By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
February 25th, 2018
Dr. Van Murrell, my college New Testament
professor, spoke so fast that by trying to record every word ruined my
handwriting. But even as serious as Dr.
Murrell was about the New Testament, he had a great sense of humor. He would often start his class by addressing
us as his ‘buddies’ and his ‘scholars’.
Once, on a test about the geography of Israel, Dr. Murrell asked “How many fish are in the Dead Sea?” He smiled as he handed out test results to
those who tried to figure.
My favorite memory of class was when we begged
him to tell his infamous parachute joke.
The joke is about certain fellow who fell off a cliff toward a lake far
below. The poor fellow managed to grab
a branch of a tree going down and was now hanging on for dear life. “Please God, help me!” He cried.
After a while, someone passing in a motorboat heard his cry. They pulled near to offer help. But the fellow declines the help saying “No thanks.
God will help me!” Then, a
helicopter flies over offering to drop down a ladder. “No thanks, God will help me!” He persists. Then, again, someone hears his cry, comes to
the edge of the cliff and offers to drop him a parachute. He declines once more, “No, God will help
me!” In the next moment, the man loses
his grip and perishes. He awakes in
heaven and makes a complaint: “Lord, I’m
grateful to be here, but why didn’t you answer my cry for help?” The Lord answers, “But I did. I sent you a motorboat, a helicopter and
parachute, but you refused each time.”
What made Dr. Murrell’s so funny was
that he couldn’t tell a joke. He was too
dry. His timing was bad. He would laugh before the punch line. It was hilarious. We loved watching him mess up. We loved the break it gave us from our challenging
lessons. It made us love him, and the
New Testament, even more. Even his poor
attempt at humor bonded us together.
Long ago wisdom said, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a
downcast spirit dries up the bones” (Prov. 17:22). Today science confirms scripture, explaining
that laughter releases endorphins into our body to counter stress. In other words, laughter is as good for you as
eating your daily bowl of oatmeal. Ironically,
however, only two times do we encounter open laughter in the gospels. Once we hear the mocking laughter of
disbelief from the crowd. Jesus showed
up to heal a little girl after they had already started the funeral. When Jesus spoke his healing word anyway, the
little girl got up and the joke was on them (Matt 9:24). The
other encounter with gospel laughter comes from the Beatitudes according to
Luke. This is not the laughter of
cynicism, but the laughter of reversal.
Jesus says: “Blessed are you who
weep now, for (one day) you will for
you will laugh” (Luke 6:21). This is
the heart rejoicing when things go better than you had expected. And isn't this how most jokes work? You think you’re going down one path and
suddenly everything flips unexpectedly.
We laugh. In the beatitudes Jesus
drew special attention to the joy found in the unexpected grace of God.
SARAH
LAUGHS
Our Scripture today is the first mention
of laughter in the Bible. The text ends with
90 year old ‘Sarah’ overhearing an
unannounced visitor telling her husband Abraham, “Your wife Sarah shall have a son” (18:10). Hearing such a hilarious report, we are told
that “Sarah laughed to herself” (18:
12 NRSV). Sarah didn’t think anyone one
could hear her in herself, but this visitor did: “Why did Sarah laugh…?” (v. 13).
In this moment of her life, Sarah had a lot more reasons to weep than to
laugh. Now, even when she is ‘as good as dead,’ she is laughing. But when she is confronted by the visitor,
Sarah denies it. “I did not laugh”. Then the
visitor counters: “Oh yes, you did
laugh” (18:15).
To Sarah and to us, this is not really a
funny story. But wouldn’t you laugh if
somebody suggested you would have a child at 90 years old? When we are young, a positive pregnancy
report is a reason for rejoicing. But
expecting a baby after child bearing years are long over? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Yet, Sarah laughs. We need to realize that Abraham laughed too. In a previous announcement, God told Abraham
that as a man of almost 100 years he would finally become a father. Upon hearing this, we are told that Abraham ‘fell on his face and laughed’ (Gen.
