God Can Be Funny Sometimes (Chester UMC)

I love this, these two passages that we've read this morning

about laughter and and laughing and Sarah getting caught

laughing in Genesis chapter 18. Oh, I didn't laugh.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

I don't know. Yeah, you laughed.

I heard it. I heard it.

And then Sarah openly laughing in Genesis 21 as God's promises

at last fulfilled, and she has given birth to a baby, a boy

that she and Abraham named Isaac and name Isaac means laughter.

Laughter. They named their son laughter.

And it's fitting because God can be funny sometimes.

Now, to say that God can be funny sometimes begs this

question. Do we mean funny, strange or

funny? Ha ha.

And, and the fact is, yes, we mean both.

Sometimes God can be funny, ha ha, and we can laugh with

incredible joy gut, you know, bouncing, belly laughing, you

know, full throated, just laugh out loud funny.

God can be sometimes. And sometimes God can be so

strange and so weird and so different than what we expect

that we just have to laugh because it is so strange and so

weird and so different than we expect.

And we get both ends of the spectrum that we get to look at

and and reflect on this morning. So God's promise to Abraham and

Sarah in Genesis 18 was definitely funny.

Strange. Abraham was about 99 years old

and Sarah was about 85 years old.

And for 15 years now, God had been promising them that Sarah

was going to have Abraham's baby and that that through that line,

great nations would come and all of the world would be blessed.

And by this point, after 15 years of hearing the same

promise repeated over and over again, Sarah's 85 years old.

She knows she can't have babies anymore.

It's biologically impossible. People were not stupid back

then. They knew how the human body

worked in these things. And she knew.

And she heard the promise again, and she laughed.

Now she was quiet about it. And she wasn't even standing

with the folks or sitting with the folks where God was having

the conversation with Abraham. She was in the tent overhearing,

listening to what was going on and laughed to herself.

But God still hurt and God knew. But it was strange, it was, it

was funny, strange. Abraham and Sarah, both very old

by this time, Sarah long past the age of having children.

So she laughed silently to herself.

How could a worn out woman like me enjoy such pleasure,

especially when my master, my husband, is also so old.

I, I took the mind master out in one of the slides.

I didn't want to get into that Business Today.

I forgot to take it out of this one young.

Talk about that on your own when you get home.

I want to talk about the laughing part.

And I think there's a lot of humor and light hearted hearted.

I mean, there's so much dark at times in the scripture and and

it's easy to miss the humor and light heartedness.

But but when Sarah says how could a worn out woman like me

enjoy such pleasure, that's what she's talking about.

I mean, she we all know childbirth itself is not

pleasure. It's it's the making the baby

part that she's talking about here.

She's like, my husband's old. I'm old, how is this ever going

to happen? And this is this is what she's

laughing about in the tent to herself.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

And she can't help but laugh. There are times when God

interacts with us in this kind of way, when God makes promises

that seem so extravagant, so ridiculous, so impossible that

that the impulse is to laugh. Laugh because it's just dumb.

And and I think the church is kind of in the midst of that.

I mean, this was 15 years of promise here, right?

15 years since we know the first recorded promise that God made

to Abraham. It's been 2000 years since Jesus

said I'll be right back. And we still are waiting for the

fulfillment of that promise. And I don't know what else might

be happening in your personal lives, whether you've ever

experienced God promising you something and, and, and you're

still waiting and waiting and waiting.

And it seems like it, it might be impossible for that promise

ever to be fulfilled. I know of a woman, she's since

passed, who loved her son. She had a large family, 5 kids

and and her youngest son made some disastrous decisions early

in life and became significantly addicted to very powerful drugs,

blew through multiple marriages and and the the last the most

recent time she saw him after he was gone for years and years and

years. He came back and told her he was

dying of cancer and and would she please cash in the insurance

policy that she had for him. She had for some reason bought a

policy specifically to insure for treating cancer and turns

out he didn't have cancer. He just wanted the cash and and

that was the condition he was in when she died.

