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Sarah Laughed
Genesis 18:1-15 ~ September 19, 2004 By Kay Woike Genesis 18 tells us that God appeared to Abraham. This wasn’t the first time. Back when Abraham was about 75 and his wife, Sarah, 65 they heard God calling them to pack up and head for the Promised Land, a land of bounty, which would be theirs. They were also promised a child through whom a great nation would come into being. They had gotten the land, but there was no sign of a child. Sarah, now way past childbearing age, had resigned herself to the fact that she was barren. Some 25 years later, Abraham, snoozing inside his tent in the midday heat was interrupted by the arrival of three visitors. He hurried forward to offer them the customary, lavish, oriental hospitality. Back then you just didn’t let strangers pass on by. Water was brought for washing their feet and they were invited to rest in the shade while a meal was prepared. Abraham went into the tent and told Sarah to make bread. Then he ran out to where his herd was grazing and got a young calf for his servant to prepare. When everything was ready, Abraham kept the men company while they ate. Then they asked, “Where is your wife, Sarah?” She was in the tent, of course. In those days women didn’t eat with men. Then one announced: “I will return in due season and your wife will have a son.” Sarah, who was eavesdropping in the tent, couldn’t help laughing to herself at the absurdity of it all - a 75 year old woman bearing a child, or even enjoying the process of trying. “Why did Sarah laugh?” one of them asks Abraham. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Suddenly realizing that this was God’s messenger talking and that she has just laughed at God, Sarah is afraid. “I didn’t laugh.” “Oh, yes, you did,” says the Lord. Don’t you feel for Sarah? She had been childless for her whole life and had come to a level of acceptance. Her biological clock had stopped ticking, yet God kept harping on the idea of a baby. The best way she had found to deal with it was to treat the promise as some sort of a divine joke and to laugh - at herself, at the situation, and, yes, at God. It is often laughter which helps us get through the disappointments of our lives, through the tensions which occur in families, through the inevitable times of grief and loss that everyone experiences sooner or later. Humor can diffuse a family argument or conflict. Laughter can relieve frayed nerves and keep tears or angry words at bay. Who would have blamed Sarah if she had cried when the divine guest reminded her of the dream she had long since given up? Perhaps she laughed in order to hold back the tears. Humor is an indispensable ingredient which helps us deal constructively with the difficulties and the limitations we all experience as we grow older. It’s something we need, because whether we like it or not we are all aging. Unlike many other cultures where elders are treated with respect and revered for their wisdom, growing older in America is not considered something to look forward to. Many people equate old age with loss of faculties, energy and strength. We are afraid of barrenness - not so much in the childbearing sense, but in terms of lack of personal accomplishment and productivity. As I talk to seniors and think about myself, I find that the biggest fear about aging is becoming useless or helpless, a burden on others. So we try to delay old age for as long as we can. Whole industries thrive on helping people look and feel as young as possible, by enhancing, reducing or replacing defective or missing body parts. Humor helps us cope. There’s a story about a couple who returned to their honeymoon hotel to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. After retiring to bed, the wife said, “Darling, do you remember how you stroked my hair?” And so he stroked her hair. She reminded him of the way they had cuddled, and so they did. Then she whispered: “Won’t you nibble my ear again?” With that the husband got out of bed and left the room. “Where are you going?” cried the wife. “To get my teeth,” he said. There is no use denying the limitations which come as we age. We slow down. Our senses lose some of their sharpness. Our energy level drops. Some of us can relate to a reading known as “The Senior’s Lament.” An excerpt from it goes like this: “Everything is farther away than it used to be. It is twice as far to the corner and they have added a hill, I’ve noticed. I have given up running for the bus. It leaves faster than it used to. It seems to me that they are making the stairs steeper than in the old days and have you noticed the smaller print they now use in the newspapers? There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud: Everyone speaks in such a low voice you can hardly hear them.” While we don’t want to gloss over our limitations and problems, humor can puts them in a different perspective. Lapses in memory become “senior moments” which can happen whether we are 30 or 80. Laughter is essential to healthy spirituality. It recognizes the tragedy of the human condition, our finitude and our limitations. But by laughing we take them more lightly. While they have to be acknowledged they are not the last word - they do not finally determine how we should feel about ourselves or how we live our lives. Laughter is a reminder that no matter what our age or situation we still have a choice in the attitude we adopt toward it. One of the important task of aging is an assessment of our dreams and goals that might lead to some redirection of the hopes and plans we have been carrying with us. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The God’s have two ways of dealing harshly with us. The first is to deny us our dreams and the second is to grant them.” All of us have reached some of our goals and dreams, but they may not have made us feel as happy or as fulfilled as we expected. In the flush of achievement we may have wondered to ourselves, “Is this it? Is this what I was working toward all these years? At some point we all have to deal with our unfulfilled dreams, with what we might call “the nevers.” I’ll never be the head of the company. I’ll never be a great writer, a professional ball player, or a conference minister. I’ll never be rich and famous. While these discoveries may be disappointing, they are also force us to think about what we can do. What might still be out ahead of us? Sometimes letting long held dreams go opens up the door to new possibilities, activities and involvements. Free from old goals, we may gain a clearer idea of what we were meant to do and be. Gandhi was 50 before he realized his real mission was non-violent resistance. Cervates was older than that before he began a career as a novelist as was Grandma Moses, the great artist. Kathleen Fischer has suggested that reevaluating our expectations and illusions also allow us become freer to no longer expect as much of life. We learn that worrying doesn’t help us and not to use up energy in anxiety. We discover that most people are neither for us or against us but rather are thinking about other matters. We learn that no matter how much we try to please, some people are never going to like us. We discover that there are some conflicts that will never be resolved. We become more tolerant of the foibles of others as we discover so many of our own. We learn to live with things we can’t change about others, the past, our present situation, or ourselves, including our own bodies. Laughing about them helps too. Regarding the inevitable waning of his physical abilities, a 77 year old man wrote: “I seem to be in pretty good health, though getting out of bed in the morning makes the raising of Lazarus look like a cheap trick.” Another man said, “You know you’re getting older when in the morning you hear snap, crackle and pop and it isn’t your breakfast cereal.” And the great musician Eubie Banks said at age 93, “If I’d known I was going to live to be this old, I’d have taken better care of myself.” For me one of the great spiritual challenges of growing older is dealing with loss. Some people are lucky enough to encounter few experiences of grief in the first half of their lives. But losses often seem to come at a faster pace as we get older. There may be loss of health: Older people have more chronic illnesses and suffer more pain than younger persons. Half their social calendar involves medical tests and doctors. There is loss of productive activity: Retirement may mean ending work that may have given life meaning. Instead one finds oneself attending wakes and funeral services for ones older family and friends. Some of what made up the important fabric of our lives is now disappearing - close family, friends, a job, financial security. We also tend to take to heart the losses of neighbors, family and fellow pilgrims, as well as the sorrows of the world that come into our homes via the news media. When too many losses happen all at once, we feel lost and incomplete. While we need to attend to our sorrow and do our grieving, we can also come to trust that every ending offers the promise of a new beginning. A loss leaves space for something new to grow. However, it may take a while before we can see that. We can garner hope and support from others who have suffered painful losses and come through to the other side. Our losses may also be the impetus for us to mend relationships that have become frayed or broken and to tend more carefully those that are remaining. My brother recently told me about a divorced friend in his men’s group who rarely spoke about his children and seemed not very involved in their upbringing. But recently one of his children had a child and that child is all he talks about. At this stage of his life relationships, particularly with that grandchild has taken priority. The movie, The Straight Story, is about an elderly, disabled man who undertakes a several weeks long journey on his riding lawn mower to see his sick brother. They have been estranged for many years, but when he hears his brother is ill, he is determined to try to heal the rift. Perhaps the most challenging task of individuals and families at any age is to look forward with humor and hope. If we have experienced a lot of disappointments in the past, we run the risk of being hardened by life and limiting our imaginations about what is possible for us in the future. That’s what happened to Sarah. The harsh reality of her barrenness led her to hopelessness. She was resigned to live without a baby. The promise offered by her divine visitor seemed to her a bunch of nonsense. I suspect that that we have all had times when we felt this sense of hopelessness: What’s the use in hoping? Nothing will come of it anyway. There’s nothing good our there for me. But being able to laugh opens us up to see new possibilities in a situation, new possibilities for ourselves. In the Spring, we are told, against all odds Sarah did bear a child whom she named Isaac, which means laughter. I don’t often remember my dreams, but occasionally I have had dreams in which I was holding or caring for a child - mine or someone else’s - I’m not sure. Other people have told me they have had a similar dream. To me the baby signifies that God potential in each one of us that can bear newness into our lives after loss, after the death of certain hopes and dreams, or during a time of transition. It may not be clear at first what shape the new possibilities will take, how what is growing inside will develop, but a baby is a sign of promise. As we age we will all go through our own barren, fallow times when we feel unproductive, hopeless, unable to foresee anything new coming to birth. Life now, we figure, is pretty much as it will be and we shouldn’t bother to anticipate anything promising in our future. But the Genesis story tells us something different. It describes the possibility of still being able to bear fruit in every season of life. So welcome God with warm hospitality and then expect important things to happen through you. Refuse to believe you are barren. Continue to laugh. Believe that the God who blessed Abraham and Sarah is also blessing you. References: Brueggeman, Walter: Genesis Fischer, Kathleen: Winter Grace Johnson, Eric: A Treasury of Humor Raines, Robert: A Time to Live
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