17:17).
So why
is everybody laughing when this is not supposed to be funny? You know it’s not good to play jokes on ‘old
folks’. Several years ago, we had a
Senior Adult Day in the church where I was pastor. I was in approaching age fifty. I was
already learning about aging. So, during
the message that day, I told a lot of funny stories about aging. I thought we all needed a good laugh together. Most everybody agreed, and laughed. But I noticed that one lady wasn’t
laughing. After the service was over,
she came up to me and said: “How dare you make fun of old people!”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry” I answered, “but I
wasn’t making fun, I was trying to help us laugh and have fun together.”
“It wasn’t funny to me! She
said. I thought you’d know
better!”
By waiting to fulfill the promise so
late, it could seem like God was making fun of old people. You could, if you
looked at it in a negative light, take this whole late, delayed, long-overdue
fulfilment, and declare it to a very cruel joke. How dare God make fun with this old
people? Why did he make them wait so
long to have a child? How dare God to
have played upon their fears and draw out their faith with so much human drama
and desperation? Doesn’t this God of
Abraham not know that life is shouldn’t be a joke? Why would anybody want to anybody want to
believe at all, when the difficulties we face, the challenges we have, the disappointments that come, can make God seem to be a player of cruel
jokes? Isn’t it this perspective that
has Prometheus, Nietzsche, and now, our society too, crying out for the ‘death of God’?
But now, let’s get back to the problem
Sarah and Abraham had to face. Among the
most difficult things that can happen to us, being childless is definitely not
a joke. My wife and I experienced it
firsthand. We were unable to have a
child naturally. Back in the 1980’s our
doctor encouraged us to go through In-Vitro Fertilization, when it was still at
an ‘experimental’ stage. When he told us
there was a good chance we could have a child, we smiled through our fears and
hesitations.
At the time, most insurance companies didn’t
cover the procedure. So we saved over
10k and paid in advance. As we went
through the tedious process, the doctor who had promised to be there for on
‘that day’ wasn’t. It was a weekend, and another doctor, coming
in from a party, filled in for him. After
the procedure, he explained that “there were complications.” When we finally got a negative result, it all
seemed like such a cruel joke. But I
wasn’t laughing?
The lesson I got from everything was
this: If you think trusting God with your life can seem like a cruel joke,
trust putting your trust in science. Some
think that technology or human advancement has better answers than faith, but
does it, really? No matter how you look
at it, when you are a human being living on borrowed time, no matter what you
hope for, life can seem like a cruel joke.
So, why should we put our trust in anything, or in any one, or in
God?
THE
LORD APPEARED TO ABRAHAM….
Strangely, and I do mean strangely, this story was told, not to
focus on Sarah, or Abraham’s laughter, but to describe an unlikely visit. Abraham
and Sarah did not know who these visitors were, but we know. The text begins: “The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre… (18:1). If you read closely, this story unfolds full
of suspense and surprise. It tells how
Abraham ‘sat at the entrance of his tent,’
looked up, and surprise; there
stood three men ‘near him.’ Out of nowhere, these visitors came. Strange, right? Then, following the rules of mid-eastern
hospitality Abraham hurries to get a
meal ready, though he only promised ‘a
little water’ and ‘some bread’. That’s kind of weird too, isn’t it? Finally, as they are all finishing their
meal, one of the visitors inquired about
Sarah’s whereabouts. Then, without waiting on her to be summoned,
the visitor gave Abraham the results of the pregnancy test.
The story gets even stranger. One of the visitors now being called ‘the Lord,’ turned to Abraham and asked
“Why did Sarah laugh?” It is probable that Abraham didn’t answer because
he didn’t hear anything. Without pause
the visitor surprises Abraham with his promise: "I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah
shall have a son" (Gen. 18:10 NRS). Again, without warning, the dialogue switches
back to Sarah, as if Abraham is no longer present. Now the visitor concludes the conversation,
just talking to her heart to heart even while she is outside, without physically
leaving Abraham’s tent (Gen. 18: 12-15).
