The Laugh Shall be First
a sermon based on Genesis 18: 1-15 (21:1-7)
by Rev. Thomas N. Hall

Ever wonder why one of the first places we turn to in the Sunday paper is the comic section? Solomon, a very wise man in the Bible, may have started this trend. He said, “A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but heartache crushes the spirit.” Could be translated I suppose, “A playful disposition will affect your entire outlook, attitude and health.

Rita Miller is a therapist at a hospital near my town. She works to get stress lowered in our lives, to stir up the healing process in our lives. Rita usually takes on some of the toughest patients at the hospital-those who have been told to get their house in order. The people who have absolutely nothing to laugh about. But Rita is a very unusual therapist-a laughter specialist. So she uses laughter in a healing way. She has experienced what Solomon discovered-a glad heart makes a cheerful face and is healing to the bones. I once watched her in action in front of aging adults. She knew that with the aging process, pain and discomfort had chipped away at their quality of living. So she began to tell us the difference between men and women. Within five minutes she got us to laugh at ourselves, the way we behave, and to get them to nod knowingly to the truth of what she said. She was terrific! God’s health clown.

Ever had this experience? You’re feeling down-maybe a bit depressed or discouraged when a friend comes along and lightens your load with some good-natured humor. Without thinking, you get drawn into laughter and the more you laugh the better you feel. Humorist Art Buchwald once said, “I went into humor because I had only two choices, either to be funny or to kill people. I owe my humor to my life in the orphanage and a series of foster homes. I found that the best way to get people to love me was through humor.”

I’m no humorist, but I love to laugh. No one ever says, “Hall, lighten up and laugh a little, stop being so serious.” Never happens. My moments of being serious are usually relieved by interludes of humor. Laughing at myself or laughing at someone’s funny story. After glancing through the serious headline news in the first section of the Sunday paper, most of us are ready to visit the funnies. The comics hold up a warped mirror so that we don’t take ourselves-or our situations-too seriously. And maybe for just a brief moment or two get rid of our serious scowls. Solomon was right: a cheerful heart is healing to the bones.

My first recollection of the contagion of laugher came-of all places-in the middle of a revival meeting. I was a bored twelve year old sitting in church with my mother. The summer night was stifling. The windows were open and some moths were flying around the ceiling lights. The evangelist had waxed eloquent for forty-five minutes and I had propped my feet up against the pew in front. Then it happened, completely unplanned. I admit it. I made a very natural but embarrassing noise. The noise was loud enough to turn all the heads in front of us. I turned and looked at my mom as if to say, “Shame on you.” So right in the middle of a very serious revival meeting the sounds of muffled snorts and wheezes and giggles broke out and spread throughout the right section of the church. Have you ever desperately tried to stop laughter once it picks up momentum? Just when you think you can contain it, you happen to glance into the other person’s eyes and you lose it. I could’ve died that night. My mom too. Instead we laughed.

All of this discussion about laughter leads us to an interesting story. The story has humor and a lot of belly laughter at its core. Frederick Buechner imagines the story like this: an old woman laughs. After a lifetime in the desert, her face is cracked and rutted like a six-month drought. She hunches her shoulders around her ears and starts to shake. Then she squinnies her eyes shut, and her laughter is all teeth and wheeze and tears run down as she rocks back and forth in the kitchen chair. She is laughing because she is pushing ninety and has just been told that she is going to have a baby. An angel has told her this piece of news, but she still can’t control herself, and her husband can’t control himself either. He keeps a straight face a few seconds longer than she does, but he ends by cracking up too. The angel smirks and tries desperately not to laugh. So he hides his mouth behind his wing. But still, you can see it in his eyes.

Not all laughter is healthy, of course. Laughter can be negative. Laughter can be entrenched cynicism and disbelief. We’ve all laughed at the wrong things, at the wrong times, and at persons or situations that left a bad taste in our mouth. Some laughter can masquerade as a refusal to believe. I have sat among clergy who have had this kind of laughter. I think they have lost their faith. “What a joke.” “We can’t do this.” “We can’t afford this youth ministry.” “Why are spending good money on El Salvador?” “Can’t wait until I retire.” I’ve heard that kind of sick laughter from clergy who had long ago made the slide from mission to maintenance. One minister told me that his church has been in maintenance since 1984. If we were without promise, without community, and without the Spirit, there would be plenty of things to scowl about, to glower about. If we just focus on our unfaithfulness, our lack of faith, our sin and shortcomings, our lack of vision, our dwindling resources and folks, sure there’s a lot to furl our brows about.

Abraham and Sarah start out with such laughter. Bitter laughter. Cynical laughter. They have by this time learned to live with their barrenness. They have resigned themselves to a closed future. Hopelessness is the norm. So when the gospel promise comes to them initially, they meet it with a laughter of unbelief. But their journey doesn’t end with a cackle of hopelessness. For God speaks a probing question into their future: “Is anything to hard for the Lord?” That is the question around which this entire story revolves.

That question is an open one and still waits for an answer from us. And don’t think you can skitter past this story and avoid the question either. The question surfaces everywhere in the Bible. It is the fundamental question that we all must answer. How we answer the question will determine our laughter. If the question is answered, “Yes, some things are too hard, impossible for God,” then we’ve failed to confess God as God. If on the other hand, we say, “No, nothing is impossible for God,” then we can fully entrust ourselves to God and no other. Then we can laugh at ourselves, laugh with God when he speaks his Word into our future. Abraham and Sarah will eventually shift from cynical laugh to a faith-filled belly laugh! They will laugh because God is going to shatter the confines of human limitations, break through the dark night of barrenness, and create possibility out of impossibility.

Sarah laughs-though it does take her nine months -because God has up and done the unthinkable. Her laughter is a bold surprise at what God is capable of doing. Her laughter is evangelical - we’re not left to work this out by ourselves. The God who promises life to our barrenness will be with us to very moment when God fulfills his promise.

Amidst all of our reasons why we should be serious at Annual Conference this past week, amidst all of the grave concerns about shrinking bucks, moral and theological confusion, sidetracking, and politicking. Amidst the quibbling over who’s racist and who’s not, I heard it. A pastor from the inner city got up and said, “Who would have believed that anything could happen in my church; we were as good as dead.” He went on to say that God had pulled the unimaginable on the unsuspecting congregation and that dilapidated church on the west side suddenly became a church again. The church grew beyond the wildest expectations. Another pastor told us that in the past five years twenty-five small groups have sprung up at their church. So many more want to join that they now have a waiting list. Laughter broke out among another congregation in Allentown. The pastor and congregation got tired of the dwindling numbers and turned to God in earnest. Then laughter broke out among the youth when they found out that they had raised more money than the adults for their missions trip. “But they’re not professional fundraisers, they’re kids-“ But . . . Oh, go ahead and laugh!

Sarah laughed a belly laugh of astonishment-at God’s ability to do the impossible. So you have probably guessed what happened nine months later. Nine months after God promised the ninety-year old a son. Yep, it happened. But you would not have a problem picking it out in the maternity ward. The nurse is going through checking on the babies. “Oh, hi, Bruce, hi Betty, hi little Barbara.” But when she gets to Sarah and Abraham’s little cutey, she says, “Hey, somebody messed up with the Abraham baby. Why some joker has written the name ‘Laughter,’ on the crib.” Isaac in the Hebrew language means, “Laughter.” Sarah and Abraham finally get the joke and celebrated God’s humor by naming their baby, “Laughter.”

But God has the last laugh . . . for from Isaac, the humor of God will carry out a much larger plan . . . to bless the entire world through people like us who can laugh with God . . . what a hoot! Amen.