The Rev. Catherine A. Caimano
Proper 6A – Genesis (18:1-15, 21:1-7); Romans (5:1-8); Matthew
(9:35-10:8,9-23)
June 15, 2008
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Wichita, KS
‘Oh yes, you DID laugh.’
Of all the words of God we hear, these are among my favorite. Poor
Sarah – poor, bitter, tired Sarah. Old and sad and losing hope
and far beyond the belief that she will ever bear children, when she
and her husband Abraham are visited by three strange men, and they
ever so casually mention that by this time next year, she will have
a son, she is so shocked and so weary that she just laughs right out
loud.
Then, when she realizes that God is part of the picture, she tries
to deny it. But God gives it right back. He’s not
condemning her, he is practically teasing her in his gentle rebuke:
Oh yes, you DID laugh. What, you think you can pretend with
GOD? You think God doesn’t know what’s going on in your heart?
You think God doesn’t keep God’s promises? This is not a
punishing God. This is God as a gentle Father, in an intimate
exchange with his hurting, bewildered daughter.
The people who put together our lectionary, the set readings
that we hear each Sunday, have given us a great gift this year –
for a good part of the summer, we will be reading along with the
great stories of Genesis, we will spend some time with many of the
major characters of the Old Testament – two weeks ago we heard
about Noah and the flood, last week was God’s promise to Abraham
that he will be the beginning of a great generation, and today we
find Sarah having her patience tested in more ways than one.
In today’s story, Sarah is having a really bad day. She’s old,
it’s noon, it’s hot, and a couple of strangers show up and Abraham
wants her to make lunch. Sure, it’s the Lord, but Sarah doesn’t know
that yet, because she just sees these men, and Abraham invites them
in and tells Sarah to get busy making them a feast. And it IS her
job to prepare meals, and the custom to show hospitality to passing
strangers, and she quickly bakes some bread and serves them.
And it would have been enough to just accept the hospitality, But
instead, one of these strange men, one of these GUYS, says something
outrageous, something truly out of line. ‘In nine months, you will
have a baby.’
That’s not funny.
That’s kind of cruel to say to a person who has been waiting her
whole life for just this sort of thing, and now it is too late.
It is a horrible thing to say to someone who has been so devastated
by her childless state that she let her husband sleep with the maid,
Hagar, and now Hagar has a son, Ishmael, and Sarah is wracked with
jealousy and regret in addition to her disappointment.
NOW she is going to have a baby? ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now
that I am old?’ she asks, with what I can imagine is just a hint of
sarcasm. And she laughs. And I am betting that this is not a laugh
of joy.
And how can we blame her? We have all believed in something
and had it fall apart. We all know what it is like to place
our trust and to have it betrayed. We know what it is like to
wish and to pray and to hope for something every day and then not
have it come true. We know what it is like to have
everything going our way, and just then, tragedy strikes.
Of course Sarah laughed!
Shall we indeed bear children now that we are old? Shall we
have marriages and careers and healing now that we have endured
divorces, layoffs and illnesses? We have seen too much to believe in
happy endings anymore, and so we insulate ourselves as best we can
against the risk of disappointment.
We live in the real world, we fortify our lives with work and
minimize our stress and our relationships and our expectations. And
everything seems ok. But not quite.
Because underneath all of our busy-ness and efficiency and realistic
goals there is still the part of us that longs for our wildest
dreams, our deepest joy. For the answer to all of our prayers.
And the thing that gets to me, in God’s rebuke to Sarah, the thing
that she misses in the moment when she is all about making the meal
and dealing with these strangers, is that God HAS come to her.
She doesn’t recognize it, it doesn’t look like she hoped it would,
but the truth is, just in the moment that she thinks that she is
extending herself to visitors in her home, that is the moment that
God is offering HER hospitality.
That is the moment when she is about to realize that we don’t invite
God into OUR world, God invites US into God’s world. We want God to
come here and explain why we don’t get what we want in the real
world, why we are not always strong enough to make everything work
out and why earthly things break and people leave and plans collapse
and dreams die. And God wants us to come to God and understand
what it means to have eternal life.
Jesus gave his life so that we can be sure that Love is the
strongest force in the universe, stronger than death, more
substantial that all our disappointments, more beautiful than our
wildest dreams, and it sits right down at our table and lets us
serve. And the extent that we are willing to serve Love is the
extent to which we know that nothing can separate us from it, and
that there can be no tragedy in that.
But this can seem far too easy, and far too hard to believe in.
So here’s the good news: You don’t even have to be sure that you do
believe, you just have to sit and listen. Because the deed has
already been done, your life has already been paid for, and the
promise has already been made. But we have to be ready to walk away
from the frailty of earthly promises and listen to the surer voice
of God, even if it makes us afraid.
I can’t leave this job I hate because I need to pay my bills and I
would have to leave the city and what would everyone think…
Oh yes, you can.
I can’t fix this relationship because this problem has gone on so
long and what was done is unforgivable and how will I ever trust
again…
Oh yes, you can.
And what about tragedy? And illness? And random
occurrences that hold us back just when we think that we are going
to make it?
And I always start to think that maybe, just maybe, all the tragedy
and all the disasters and all the unkept promises in this world are
just the result of billions of people
over thousands of years saying ‘no’ to the promises of God, again
and again, so that we live in a world that is broken.
And then I think, that if all of us, just for a day, just for an
hour, or even a minute, if all of us really believed the outrageous
promises of God for just a minute, we could end hunger and
warfare and disease and hatred in a second.
But…
But that’s impossible. I mean, how could we get everyone
to believe in the same minute? And all the different belief
systems, how would we reconcile them? and what about
terrorists and fundamentalists and…..
And it’s gone.
Oh yes, you did laugh.
Poor tired Sarah, at the end of her hope, long past her belief in
God’s promises, found out at last that we only need one thing: The
love of a God that is so extravagant that it wants us to have
EVERYTHING. No kidding.
Nine months after the lunchtime visitors, Sarah gave birth to a baby
boy, and she named him Isaac, which means, ‘laughter.’
Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?