Pastor
1
Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah
what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his
old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac
to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham
circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when
his son Isaac was born to him. 6 Sarah said, "God has brought me
laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me." 7 And
she added, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse
children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age." 8 The child grew and
was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne
to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, "Get rid of that slave
woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the
inheritance with my son Isaac." (NIV)
The story of the birth of Isaac is quite a story. Abraham had been promised by God that he would be the father of a great nation but his wife Sarah did not get pregnant. In desperation, she proposed a surrogate mother to provide the child and Ishmael was born. Fifteen years had passed before we come to the moment of this passage. Sarah is 90 and Abraham is 100.
A year before Isaac was born, three visited came to Abraham as recorded in Genesis 18:9-15 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said. 10 Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" 13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' 14 Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." 15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
I am going to propose today that our sense of humor is actually a uniquely human trait that shows we are created by God. God himself has a sense of humor which he has passed on to us. The very nature of humor actually says a lot about God and shows us something about faith. I will come back to that in a moment, but first I want to reflect on the Bible account of Sarah.
Apparently, Sarah was getting into a bit of trouble for laughing at the prospect of being pregnant at age 90. Nobody here finds that hard to believe (I mean the part about her laughing!). She laughed because the idea seemed so far out of the ordinary. When the Lord called her to account, she lied. It doesn’t pay to lie to the Lord. He knows.
Personally, I think the Lord did all of this on purpose. It has his MO all over it. I think God laughed as well. This scene has caused me to think. I have a theory that I would like to try on you. Here it is: “Laughter and Faith are related.” To show you what I mean, I need to talk a little bit about humor and why things are funny.
Something is funny because it surprises us. The thought goes in a different direction than usual. The sudden shift catches us off guard and makes us laugh. Let me do a very unfunny thing and explain why two of my favorite jokes are funny. (This is spiritual, just wait).
(I heard
Fulton Buntain tell this
The other
one is similar. (I heard Red Skelton tell this
We hear a lot today about thinking outside the box. We all should break free of mental constraints and color outside the lines. There are so many people thinking “outside the box” that it seems that everybody is outside the box and nobody is left inside to do the things the old fashioned way that actually worked.
In order for humor to work, there must be a predictable way of thought. You can’t violate the rule of thought if there are no rules of thought. In the case of Sarah, having a baby at 90 is not funny unless it never happens. We know that starting at age 27 a woman’s fertility starts declining. A few of you ladies have been “surprised” in your forties. If it happens in your fifties, you make it into the newspaper. If it happens at 90 you make it into the Bible. The oldest American just died a couple of days ago at age 114. Sarah died at age 127. She was clearly in a league by herself.
God knew all about fertility. God is a God or order. Everything is predictable. There are “scientific laws” in the universe because God is orderly. That’s why this story reveals the humor of God. Everybody is thinking one way. The “law” of fertility is playing itself out. Sarah is in a panic and does the Hagar thing because she knows the rules of life and they no longer are in her favor. God is planning the surprise. When it happens we all laugh. Isaac means “laughter”.
Where did we get the ability to laugh and to see things humorously? No animal laughs including laughing hyenas. Your dog does not bust out laughing. Your cat may purr, but she doesn’t laugh and rarely even smiles. They can be surprised, but they don’t laugh. They don’t laugh because they can’t grasp the implications. Although God made them, he didn’t make them in his image. They lack that divine likeness.
Here is why I say that laughter is related to faith. Things are going along in a predictable way. There has been a diagnosis and we all know the outcome. We prepare for the inevitable. The laws of nature are being fulfilled. As we go along we suddenly remember God. We say, “wait a second. What is God up to here? This isn’t about sickness.” We start looking outside the box. We are surprised by God.
Laughter is the sudden surprise against the predictable. Faith is the sudden discovery within the predictable, that something else is possible.
There is another, darker, side to this story. Ishmael sees Isaac and begins to mock. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, "Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac." The word “mocking” is virtually the word laughing.
Ishmael was violating the standards. He was going against the rules. It was a lot like laughing. It is not in the Bible, but the midrash, which is the ancient rabbinic transmission. Sarah saw Ishmael committing the three cardinal sins of idol worship, immoral sexual behavior, and murder.[1] His actions are a break in the proper moral order, a deviation from the norms. The word used to describe this is a spin-off of the word “to laugh” but in a secondary meaning.
God has created order of every type. Scientists can study the patterns and predict how it will all happen. We should always bear in mind that God loves laughter. You never can tell what he is going to do. That is why people who think of religion as rules don’t understand God. They miss the dynamic of divine humor. Faith anticipates and speculates. Faith is beating God to the punch-line. Faith is being right in step with the creative ways in which God reveals himself in every kind of situation.
Things that show the humor of God.
Flowers growing out of dirt.
A young single girl going to
Beware of religion that does not laugh.