” and today’s is “Abraham 2.”

It is especially timely to think on Abraham because he is the man whom the three Western religions, - Judaism, Christianity and Islam, - regard as their founding father, and the relationship among these religions is politically and culturally more than normally critical at present. I cannot make this a series in comparative religion because I lack the time and the expertise, but we might from time to time notice things common and things different. Let us start by placing on record the common Abrahamic element in the three religions, namely faith. These are religions of faith because Abraham was primarily a man of faith.

We could at this point ask for a definition of faith, but I want us to proceed not by definitions but by stories. Listen to the stories of Abraham’s experience and let them lead us to an understanding of faith. Definitions freeze human experience like specimens in the scientist’s bottle, while stories flow like life itself, twisting and turning, like life itself. Whatever these religions mean by faith will emerge from the twists and turns of living, and because it lives faith cannot be caught in a definition. Nevertheless, we do need a preliminary description, if not a definition, of faith, otherwise we will not recognize it at all when we see it. So let me propose this description: Faith is a conviction that there is one God, invisible, almighty, and loving, an attitude of trust in that one God, and the action that results from that trust. So when God says, “Go!” the faithful person goes, and when God says jump, the faithful person asks, “ How high?” Last Sunday we saw Abraham acknowledging one God only, believing God’s word to him, and acting on it, and that is the first example of faith by comparison with which we shall recognize it when we see it again. Faith is a conviction, and attitude and an action.

At this point the question arises, “How do I hear the Word of God, what does it sound like?” Most of us would, I’m sure, say that if we received a message that was indubitably from God, we would of course obey it, but the problem is chiefly that God is so unclear. God seems mostly to mumble rather than shout it out. This week’s story to tells us about how God’s word came to Abraham and through him to us. It is the hot part of a hot day and Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent in the shade of an oak tree at Mamre. He looks up and there in the haze stand three men. What does he do? Does he reach for his gun? Does he tell them to get the h… off of his property? No, he jumps up and says, “My Lord (singular), if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves (plural) under the tree while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on  - since you have come to your servant (vs. 3-5).” The morsel of bread turned into a full meal of cakes, meat and milk (non-kosher!) and the one who became three became one again and promised to return in the spring when Sarah gives birth to her son. Sarah overhears this promise and laughs in disbelief.  Abraham was 100 at the time and Sarah 90 (17:17), and at this word both of them laughed, but Sarah tried to deny it. The text reports this charming exchange between Sarah and God, “The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?  Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you in the spring, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied saying ‘I did not laugh’; for she was afraid. He said, ‘No but you did laugh.’” (18:13-15). I find this charming because of the humanness of the divine response.

So God’s word came to Abraham by a special divine visitation, of which our story is a distant memory, written long after the event on the basis of tradition, whose details are not to be taken literally but whose substance is true. In this regard Abraham is special. We cannot expect similar visitations because we are not founders. Abraham is the founder and as such he experienced unique revelatory events. We must be content to rest on his experience and witness, and to believe the message of this story. Let us look at it again to see if we can gain information to help our own communication with God, to understand its message.

According to this story the word of God came to Abraham when he was extending hospitality to a mysterious stranger, who seemed sometimes to be one and sometimes to be three. We could in our interpretation emphasize the importance of the hospitality; Abraham was enthusiastic and generous beyond expectation; he gave water in a desert place and the best food he had to strangers. If we choose to emphasize Abraham’s hospitality the message would be that to hear God we must position ourselves properly, in this case by being open to others, without the suspicion that puts us on guard against strangers, and generous with our time and our goods. In this way we place ourselves where we may receive God’s communication.

Another feature of the story that might help us in our own communication with God is that God’s word came to Abraham as a promise. Promise is one of the constitutive elements of faith. We saw it last Sunday in the proposition God made to Abraham that if Abraham trusted and obeyed him, God would make him the father of many nations and his posterity would be a blessing to the world. In the current story God begins to fulfill that promise by giving Abraham and Sarah the child they need to begin the march of Abraham’s people down the ages. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, a mighty nation begins with a single birth, and in this case such an unlikely one. We are told that Sarah was ninety, and Abraham a hundred, and they laughed when they heard the promise. We could say that they laughed scornfully, and perhaps there was an element of derision of the impossibility in their laughter. We could also say that they laughed for joy. The situation was so vague and confused. Who were those three - or was it one – strangers?  Did they not know how old Sarah was? She laughed at the unrealistic nature of the promise. In the end we need not answer these questions, because in the spring, as the stranger had promised, Sarah gave birth to a son and named him Isaac, whose name means, “God has made me laugh,” this time for sheer joy at the amazing grace of the Triune God. The whole unlikely story of salvation was now underway, and Abraham knew that the mysterious God who rousted him out is serious about this salvation. We may, therefore, heighten our awareness of the divine communication by meditating on the promises fulfilled and outstanding in our lives.

I need not tell you that traditional Christian interpretation sees this passage as a revelation of the Triune nature of God, of the Holy Trinity. It is surely remarkable that the pronouns referring to the three visitor(s) oscillate between the singular and the plural. Sometimes he is “he” and sometimes they are “they.” Were the Church Fathers being merely fanciful when they took this textual fact as an indication that the one God is Holy Trinity? They were certainly being creative, even playful, but I would not say fanciful in reading the passage in the light of the later revelation in Christ as a foreshadowing of the full revelation of God as Trinity. This son of Abraham foreshadows the Son of God Jesus, whom the Apostle Paul calls the one true offspring of Abraham (Romans 4).

I hope the story itself bears a meaning for your faith and that I do not have to work too hard to apply it to our lives. Think of the impossible things that have come to pass for you in your life with God. Think of the risks you took for God and the fruit they bore. Think of the risks you did not take and wonder. Reflect on your communication with God. Has it come through others, through the teaching and preaching of the church, out under a tree as you dozed in the heat, or perhaps all these ways and more? I bet that most of God’s dealings with you have been surprising, and that often you have laughed out loud. And I know that God’s promise for each one of us is irrevocable. Grace is what we call these moments of the divine favor, and they are all laughing matters. They call forth the sheer, unforced joy, what is most aptly called delight. Sarah knew the delight of God’s grace, and so did Abraham, and so may we. Indeed, many of us have already known that delight and in many ways.   One of my favorite theological affirmations is that the chief purpose of human life is to love God and to enjoy God forever. Let us therefore look for the moments and the years of divine grace in our experience and laugh with delight  in the Lord.