He was 75 years old when they left Haran;[1] she was 65 then. They packed their portable belongings and left, following the call and promise of God. “The land that I will show you”—that was all God told them about their destination. And there was the promise that God would make of them “a great nation.”
Twenty-five years later they had journeyed far and wide, but Sarai was still childless. Abram had a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, a slave who served Sarai; the boy was a teenager when God appeared to the old man and renewed the covenant promise, saying, “I will make you exceedingly numerous. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and kings shall come from you.”
The old man took it all in—the extravagant promise, the new name, Abraham, the detailed instructions about circumcision—but when God mentioned Sarai, and that her new name would be Sarah, and that she would give birth to a son and that kings of peoples would come from her—that’s when Abraham fell on his face and laughed. He was a hundred years old and she was ninety, and God was talking about a baby, their baby.
This is the first time in the Bible somebody breaks down laughing. Not that for generations there wasn’t much to laugh about, but this is the first time laughter erupts in the text—and Abraham didn’t just laugh, he fell on his face and laughed. I imagine he was laughing so hard, he had to hold his sides. You may think that’s not appropriate somehow, that one is to show reverence and awe when God speaks, that such laughter smacks of disrespect—but God apparently didn’t see it that way. God kept speaking to Abraham and reiterated, “Your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac”—that’s Yitzhak in Hebrew, meaning “he shall laugh.” And in due time, Sarah gave birth to a boy, Abraham named him Yitzhak, and Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”[2] It was no joke, and it wasn’t that God, like the worst kind of bully, was having fun at an elderly couple’s expense, no—at first their laughter may have been tinged with disbelief, but when Sarah was showing, they were laughing with hope, and when the little one was born, they couldn’t stop laughing with unbridled joy. Psalm 126 begins, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” When life and promise rhyme, God’s people laugh.
Curiously, “aside from general appreciation that laughter is good for us… we know little about laughter itself,” one scholar wrote. “Laughter typically appears in human babies around 3-1/2 to 4 months of age, but we know little about the details of the developmental process.” We do know that people around the globe laugh, ha-ha-ha or hee-hee-hee or ho-ho-ho, and nobody laughs ha-hee-ha or hee-ha-ho, but we don’t know why. We do know that “it is pleasurable to laugh at or with people, [and] quite unpleasant to be laughed at. … Court fools and presidential aides learn early in their careers that it is safer to laugh with the boss than at him or her.”[3] According to wikipedia,
Laughter is a physical reaction in humans consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system resulting most commonly in forms of “hee-hee” or “ha-ha”. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can arise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, relief, etc.[4]
Joy, mirth, happiness, relief—when life and promise rhyme, God’s people laugh: they chuckle, titter, giggle, chortle, cackle and snicker, they snort and roar and guffaw. When life and promise rhyme.
Again and again, in Genesis and Exodus, and in all of Scripture, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah face obstacles to the realization of God’s twofold promise of a new generation and land: childless women, migrations out of Canaan, enslavement in Egypt, desperation in the wilderness, corruption in Jerusalem, exile in Babylon—and again and again the question is raised: Will God—can God—keep God’s promises? Will God remain faithful despite the near constant stumbling of God’s people, despite idolatry and greed and abuse of people and land and all living things? Will God remain faithful despite our stubborn refusal to do justice and love kindness and walk with God?
We are entering the third week of Lent, and the words are sinking in that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.[5] And we tremble at his words, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We tremble because our lives are so entwined and infused with his, and he calls us to follow him to the cross. He calls us to follow him on the way of radical hospitality and life-giving compassion, aware that his divine mission elicits rejection and violent antagonism from those invested in maintaining the status quo. We tremble as he announces with utter clarity that he must be killed, that his faithfulness to God’s mission of healing and redemption will inevitably result in his death, because his commitment to God and to us will not falter.[6] We tremble because the execution of this faithful one is the ultimate obstacle to the realization of God’s promises. He will be crucified by the empire—and who can actually hear the words “and after three days rise again”?
We know the ways of empires, it doesn’t take great imagination to understand their simple logic of domination. Empires win every time—until they fall and other empires take their place. But a crucified man rising again after three days? The prospect of that is about as likely as a ninety-year-old woman having a child with a hundred-year-old man. Preposterous. Ridiculous. Fall-on-your-face laughable.
But the day came when Sarah put little Yitzhak in Abraham’s arms and they laughed.
The day came when the Hebrew slaves walked out of Pharaoh’s brick yards and they laughed.
The day came when their children crossed the Jordan and with the taste of milk and honey on their lips, they laughed.
The day came when the exiles once again trekked through the desert and returned to the land—their mouth filled with laughter, and their tongue with shouts of joy.
And the day came when the women returned from the grave and told the other disciples, and none of them could decide whether to laugh or cry until it sank in that God had indeed raised Jesus from the dead. That’s when their cautious, very restrained and doubt-filled laughs branched out and bloomed and burst—and waves of joy filled and lifted them. And they were braver than they had ever been or thought they could be; and kinder; and more committed to true community. It was as though the realization of God’s unshakable faithfulness made them not just want to be, but actually be more faithful followers of Jesus.
To be in covenant, I have learned from Walter Brueggemann, means to be a “partner in the practice of loyal solidarity.”[7] It means to recognize God’s loyal solidarity with us, and to become in its embrace new human beings who embrace others—especially those at the bottom and on the margins of the worlds we create—in loyal solidarity. It means to resist the idolatries and power dynamics of the empire with the liberating practice of the kingdom of God.
Today we receive a special offering for Week of Compassion, which is one of the many ways in which we seek to live in loyal solidarity. Week of Compassion helps us multiply our impact in disaster relief here in the U.S. and around the world, in sustainable development projects that empower women and marginalized communities, in supporting refugee families and immigrants, and in building relationships with ecumenical partners. This year’s theme is, Let Love Flow. There’s a river flowing from the heart of God through every part of creation, every cell, every leaf, every living thing, every person, every ocean and forest, every planet and star. Love wants to flow so life can flourish.
In Kenya this means, quite simply and wonderfully, assisting local partners in building water supply systems at the village or neighborhood levels. This means better drinking water. This means girls can go to school instead of hauling water over long distances. This means more productive gardens and fields. This means growing incomes.
I’ve looked at so many pictures from Kenya, and although they’re silent visuals, I can hear the boys laugh and scream with delight, and I can hear the women laugh and talk about new possibilities while they fill large canisters at the community fountain. I can hear and see, almost taste, what happens when we let love flow. And I begin to imagine what else loyal solidarity would allow us to be and do. For whenever we let love flow, life and promise rhyme.
[1] Gen 12:4
[2] Gen 21:6
[3] Robert R. Provine, “Laughter” American Scientist 84. 1 (Jan-Feb, 1996): 38-47. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Provine_96.html
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter
[5] Mark 8:31
[6] See Ira Brent Driggers https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-mark-831-38-5
[7] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah (WBC, Vol. 2), 114.