Homily for Proper 6, Year A

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA

Lectionary Texts:

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)

I come from a family of people who laugh.  I wasn’t necessarily raised to have a stiff upper lip, nor was I encouraged to let my feelings spill out freely for all to see.  But I was taught in word and example that there was nothing that could happen in this lifetime that could separate us from the love of God, and there was nothing that couldn’t be made more bearable through laughter.

We are that family who tells jokes at funerals. Tears of sorrow often mingle with tears of laughter. I have a bittersweet but beautiful memory of my Dad finding enough strength during his final hours of life to whisper a joke, a rhyming “punny” Dad joke at that.  These times of laughter aren’t ways to escape the hard realities of life.  From these moments, I’ve learned that laughter can be a doorway that helps us welcome unexpected joy in the midst of encountering the sobering realities of life. 

So, as you can imagine, the story of Sarah, Abraham and three messengers of God resonates with me in ways both human and holy.  My parents chose my namesake well. I can actually imagine myself in solidarity with Sarah listening in to this conversation, hearing repeated a prophecy which my heart still wants to believe while my mind and body wrestle with the unshakable realities of aging.  Sarah could have been angry, bitter, hopeless or despondent.  Instead, she hears spoken once again the promise God has made: not only to Abraham, but to HER.  I can imagine that she rolled those words over and over in her mind hundreds of times over the years.  Even when she lost confidence in herself and made short-sighted choices to control the situation.  God didn’t abandon her.  But standing there in her tent, listening in to this conversation she heard that prophecy again and, our story tells us, she laughed at the core of herself.

I’ve been imagining this story and thinking about Sarah’s laughter all week.  It feels like grief marinated in hope, the kind of hope that cannot be spoken out loud for fear of ridicule.  It feels like the kind of dream that we only dare to dream of in solitude, when no one will accuse us of being too naïve, too out-of-touch, too self-centered. I think it is revealing that the words we are told that she said as she laughed to herself were, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” and to know that Hebrew word for “pleasure” implies a luxury and a delight.  Sarah wrestled with her worthiness  and capacity to bear God’s promise.  And yet, there was a space of hope in Sarah’s soul that never dissipated.  And I imagine that her laughter was as much filled with the possibility of delight as it was with doubt.  If God saw Abraham’s seed of faith and reckoned it to him as righteousness, God heard Sarah’s laughter and honored it as an ember of hope that would soon ignite into holy delight.

This story of God’s steadfast providence through the harsh realities of our lives repeats over and over again through our Holy Scriptures.  We humans don’t always get it right.  We try to figure out how to manipulate the situations of our lives to get to that thing that we believe God wants for us, rather than opening ourselves vulnerably to the unfolding of our journey with God wherever it may lead.  We become disappointed and disillusioned, and we can begin to doubt whether God is present with us on the journey at all.  And out of nowhere, God shows up for us in the faces of strangers and we find ourselves entertaining messengers of God’s redemptive love even when we least expect it.  It might make us laugh, like Sarah.  It might give us hope even in the midst of our sufferings as we hear in today’s lesson from the Epistle to the Romans, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

At all times and in all places, God is showing up to us in ways that are bewildering, ridiculous and unexpected.  And sometimes we ourselves are the agents of God’s gifts and messengers of unexpected delight.

Let me repeat that so we can open our hearts to really hear it:

Sometimes we ourselves are the agents of God’s gifts and messengers of unexpected delight. 

Maybe that statement makes you laugh, like Sarah.  It often feels like we are burdened by the needs of the world; we have enormous amounts of work to do and the needs and concerns of the world in which we live overwhelm us.  And that may be true.  But what if God is asking us to show up and be present to the lives that we lead and the people that we encounter exactly as we are? What if God is working through not only our gifts, but also our struggles and confusions to be present to others in this world, through our own willingness to be agents of God’s mercy, love and grace in a hurting world. 

The disciples in today’s Gospel lesson didn’t accomplish the miracles of curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, and casting out demons on their own merits, strengths or authority.  They went out to the people of God to whom they were sent and were charged with sharing the Good News with them: “the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  The disciples offered faithfully the message and reminder of God’s steadfast promise. All that healing flowed from God’s redemptive and transforming love, not their personal merits.  And I am positive that in the alleviation of pain, suffering and death there was also laughter and a great giving of thanks and returning to hope.

Sarah’s laughter was a human response to the surprising and overwhelming nature of God’s steadfast love, even when it seemed all hope was gone.  This is holy laughter, not bitterness.  She is invited by the messengers to own her laughter, but she once again becomes afraid.  She tries to deny it; but they note to her that she did indeed laugh. 

God sees us. 

God notices us. 

God loves us.

Exactly as we are.

I’ve read a few commentaries suggesting that Sarah was being chastised for her laughter.  But I think that interpretation emphasizes our fears, not God’s abundant love.  What this lesson goes on to tell us is, “The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised” and we know the rest of that story: Isaac is born to Sarah and Abraham, and the lineage of the chosen and beloved people of God continued.  And Sarah responded with her faith renewed and her delight evident, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

This week, I have held this image of Sarah’s laughter and pondered the ways in which it demonstrates a sort of holy defiance to the limitations placed on us in this world, whether by age or gender or any other defining characteristic of our humanness.  As I affirm my solidarity with my sisters who are ordained in the Baptist tradition who are standing in the strength of their call against the voices that seek to diminish their worth or question the veracity of their ministry; as we celebrate Juneteenth with joy and choose to be in community and elevate the liberation of formerly enslaved African Americans over the tyranny of the institution of slavery and oppression; as we celebrate pride and joyfully embrace the knowledge that all people are beloved and wonderfully made exactly as we are: we live in the hopefulness of Sarah’s laughter.  We choose to embrace the divine providence of love even while we recognize the pain and grief inflicted by social injustice in this world.  We laugh in defiance of the limitations of the world as we recognize that all things are possible with God.

So, I want to issue us all the challenge of welcoming Sarah’s laughter.  Whether it is the delight of encountering God’s presence in the midst of a hurting world; whether it is the joy of liberation as we join together across parishes in solidarity on Juneteenth; whether it is our willingness to be present as the face of God to a hurting world: we have cause to laugh rather than to despair.  We have reason to hold hope in our hearts: for justice, for healing, for reconciliation of a broken world filled with broken hearts.  God is bigger, stronger, greater and yes even more surprising than we could ever ask or imagine.  So, I invite you to hope boldly, to laugh proudly, and to open yourselves to being the vessels of the good news, sharing the message of God’s liberating, life-giving love for the world with every one we encounter.