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June 15, 2008 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time Genesis 18:1-15
Is Anything Too Wonderful for the Lord?
Rev. Kyle Segars
And Abraham and Sarah named their son Isaac, laughter. Since Shelaine, Sedona and I are blessed to have family visiting with us this week, that name naturally made me think back about all the times I have sat round the fellowship table of family and truly, heartily laughed. My dad and I have shared many a happy time and I am so blessed to call him friend as well as father. However, it is not only him but the whole family sharing around a common table of care, concern, and hospitality. I remember many times my mom red-faced with laughter sitting at the dinner table even though she might have had a hard day. Telling stories, gossiping if we were to be honest, on Sunday afternoons about the eccentricities of our own family members and those people we grew up beside in our small town. So, table fellowship and family and laughter and good times are all rolled up into one for me in my memory and experience. And in the ancient near east where our lectionary story takes place, then as well as today, that table was always enlarged to include those strangers who showed up unexpectedly at your door.
The text makes it very apparent that Abraham scrambles to welcome the strangers, to make them feel at home, to feed and shelter them from the hot sun, to include them as part of his own family. He is their servant, bowing and then running to tell Sarah to be quick about making the bread. Now, the scripture doesn’t say he knew these strangers were necessarily from God, for he only addresses them as lords, as rulers crossing the desert who stopped by the way-station of Mamre on their way to Sodom. But he treats them as God commands his people to treat the stranger, the sojourner in the land. He waits on them as they eat – this great father and leader of his own people is their servant as he invites them around his own table, sharing food, conversation, laughter.
The text quickly moves to the men asking of Sarah and one making the pronouncement that when he returns next year, she will have a son! Well, Abraham, as you can imagine, nearly fell over into the curds and milk when he heard that! And he had already laughed back in chapter 17 when he heard the same thing – verse 17 says he fell on his face laughing at the prospect. And Sarah, eavesdropping on the conversation, let a little nervous titter escape from her lips that was loud enough for the guests to hear out under the oak tree. Neither one can believe what they have heard. She is past ninety and the old man is 100 and is she now to have pleasure? (for that is what the Hebrew word means)
One of the reasons I love reading the scripture is that it doesn’t whitewash anything – it is all there, all of our dreams and fears and everything that makes us human. Abraham and Sarah here are not pasteboard cut outs, two-dimensional heroes of faith, but real people like you and me. And what do they learn that we need to learn as well? That God acts even when we don’t believe or have the strength to go on believing. God had promised a son years ago but they have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Things had not been easy for them at times, and they had tried to cover their unbelief with actions of their own to force God to act on their timetable rather than God’s. And if you continue to read their story, you know there will be hard times to come. But when we look around us and only see the despair of the world looking back at us with glazed eyes of indifference, I think their story gives us hope. It gives us hope for it testifies that God is active and loving – even when we deny God and laugh at his impossibilities. God doesn’t turn his back on us, but simply asks “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
And Abraham and Sarah, our mother and father, our parental ancestors in the faith, experience the joy of God’s laughter working its way in their lives. The kind of “deep belly-laugh of incredulity, of sheer joy in the Lord” that Frederick Buechner says “issued forth from David as he danced through the streets of Jerusalem in front of the Ark.” The kind of joy that the psalms are talking about where they say, “When the Lord had rescued Zion, then our mouth was filled with laughter” or when they are so excited they yell at the top of their lungs, “Let the floods clap their hands, let the hills sing for joy!” It is the kingdom of God Jesus is speaking of when the Prodigal comes home and his father runs down the lane to meet him, no worry about appearance or dignity, just love as he hugs him to his breast and they party till the morning hours. It is what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.” Buechner says it’s what the Bible is really all about at its core, and I think he has something there. Now, I am not saying everything is easy by any means. And the text clearly shows that being in the hands of the living God can be a dangerous, difficult thing because of who we are as humans. But the story of our God as a whole is a love story – full of joy and laughter and love for all of creation, for all peoples, for all nations as our God gives and gives and gives with hands wide-open all the time. For when we walk with him in joy and acknowledgment, in relationship, God’s laughter has the power to break through our disbelief. As Abraham and Sarah laughed in wonder at the prospect of new life, I think they only had a slight inkling of the many wild dreams God dreams for each of our lives.
Family, hospitality, laughter – as members of God’s new family constituted in Jesus Christ, you know what our only real task is? To simply share this good news with others through our words and deeds. Jesus invites all of us to respond in love to God’s goodness by simply living out the Kingdom he says has come, to sit around the banqueting table that he has provided and live into that good news now. “You received without payment, give without payment” – sharing in the Kingdom, sharing our lives, our resources, our joys and sorrows, our laughter, our love in God’s goodness. And that is what the family is about. Not just your blood kin, but the new kin in Christ; those seated to your right and to your left all across this sanctuary and all around the world where they name the name of Jesus as Lord. We are brothers and sisters to embrace not only each other but all our neighbors – to show hospitality to all those who show up at our doors. And just as Abraham welcomed the stranger, just as the disciples went as strangers to every door, it is our Kingdom specific task to joyfully welcome all as if we are welcoming the Lord.
And the reason we can even do this at all is that through the Holy Spirit the laughter of God invites us to trust completely. Our faith is about joyfully living together as family even as we face an uncertain future. In spite of floods, fires, poverty, war, laughter still comes in God’s visitation and God’s dwelling with us, in the fellowship around a common table that then leads us out into this world that God loves with an indescribable, unquenchable fire. And I think fellowship is something this church does well! There was lots of laughter at the party Tuesday night, lots of it when we gathered together to enjoy each other’s company and be about one of our tasks as the body of Christ. Laughter spilling forth from the Gathering Space yesterday as friends and family gathered to celebrate 50 years of marriage with the Houghs. Laughter when we join together with people we hardly know yet but we gather in the name of a common Lord around a fellowship table where strangers become sisters and brothers. Many times this is too wonderful to comprehend, but it is part of God’s plan to enlarge that circle to embrace and invite all those we meet in the world. We don’t need to be afraid of the stranger. We don’t need to be afraid of God’s goodness, but simply trust that this loving God we worship is active and capable of bringing his special kind of joy to all the world, even beyond our own disbelief. So, in all our many lives and individual hopes and fears-through it all, each one of us must answer the question for ourselves so that we might be about God’s call for us as a church body – “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
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