Genesis 18:1-5; 21:1-7 ; Matthew 9:35-10:8
Sometimes the only reasonable thing to do is laugh.
Like when yet another stupid thing goes wrong in a project that has to succeed (whether that project is getting the whole company onto a new software system, or getting the family out the door in the morning).
Laughter, after all, defuses tension, provides relief – makes it possible to go on when other alternatives are crying in despair or exploding with anger.
Or when someone makes a joke.
Makes an exquisitely timed remark about bananas, or proposes something absolutely, absurdly impossible and your diaphragm bounces and you hear yourself snort or giggle before you even realize you’re laughing.
Laughter builds community – enhances social bonds and boosts moods and cooperation. Laughter knits us together.
Right up until someone thinks you’re laughing at them.
Laughter relieves and connects us right up until someone thinks your laughter is mocking their mistake, or their perfectly serious proposal about bananas.
Or about childbirth at an extremely advanced age.
Sarah catches a lot of flak, over the centuries, for laughing at God’s announcement that she – 90 years of age, well past menopause, childless all her life and not for lack of trying – that she is going to conceive, carry, and birth a child in the next year.
The idea is ludicrous. It’s physically impossible. It’s stupid even, on some levels. What over-90 year old has the energy to chase a toddler every day, even if the biological mechanics of post-menopausal childbirth could somehow be overcome?
You have to laugh.
Abraham laughed – fell on his face ROFL laughing – when God floated the same idea to him a scene or two before the one we heard today.
Even with the greatest possible faith that God can make this impossible thing true, it still yanks open deep emotional and spiritual wounds raw from years of unfulfilled longing to conceive and bear and nurture children, and all the social burdens of “failing” to do so.
Or – if it happens that Sarah was in fact perfectly comfortable with not mothering children of her own womb – it utterly disrupts the life she’s made for herself.
If Sarah took this proposal seriously, she’d probably have to cry. She laughs.
People laughed at Jesus, too.
He knows they are going to laugh at the first apostles, the friends we heard him sending out today to go tell all Israel that all God’s promises are about to be fulfilled here and now (yes, here – in this same stupid timeline where the worst leaders keep getting put in charge and wars spring up for the worst reasons and you can’t afford the eggs in the market – here all God’s glorious promises are sprouting).
He warns them that they’ll encounter rejection and resistance. I’m certain people laugh at them.
The idea that the reign of God – perfect justice, complete abundance, an entirely trustworthy community – is right at hand, right in front of us in this world that – to all our sense – is a hot mess (or a smoky, politically nasty mess), is pretty ridiculous.
Just as ridiculous as the idea that Sarah’s going to conceive and birth a healthy, holy baby at decades-past-menopause.
Just as ridiculous as if a messenger of God showed up here today, and told us that before the 2024 general election our country would be truly and happily united for an uncontested common good.
Or that by Christmas, gun violence deaths would drop to zero.
Told us that, and also told us that you and I – just us – are going to be the ones to make it real. To carry out the convincing and the adjusting and the rearranging to make it happen.
Because that’s the other thing about these big impossible promises of God.
Like Sarah carrying a child in her body, like the first apostles trekking around the towns of Israel, these promises of God involve us as active participants – as proclaimers of the kingdom, parents of the future, healers and prophets and hope-givers and hard workers.
You and I – just as we are – tired or enthused, broken or whole, too young, too old, too busy, ready or not – you and I are going to totally change the world by this time next year.
Wouldn’t you laugh?
I mean, God must be joking.
(Or crazy, that’s a possibility.)
And you might expect other folks to laugh at us if we say “yes”.
But it might – it might – be… fun?
Amazing.
Awe-some.
Maybe – just maybe – that first sharp “Ha!” of disbelief can flow right into the laughter of delight. The laughter of the sheer audacious high of launching ourselves into the impossible.
What if we were laughing with God?
Sharing the joke that a handful of oddly assorted people who definitely did not sign up to change the world (along with maybe a couple of people who did sign up for that but no one took them seriously) are right in the middle of God’s impossible promises coming true.
I suspect God’s got enough of a sense of humor to appreciate just how ridiculous these promises are, all things considered, and to want to share the joke with us.
The joke that all the promises are true.
In spite of the biological, physical, political, practical impossibilities.
I suspect God may often be inviting us to laugh with God in the face of disruptions and surprises. To share holy laughter that recognizes that indeed, nothing is as it should be, and that God’s promises, our wholeness, the success and completion of God’s love, cannot be defeated as things go wrong.
I have caught glimpses of this shared and holy laughter in celebrations of Pride Month – an observance that includes both revels and ridicule – and in which that laughter is healing.
The revels and laughter affirm the promise of true welcome, equity, and joy for all humans as they live into the truths and loves that make them their whole and holy selves.
And at the same time, the laughter acknowledges how far we still stand from that inclusive promise, how necessary it is to defy – to laugh in the face of – fear or hate or pettiness or powerful self-interests that tear down the love and promises here and now.
This holy laughter renews us for the ongoing work of being people who help God make those promises true.
I’m still learning about the celebration of Juneteenth, which we mark this weekend, but I suspect that celebration, too, may partake of the kind of holy laughter that affirms the promise of equity, freedom, and abundant life in the face of all the ways our history and present have broken, twisted, or delayed that promise.
To celebrate the gift of freedom, to acknowledge the bitterness of freedom delayed, and still insist that promise will be fulfilled is perhaps one way of laughing with God in God’s now and our not-yet.
Laughter that renews us as we help God make those promises true.
This morning we heard Sarah claim that holy, healing, joyful laughter with God as she holds her absurdly impossible son in her arms. The story doesn’t specify, but I deeply hope she – and Abraham – also laughed with God when that child hit the terrible twos or threenager stage, when they were worn out with parenting and still – still! – right in the middle of the ongoing impossible promises of God.
I hope the first apostles laughed with Jesus, when they were out on the road and people ignored them, or laughed at their offers of healing, or their proclamation that all God’s promises were becoming real here and now. Laughed as they remembered that no matter what anyone said, no matter how big their failure in this particular village, they were already deeply, powerfully, connected to the love and miraculous power of God, vividly real in their beloved Jesus.
I hope you laugh – I hope we laugh – over and over, with God, at the joyful absurdity of God’s love and power blossoming within and around us, right in the middle of one more disappointment, or failure, or roadblock.
I hope we laugh with God every day, sharing that holy laughter that renews us, abundantly, eternally, for the ongoing commitment of being people who help God make those impossible promises true.