And it wasn't till after her death that he was sent to prison

because he had so many DU is And in prison he found Jesus again

and his life was dramatically changed and transformed and we

got out of prison. He was very much a different

man, became a pastor, a lay pastor and served a church and

cared for people and and and lived a wonderful, beautiful

life from that point on. He has since passed as well.

But that that mom never saw the promise fulfilled when her son

was born, when he was growing up, when he gave his life to

Christ, when he was baptized and and the hope that she had for

him, the dreams that she had for him, the prayers that she said

for him, and none of it was filled fulfilled in her

lifetime. God is strange.

Sometimes. God is weird.

God will, will, will promise things and we think we know what

we're being promised. And it turns out that God's

going to fulfill the promise in a way that's completely

different than we expect. Sometimes we try to make the

promises work out on our own. That's what Abraham and Sarah

did after years of not receiving the promise and then everyone

knowing Sarah's too old to have a baby anyway.

So, so Sarah gave her slave Hagar to Abraham and said, have

a baby with her. And and that has had that had

disastrous consequences for generations and generations and

generations afterward trying to make God's promises come true

instead of waiting for God to fulfill his promises.

And it's so hard. It's easy for us on this end of

it to look at Sarah and Abraham's situation and say,

well, they should have just been patient and trusted God.

But think how you would react if an 85 year old woman came and

told you, you know, God promised me I was going to have a baby

before I die. It's going to happen next year,

God promised me. You'd think this lady needs to

be receiving some care, right? You, you would think that it's

easy for us on this side of the story because we know how the

story ends. But when we're in the middle of

the story and we're waiting for the promise or God seems to have

promised something that's so extraordinarily impossible that

it can't possibly become come true.

And, and, and we despair or we give up or, or, or we, we just

laugh it off and say this whole thing is just crazy.

God can be funny sometimes and very strange sort of ways.

God can also be funny, ha ha. And God was funny, ha ha.

By Genesis chapter 21, just about a year later, Sarah had

Genesis 21 · chapter mention

apparently enjoyed that pleasure and Abraham too.

And now there's a baby and Sarah's nursing and she can't

help but laugh. She can't help but laugh.

Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he said, and the Lord

as he said. That's, I think, one of the most

important phrases in the Bible. The Lord was gracious to Sarah

as he said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised.

And Sarah said, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who

hears about this will laugh with me.

When God fulfills a promise, there is tremendous laughter,

there can be tremendous joy, tremendous surprise.

I mean, Can you imagine Sarah's relatives and friends and family

when they say Sarah's, Sarah's, Sarah's pregnant, Sarah's,

Sarah's? I will believe Sarah's pregnant

when Sarah has the baby. Sarah had the baby.

And wow, folks were just overwhelmed with joy as Sarah

was. What did she have to laugh about

at this, at this point? You know, I mean, there's a lot

of work going on with the raising a baby and 85 years old

and wow, now I got to raise a baby.

There's a lot of work going on with that.

What did Sarah have to be laughing about?

Sarah had the joy of being a mother, the absolute joy of

being a mother. Clearly she'd been longing for

this, for she was in her 8th decade.

I don't know how old she had to get before she started wanting

to have a kids of her own. But in a culture in which that

was what was expected, that that was the purpose of life for for

human beings to get married, to have children, to be fruitful

and multiply. This was this was still part of

the ethos then, as it is in many places still today, that one of

the reasons we're here on this earth is just what God said, be

fruitful and multiply. And here's Sarah for 85 years

with no multiplication, with no addition.

And now she gets the joy of being a mother.

She gets the joy of holding a baby and saying this is my baby.

The joy of nursing a baby, saying I'm giving this child

life from my own body. The joy of his first laugh, the

joy of his first kick inside the womb.

The joy of his first steps, the joy of his first words.

And Sarah was at that moment anticipating all of those joys

that she had given up all hope for.

God bless Sarah with the joy of being a mother.

God bless Sarah with the joy of a lifelong desire come true. 85

years or let's, let's, let's give her ten years of, of being

a kid and saying, you know, boys are yucky.

Maybe even, you know, 1215 years of that.