The strangeness of this whole conversation
reflects another odd thing I’ve noticed about the life of Abraham up until
now. Abraham’s story has been filled
with promises that seem like they will never come true. On almost every turn, these promises are being
pushed forward again and again into the future.
When Abraham is called, he is
given a promise to become a great nation (12:2), but even at the close of his
life, he’s still just a small tribe (Gen. 25: 1-8). When Abraham
made a covenant with the LORD, he’s given the promise again, but still no
nation, not even a single child of his own blood (15:3). Then, when the promise is renewed at age 99, it is renewed with the sign of
circumcision (Gen. 17: 24). Did you
catch this? Abraham was circumcised at
age 99! No wonder he fell on his face
laughing. It wasn’t just cruel, but it
is totally insane (If you thought childbirth at 90 was cruel). This slow, unfolding, but deliberate disclosure
seems to be with purpose and on purpose, but still no true heir. Finally, we
come to the birth announcement. Yet
still here, the answered promise is still at least 9 months away. A lot can happen to a woman who pregnant and
90 years of age. My mother had 7
miscarriages and she was in her 20’s and 30’s.
Besides all this waiting, deferment, and
delay, Abraham made a lot of missteps too. Abraham has faith, but he’s certainly not
perfect. Evidently, this Abrahamic faith
was not to be defined by absolute perfection.
When Abraham wandered into Egypt during a drought, he fears for his life
and lies about his wife, pretending she is his sister (12:9ff). Later, when things look hopeless again, Sarah
offered her handmaid Hagar, to Abraham as a surrogate wife (16:1ff). After Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, this
caused all kinds of complications of rivalry and jealousy (16:4ff). It appeared that even these people who live by
faith and promise don’t look so promising themselves. Even while being faithful, faithful people struggle
with impatience and shortsightedness. These stories, though so far removed from
us, start to seem strangely familiar
and reflect our own struggles with faith.
And what was the reason all this
was happening? It was this God, who was
so deliberately slow to deliver on his own promise that things got terribly messy
and complicated. Why would Abraham keep
believing, trusting, and placing all his hopes in a God that treated him like this?
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul picked up on Abraham’s struggle
of faith. In his letter to the
Romans, Paul quotes Genesis 15:6, where it says “Abraham believed the LORD, and “faith was reckoned (or credited) to Abraham as righteousness” (Rom. 4:9). Paul’s point is to avoid saying that Abraham
was righteous, but that he was credited ‘righteous’
because, as Paul writes ‘no distrust’ ever ‘made him waver concerning the promise of God.’ (4:20). But how
can Paul make this claim? He makes this
claim based upon Abraham’s faith, in spite of God’s all that did or did not
happen to him. Paul says that even when
Abraham was ‘weak’, or ‘already as good as dead’ (19, he was ‘fully convinced that God could do what he
had promised’ (21). Abraham, he says
‘grew strong in his faith as he gave
glory to God’ (20) even as he was ‘hoping
against hope’ (18). Abraham’s faith
was no make-believe, fairytale, or imaginary easy-to-believe faith, but Abraham’s
faith was like our faith, like true faith, a struggling, but determined faith
including warts and all. Abraham’s faith
was an example of what all faith must be: a struggling, enduring, unwavering
faith lived against all odds which was ‘credited’
or ‘reckoned’ to him as the right or
only way to live. Abraham lived right, not
because he had no slip ups, but he lived right because he stayed the course in
the face of all that did happen, and all that didn’t happen, like he had hoped
it would.
Perhaps it is what Paul said last that
is most important: “Now the words ‘it was
reckoned to him’ were not written
for his (Abraham’s) sake alone, ‘but for ours also’ (23-24). Did you catch this? What was happening in Abraham’s experience
of God, is what happens in all people with true, enduring, lasting faith. Having faith, in spite of everything, is what
righteousness, and right living means. The ultimate expression of faith for the
Christian, Pauls says, is that God will
also declare us right, when we believe
in him (God) who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead…” (24).
