(Caveat to the blogosphere: Sermons, though written as manuscript, are seldom preached verbatim as written. Some of the puctuation I use here is non-standard, because it contains many pacing or tone cues that I alone understand; I may not have cleaned all of it up.)

Genesis 18: 1-15, 21:1-7

I don’t know about you, but I love a good joke. And to me, the best jokes have some sort of build up—they start out as some sort of ordinary story, and there is at some point a twist that turns everything sideways and makes the punch line so incredible that I nearly cry from laughing so hard.

For me, the opposite of the really good joke is not so much the bad joke, but the kind of situation that results in nervous laughter. You know the kind…when someone important is giving a speech or presentation, and you think you are the only person in the room who notices that their fly is open—only you can’t point out that their fly is open, because what are you doing noticing that, anyway? Or when the youngest child at the family reunion blurts out an obscenity that they don’t really understand the meaning of, but all the elders at the table are nervously laughing while giving the parents of said child what we call “the old stink eye.”

Then there is the really awful nervous laughter moment. That moment when someone says something that is potentially hurtful about someone who is standing right there next to them…and the situation is so emotionally charged and ugly that the only thing I can do to try to cut the tension is to do that nervous chuckle that kind of happens with out my meaning for it to. A blatantly bigoted comment is flung out, or a subtle dig at someone’s appearance or financial/marital/social status. The kind of comment that glues the mouth shut because I am afraid that if I speak up, if I say, “Hey, isn’t that kind of bigoted or unfair?” I will make the person being targeted feel even worse. So I keep my mouth shut, thinking that if I don’t say anything, maybe the person didn’t really notice. Besides, maybe I misunderstood.

I like to think that maybe Sarah’s laughter in our story for today is just that—nervous laughter. Imagine this scene: Abraham and Sarah have been sitting still and staying put for 24 years after God first told them to leave Ur of the Chaldeans and haul out to a foreign country. Now, much has happened for Abraham: He has borne a son with Hagar, his wife’s servant, and he has made a covenant with God—one that was sealed with Abraham’s circumcision at an old age. (Talk about your situations that might induce nervous laughter!) So things aren’t so bad for old Abraham. God has promised him another son, by his wife Sarah—a promise to which Abraham responded with laughter. But the text doesn’t tell us that he went home to tell his wife about that promise. Maybe the whole circumcision situation was enough for them to handle.

Watching his wife’s pain as she watched all the other women she knew give birth, and even gave her servant to sleep with her husband so that her husband would not die without a son…well, that must have made Abraham want to protect Sarah from what he might have thought was a really bad joke. Why add insult to injury?

So on that day, when Abraham sits under the trees, trying to find a little shade for his old bones in the heat of the day, three strangers appear. Now, remember, when things happen in threes, sevens, twelves, or forties, it is very significant. it means that these are no ordinary visitors. But Abraham might not have been thinking about it that way. For him it might have just been new faces to see, some new stories to hear, and a break from his ordinary life of sitting by the tent in the heat of the day. He’s so grateful that he jumps up—not an easy thing to do when you are 99—greets the strangers, and puts out the hospitality, the best of what he has for the visitors. Or at least he asks Sarah to. He is so excited that after the banquet is prepared, he and the visitors sit down in the shade to eat.

As they are eating, they asked him, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” Don’t you think Abraham’s ears perked up when these strangers knew his wife by name? Then they drop the bomb. The punch line to the really bad joke. “Next year, I’m coming back. Sarah is going to have a baby.” Post menopausal Sarah. Old: 99 years old; too-old-for-childbearing Sarah.

The Bible says that Sarah muttered to herself. “Hmmph. As if Abraham still looks at me in that way. Even if he could, and I could, and we still wanted to, what good is it? That ship set sail a long time ago.” And I can imagine, even as she laughed it off as folly, as something so ridiculous that she didn’t even take it seriously, a lump was forming in her throat, and her eyes were beginning to sting just a little bit with the tears that were forming. Don’t we do that? Don’t we try to minimize the things that we want so badly we can taste them, but we think we will never have? And doesn’t it really irritate us when someone holds that something up to us and says, “Yes, you’ll have this some day!” when we know in our hearts that it will never, ever happen?

When I was newly graduated with a Masters’ of Divinity degree three years ago, I watched as all of my classmates who were called to parish ministry moved away to begin their new ministries. I’d get a phone call, or an e-mail, or be in conversation with a friend and get the news that another one of my classmates got the call—found the church—passed the trials of ordination—planned their ordination service—hired the movers. And I saw the looks on their faces when they saw me the first time after getting this wonderful news. I knew that they knew that I hadn’t gotten that wonderful news yet, and I knew that they felt overjoyed for themselves and sad for me at the same time. And I heard them say to me, again and again, “It will happen for you, too.” And as I have shared with you before, for a while there, I had actually come to believe that it never would.

Is anything too wonderful for God? That was the reply of the stranger to Abraham. That is the punch line to the really good joke. As created beings—even created in God’s image—we want. We need. Our hearts burn for the things that will make us feel full and complete and whole. And at the same time, there is this little corner of doubt that makes us question of we will ever have what we really want and need. We forget that there is not anything too wonderful for God. No place too barren, no situation too hopeless, no need that God cannot fill in God’s own time, in God’s own way.

Now, that last line is important. This is a culture which despises the delay of gratification, that rewards instant reward, that culture whose mantra is “If you want it, don’t wait, go out and get it for yourself.” We are immersed in this culture and its messages to us are powerful. It is hard to imagine sometimes waiting for God’s time. But the lesson of Sarah and Abraham is that nothing is, indeed too wonderful for God. And we can dare to laugh, dare to be skeptical, dare to wonder how God is going to pull us out of this one, because God is faithful, and God keeps Gods promises.

What I love about this story is that God gets the last laugh. God gets to deliver the best punch line of all—a son named Isaac, which means laughter. And Sarah gets the joke. Sarah realizes that her situation is fraught with laughter. People will stare when they realize that she, an old woman is nursing her newborn son—many will laugh at her. Her son will bring her much laughter and joy in her old age. And I’m sure that Sarah gets the best joke of all—that there is an absurd disproportion between divine generosity and human belief.

We need to be reminded that nothing is too wonderful for God because we consistently sell God short. We consistently measure God by the human yardstick. We forget—on a daily basis—that the God who hung the stars cares about the smallest details of our lives. We need to be reminded, from time to time that there is no limit to what God can do for us.

In selling God short, we of course sell ourselves and one another short as well. We are made in the image of God. If we do not believe that God cares about us, why on earth should we believe that we can care for one another? So we let the little jokes slide by, we pretend we don’t hear when someone makes a comment about whole groups of people. We avoid rocking the boat, and we go along to get along. And every time we do this, a little bit of our integrity gets chipped away. But the promise of God remains. And God is still wanting to be intimately involved with us, and connected to our lives.

So dare to laugh, yes. But dare to dream of a world where the little offhand jokes and oblique remarks are no longer just brushed aside with nervous laughter. Dare to be in this world a sign and a symbol that nothing is too wonderful for God. Dare to embrace the image in which we are created. Dare to accept the gift of Jesus Christ that God offers us all as our salvation. Dare to believe that you are God’s own beloved son or daughter.

Thanks be to God.