So everything. 70 years. 70 years of wanting a child, 70

years of wanting to participate in God's good creation in this

way, 70 years of wanting to fulfill what she felt she was

born to do. However many years she'd been

married to Abraham, of wanting to provide her husband with the

child. This lifelong desire that she

had given up all hope of ever coming true.

It was impossible. It was a laughable, It was

ridiculous. And now here it was, this thing

that she had hoped and longed for and dreamed of, and now here

it was. And God had done it in a way

that neither she nor anyone else could have ever anticipated,

predicted, or planned for. Nothing like this had ever

happened before. Ever.

A joy. A joy of the lifelong desire

come true. And Sarah had the joy of being

honored by those around her. Let's make no mistake about it.

In that culture, in that time, in that place, a woman's

purpose, a huge part of a woman's purpose, was to bear

children not here to judge or condemn or bless or praise

another culture that existed in another part of the world

thousands of years ago. But that was what she was living

in, and in her culture, surrounded by her community, she

would have been deemed inadequate.

She would have thought herself inadequate, not up to the task,

not good enough. Not good enough for God to bless

her with the simplest and most basic thing that most women get

to experience and do, having a child.

It would have been a shameful thing for her.

She would likely have been filled with guilt.

Guilt and shame that drove her to do to Hagar what she and

Abraham did to Hagar, and then be so angry about it afterwards

that she made it worse by abusing Hagar and and and

kicking them out. The shame, the indignity, the

inadequacy that she had experienced for decades in her

life now vanished in an instant. Well, nine months vanished.

Gone. No shame, no indignity, no

inadequacy. She has now done what no other

woman has done before. She has given birth after her

childbearing years. She has brought life into this

world, and she's nursing that life with her own body.

And now, far from being dishonored, she's being honored.

Far from being put down behind closed doors and in conversation

on the other side of town, now she's being lifted up and

praised and celebrated. Honored.

One of the most honored women in all of human history.

Sarah has become, and she has that joy.

Is it any wonder that she laughed that day?

Is it any wonder that she couldn't contain the joy that

was within her? And knowing that her experience

would bring joy to others, she laughed even more.

God can be funny, strange. God can be funny, ha ha, and can

give us reasons to laugh from deep within our souls, but we

need some clarity and accuracy here or we we stand to take away

the wrong things from the story. The point of this, one of the

amazing things that happened in this story is that Sarah

received what she had longed for and dreamed of her entire life,

that God gave her that. But that's not the point of the

story. That's a side effect of the

point of the story. The essential thing to take away

here is not if we pray hard enough and we just don't give up

hope that God will eventually give us what we are longing for

too. That message is not in the

Bible. Name it and claim it not, no.

If you believe it, you can achieve it.

No, that is not the lesson to take away from this.

That will undermine entirely and thoroughly the lesson and this

point of this entire experience that God shares with us in the

Scripture for clarity and accuracy, we have to get because

many, many, many faithful people die without getting the things

that they longed and dreamed for.

And sometimes they don't even happen after they die.

They never happened. There are faithful people who

live and die and will spend eternity in heaven without

getting things that they really, really good things that they

longed and hoped and prayed for. This, The essential take away

from this story is not if you name it, you can claim it.

If you believe it, you can achieve it.

The essential point here is about the faithfulness and power

of God, not the fulfillment of Sarah's hopes and dreams.

The main thing is the faithfulness and power of God.

God did what God said He would do.

And that's what God wants us to hear in this story, That God

made a promise that everyone thought was stupid and

ridiculous and impossible. And Sarah at least had the

courage to respond to that promise authentically and

realistically in that way. Even if it was quiet, she was

laughing at it. But God did it.

God did what he promised. God always does what God

promises. God will always do what God

promises. And even if all of the

circumstances in front of us seem to deny the reality of that

promise, that either is saying, I don't care what God said, he

won't do it or he can't do it. This is one of the, this is one

of the, the, the number one arguments of atheists against

Christianity that that God has not fulfilled all his promises.

And there are lots of promises and prophecies about Jesus

himself that are not yet fulfilled, not the least of

which is be right back 2000 years.