Abraham’s struggle of faith was not
Abraham’s alone. Abraham’s struggle was
to trust life and this is the most basic struggle of every human being. It was
his journey and struggle with faith that made Abraham’s story the foundations
of three major world religions. It
wasn’t because Abraham lived to be 175 or because he fathered a child at 100
and not even because his 90 year old wife Sarah had a baby. No, the story of Abraham has remained with
us because it is story about having and keeping faith, no matter what. We all have to believe in something, because unpredictability
and insecurity is a given of human existence.
But isn’t it the loss of ‘having and
keeping’ faith that threatens us today? We see youth losing ‘faith’ in the world
around them; challenging everything, but having little faith to be able to rise
above their own situations. We also see
extremes in politics and religion, rising up to spread more hate than
hope. What is really going on? Harvard philosopher Charles Taylor, named
our situation ‘Our Secular Age’. This ‘secular’ view of the world is the
belief that this life and this world is all there is. A secular world is not ‘enchanted’ with mystery or faith; it is not ‘full of surprises’ and
does not need a creator, a sustainer, or a redeemer God to infuse this world
with possibilities beyond what we can know, feel, or prove. No, since there is nothing else, we must
have it all now. We are alive and
entitled, now. We can’t wait on God to fulfill
his promises. We don’t want to go this faith journey. We don’t expect any surprises in this world,
except the experiences we manufacture for ourselves. It is this kind of self-determining belief
that dominates today and it’s a very sad belief, isn’t it? It’s might even prove to be more burdensome
that a having a God who commands and judges because secular faithlessness
leaves this world and our life and impending death, to be finally about
nothing. Without God there is no problem,
no struggle, and no adventure, and that’s the problem. The struggle does, and so does the meaning of
life, because the faithless say life is going nowhere. Life is only “… a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
(Shakespeare).
Is this nothingness what we will settle
for? Probably not. I say this because of what I saw recently on
the news as the rare solar eclipse was approaching back in mid-August. A
popular scientist was on CBS news, explaining how remarkable this event
is. The Sun is 400 times further away
from us than the moon, and the moon is exactly 400 times smaller than the
Sun. These exact coincidences he said
make a great moment for us to go outside, take a look at what is happening, and
‘commune with the cosmos’. I though it
amazing to hear how ‘religious’ this scientist sounded. Everything we trust God for, he put his trust
to find in rare, predictable, and physical cosmic event. Is this where science is trying to take
us? Is where people find their hopes,
dreams and faith, in the years to come?
Will we settle for the way things are, or will we allow this rare visitor to bring faith’s greater surprise?
IS
THERE ANYTHING TOO HARD FOR THE LORD?
Interestingly our text expresses the way
to have faith in this visitor, in the form of an unanswered question. After
the visitor heard Sarah laughing, he asked what will forever remains faith’s
most important question: “Is there
anything to hard (too wonderful) for the LORD?”
The whole point of this Abraham story is not what it seems; that God
made Abraham struggle, endure and wait, but that in this very real, dramatic,
human struggle and journey we call life, God showed up. After Abraham’s father left Ur and settled in
Haran, God called and showed up. After
Abraham struggle in Egypt felt all alone, God showed up and made his promise
again. Then, after Abraham and Sarah
thought they would have to settle for Hagar and Ishmael, God showed up
again. And now, even when they are ‘as good as dead’, God shows up to accomplish
what only God can do; bring his own promise to fulfillment.
So, now this question forever remains
with us, because it is still the human choice between faith or faithlessness,
between hope and hopelessness, and between love: Do need to trust in a God who brings
surprises, revelations, prospects and possibilities beyond what we now know? Jesus himself answered this question for us,
in the affirmative: “This is not
possible with mortals, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26, Mark
10:27, Luke 18:27). Interestingly,
Jesus made this statement in response to the question about “Who can be saved?” because, he said,
it is ‘hard for rich people to enter the
kingdom of God’ (Luk 18:25, Mark 10:25,
Matt 19: 24). Precisely
because it is ‘hard’ for people who
think they have everything to think they need God, is exactly the ‘impossibility’
that God can overcome.