I used to have a watch there and that gesture worked much better

than it does right. There we go, 2000 years.

That's where I live now. God is faithful and God is

powerful and God will keep his promises.

If God has promised it, God will do it.

And, and God has made promises. I go to prepare a place for you,

a dwelling place for you, he said to his followers, many of

whom had no place to live. If it were not true, I wouldn't

have told you. Jesus said, come to me, all you

who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.

I know a lot of people that I've worked very very hard and

labored under great toil and great burdens till the day they

died. I will return.

I will never leave you or forsake you.

I have been and will be king over this entire universe.

My Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

When? I don't know.

I don't know. Since I was a little kid, I've

had preachers and, you know, on TV and other places telling me

it's almost here. It's all the prophecies, the

signs are fulfilled. There's birds in Israel and

there's war and it's just be. And we don't know.

It might be in 10 minutes, it might not be for another 2000

years. We don't know, but as people of

faith, we don't have to know when we don't have to know how.

All we are asked to do is believe that God will do what

God has promised he will do. And he one day will wipe away

every tear from every eye. And we'll all laugh together.

We'll all laugh together. If God has promised it, we will,

he will do it. So until then, let's be open to

the impossible. I I, there is this constant

tension in life. You know, we as parents, we know

we got to tell our kids often. Be realistic.

You know, I had very unrealistic expectations at Christmas time

every year because I believe Santa could make anything in his

shop. Couldn't understand why I didn't

get what was on my list. What's holding Santa back?

He can make socks. Why can't he make me?

ATVI don't understand. We got to teach our Yeah, and

I'm naughty. Let's.

We're going to leave that part aside for now.

Never even thought of maybe I was on the naughty list.

That didn't occur to me. So we, we, we at some level, we

teach, we teach our kids to be realistic, to temper

expectations and at the same time, at the same, and, and

that's important and that's valuable and that's necessary.

And at the same time, we have to cultivate within ourselves, if

within our kids, the capacity to be open to the impossible that

that God can do anything. I've spent a lot of time working

with kids and youth. I've heard the number of kids

that I have met that are going to be professional athletes is

extraordinary. And I don't want to crush

anyone's dream. God can do anything that God

wants to do. I always tell them have a Plan

B. I have a Plan B.

So I don't want to stomp on anyone's dreams.

But the number of times when God calls his people to do a thing

and the response is simply I can't do that.

I can't do that. That's impossible.

I don't have the influence. I don't have the wealth, I don't

have the money. I don't have the opportunity.

I don't have the time. I don't have.

We don't have. We can't.

We can't. We can't.

What's God calling us to do? What has God promised us?

Be open to the impossible. Trust in God's promise even when

it seems impossible and way overdue.

And then we can be igniters of joy by giving the gift of God's

impossible love, forgiveness and adequacy to others.

Here's one of the things that a lot of people, there's a lot of

things that people believe are impossible, that that they're

lovable, that they'll ever have anyone in their life that will

simply love them for who they are, not what they can do or

accomplish. That they can be forgiven that

the wrong that they've done the shameful thing or things that's

in their past, that it can be forgiven, it can be washed away.

It can be made so that their life is almost like it never

happened. A lot of people cannot believe

that they are adequate to the tasks that are in front of them.

If you spend time on social media today, there is an awful

lot of despair and dread about the future right now.

There's a lot of reason for that.

And I'm not going to get into all of the politics that behind

that's behind it. But when when everyone's

screaming about all of the disasters that are going to come

if they don't get their way and no one's people are, it's one of

the first generations, at least in American history, that has a

gloomy outlook for the future. That the future looks

impossible, that they're not adequate to it.

I'll never have enough money to own a home.

I'll never be able to afford an education.

I won't be able to afford the healthcare for the people that I

love. I can't raise a kid and make

them feel safe and loved and welcome and whole.

In this world, there are a lot of things that people believe

are impossible, but because we can believe in the impossible,

we can say to whoever, whenever, wherever, you can be forgiven.

You can be forgiven. You are loved.