In commenting on this impossible possibility
of faith in God, Old Testament scholar
Walter Brueggemann writes, ‘the question
(of faith) does not linger with babies
and birth stories (in the Bible), but
it moves also to the impossibility of discipleship, the impossibility of faith,
and the impossibility of a new community.
The right answer faith gave in Scripture, is the right answer faith
still gives, when we have faith and keep faith, that allows God the freedom to
be God and trust God to do what only God can do. It is only by entertaining this kind of faith;
a faith in a God who still visits us
with both promise and surprise, that we can keep faith in a world that has ‘frighteningly’
no future without a future in the possibility of God (See Interpretation
Commentary, Genesis, pp 159-162)., 1982).
Speaking of possibilities only in
Abraham’s God; as I wrote this message back in August, the world had again be
disrupted by another devastating terror attack, now in Barcelona, Spain. How in the world will a threat like this ever
be stopped? It’s seems impossible. How will these extremist ever learn a message
of love, not hate? And it isn’t that
much different when we see all the division and hate also going on in this
country. How can we move beyond it all? But only two week before the attack in
Barcelona, there was a surprising CBSN New report, about an 86 year old Texas
born, Pentecostal evangelist, Marylyn Hickey, who was traveling and preaching,
spreading the message of love in Jesus Christ, even in most Muslim Pakistan. Pakistan is not only predominately Muslim, but
it is also a hotbed of Muslim fundamentalism, where Osama Bin Laden had his
final hideout. But in this most strange
report, reporter James Brown, told how this Pentecostal lady message of Christ
love was being warmly accepted by a Muslim population, and she was not at all, deem
by the masses to be a threat. I could
not believe what I was seeing, it was one of those ‘impossibilities’ becoming
possible right before my own eyes that were glued to what I was seeing. (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/cbsn-on-assignment-follows-a-christian-evangelists-journey-to-pakistan/).
Could it be
that there are still, among the ‘impossibly’ of this world, possibilities that
only the God of Abraham can bring. “Before
Abraham was, I am.” Jesus said. Are there answers and possibilities that have already
revealed to us, but are not yet fully accepted by us, as they have been supremely
revealed in the love of God through Jesus Christ?
Fleming
Rutledge tells of an article in The New Yorker about an CEO who boasted that his
own multi-national company named Schulmberger was now able to do its employees
and its customers ‘what religion had
tried to do, but failed to do’. He said his company is providing for people community, identity, and security just
like religion attempted to do, but ‘religion’ he said, could not and cannot deliver
on its promises.’ Religion, he said, can’t
deliver, because religion is made up of only ‘human projections, wishes, fantasies, fears, and longings.’
You may be
surprised to hear that I agree wholeheartedly with this CEO. Religion can’t deliver anything. Religion is a human way to approach God, appease
God, please God, or even to invent God.
But this God of Abraham and Sarah, was not about ‘religion’ that any
human can or would invent. This is a
story about a relationship with the God who is revealed in a relationship of
faith, not in a religion. “Before Abraham was, I Am,” Jesus said (John 8:58).
My name is “I Am who I Am”, God informed Moses (Ex. 3:14). This God who is the great “I AM” has been
revealed fully in Jesus Christ as “the
way and truth and life.”
And finally,
this God of promise and possibility has not been revealed to shrink our human potentials
and prospects, but to expand them. This
visitor from beyond who brings us all our possibilities, still comes to through
the Spirit of the Christ, who by living, dying, and being raised from the dead,
has revealed the unlimited resources of God, through faith, hope, and
love. And the greatest resource for all our
possibilities, then and now, and from now on, will forever be God’s love. It is
love that gives us, and restores to us, the joy of the salvation only God can
give. Amen.
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