I'll show you that. God can love you because I'll

love you. And if I can love you, God can

love you even more. And you are adequate.

With God, nothing is impossible. And no, we're not adequate,

maybe on our own, but you can take the next step.

You can trust in God. You can walk into the future

without knowing how the bills are going to be paid or where

the money's going to come from or where you'll find the energy

and the strength to do these things.

But just take the next step, do the next thing and trust in God

along the way. And God, God says that with His

Spirit in you, there is nothing you can't do.

That doesn't mean we can't take that hyper literally.

I will never be an opera singer or an NFL player.

Not going to happen. Not going to happen.

Good news is, that's not what God wants me to be.

I'm really glad that's not what God wants me to be.

Whatever God has called you to, whatever life God has put in

front of you, God will give you whatever you need to do and be

to live that life. And so we can face tomorrow with

hope and expectation because God has not brought us this far to

leave us. And that's true as individuals.

It's true as a society, it's true as a people, it's true as a

church. God has not brought the world

and the universe this far to wash his hands and be done with

it. God will do what God has

promised for the world and for us and for the people that we

meet. And by the grace of God, we

could ignite that joy in the people around us.

Nelson Mandela, I think, might be one of the greatest examples

of this kind of living that there is.

He spent 27 years in prison, 27 years.

And for most of that time he experienced horrible abuse and

deprivation. I'm and I'm forgetting there was

an I just just a reminder and I can't remember the island where

the prison was. Spent most of that 27 years

there with inadequate food, inadequate shelter, inadequate

clothing, often in solitary confinement, cut off from the

outside world. Allowed one guest and one letter

every six months. Made to sleep on a cold stone

floor with nothing but a thin straw mat.

Did hard labour in in quarries, quarrying limestone without

adequate protection that permanently damaged his lungs

and his vision. 27 years in prison and and during that time,

somehow, by the grace of God, did you know he was a Methodist?

There's something a lot of people don't know.

Nelson Mandela was a Methodist. He grew up a Methodist, raised

in the Methodist Church. We learned the grace and hope

and trust and power of God and, and during that time, he never

gave up hope. He even when guards were abusive

to him, he refused to be abusive back.

He treated them with dignity. He treated them respect.

He treated his fellow prisoners in the same way.

He took law classes. He he taught his fellow

prisoners how to live lives of dignity and respect and hope and

peace. In his book Long Walk to

Freedom, he had this to say. OOP, I closed that app boy,

messing up my timing here. I never lost hope that this

great transformation would occur.

His hope was the transformation of South African society from

horribly abusive, racially divided, dictatorial apartheid

in which he and everyone that looked like him was a second

class citizen at best. There have been that way for his

entire life and and it looked like there was no real hope or

possibility of change. But in prison for 27 years, I

never lost hope that this great transformation would occur, not

only because of the great heroes I've already cited, but because

of the courage of the ordinary men and women of my country.

I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is

mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another

person because of the color of his skin or his background or

his religion. People must learn to hate, And

if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.

For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its

opposite. You know what's impossible?

Someone to be imprisoned for 27 years as a political prisoner

and come out still believing that by the grace of God and God

eventually fulfilled that dream and that hope for Nelson

Mandela. Now here's the thing, if we, if

we follow God, if anyone decides to follow God for the laughs,

they are going to be sorely disappointed.

Much of the time when people come to me wanting to get

baptized, they often spend a good amount of time trying to

talk them out of it, or at least making it clear to them that

what they are committing to is not happy.

Happy joy, joy, life where everything hope and dream they

want is fulfilled. Our leader is described by the

Holy Scripture as a man of sorrows who experiences grief.

And how can we expect lives then, that are free from sorrow

and grief? But there are those times.

There are those moments when we see God's promises fulfilled in

our lives or in the world around us, and the joy just is

overwhelming. And we have the opportunity to

ignite that joy in others by sharing the impossible with

them. Hope, love, forgiveness,

adequacy, these are the promises that we have.

God can be funny sometimes. Because God can be funny, we can

laugh and help others to laugh as well.

In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.