Genesis 21.1-7, Matthew 9.35-10.8
The Second Sunday after Trinity, 18 June 2023, Austwick, Eldroth
‘God has brought laughter for me’, said Sarah, having named her son Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter. ‘Everyone who hears will laugh with me’, she said.
Well, she definitely had a funny story to tell, the story of two old cranks, she and her husband Abraham, who in their dotage heard God telling them to look up at the clear night sky and promising them that they were going to have children, and as many descendants as there were stars twinkling in that sky.
We might picture Sarah’s eyes bulging with astonishment. What God said made her laugh - but this first laugh of hers was an unbelieving laugh, a cynical laugh, which she immediately regretted. ‘Were you laughing at me?’ God asked her. ‘Oh… no…’ Sarah lied. ‘Yes, you were, you were laughing at me’, God said. Whoops.
Michael Rosen, in his wonderful book How to Make Children Laugh, says that ‘Anxiety, surprise, absurdity and language-play all offer us a rich source for humour’. [1]
Anxiety, surprise, absurdity and language-play: we find each of these in Sarah’s story.
The anxiety of being told to leave the place where you’ve lived your whole life, to start a journey to some unknown land, however flowing with milk and honey it was promised to be.
The surprise - and that’s an understatement - of being told that after a lifetime of carrying nothing but the shame of barrenness, she would bear a child.
The absurdity of falling pregnant in her nineties to a husband turning 100.
And the language-play: ‘God has brought laughter for me’. That’s funny from Sarah, it’s a beautiful joke, naming her child laughter, remembering how she first laughed cynically at God’s promise, and now she found herself giggling, chortling, joyfully dancing with glee, at that absurd promise having been fulfilled.
It is God’s delight to bring laughter - to those least expecting it.
Laughter brings relief to those who are anxious, says Michael Rosen. ‘Relief is a critical part of humour,’ he says. ‘If we think of anxiety as being a full bladder that we can’t admit to, then laughter is the moment when you can get to a loo and have a pee. It’s the release of the anxiety-bubble. … Part of the comic technique is to fill the bladder with as much tension as you can.’ [2]
And how God fills Sarah’s story with tension. Years pass between God’s first announcement and Isaac’s birth; and during this time the book of Genesis records Abraham bargaining with God to save the few righteous men of Sodom, Lot’s wife being turned to salt, Abraham watching Sodom and Gomorrah going up in smoke, Lot’s daughters tricking him into making them pregnant, and finally, after wandering around the region of the Negeb, the ridiculous episode of Abraham causing great confusion between himself and the local King Abimelech by pretending that Sarah was his sister, with the local womenfolk losing the ability to bear children until God restored them. Living through all of these bizarre situations, Sarah must have often thought, well if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry. [3]
After so very long, the release of the anxiety-bubble comes in the line which says, ‘The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him’. What a relief. What a release.
Sarah began this odyssey by laughing at God… in doubt, perhaps, in anxiety or fear; and she ended this astonishing prolonged episode in her already very long life by laughing at herself…. laughing as her initial lack of faith was superseded by a joyous realisation that God had done what he promised.
‘Humour is … a prelude to faith,’ wrote Reinhold Niebuhr; ‘and laughter is the beginning of prayer.’ Humour and faith are intimately related, he wrote, because both deal with the incongruities of our existence. ‘Laughter is our reaction to immediate incongruities and those which do not affect us essentially. Faith is the only possible response to the ultimate incongruities of existence, which threaten the very meaning of our life.’ [4]
Laughter cannot replace faith; it is inadequate as a full response to life’s complexities, challenges and tragedies; we cannot entirely laugh our way through life.
Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that ‘To laugh at life in the ultimate sense is to scorn it’. Maybe ‘a fitting response is for each of the people involved to step back and gain the balance, perspective, and sense of proportion necessary to match up against the incongruities besetting them. In this way, Niebuhr explains, humour is a starting point in the life of faith. Religious faith offers the deep insight that the incongruities of life do not need to defeat us. An ultimate victory over powers that seem insurmountable is possible.’ [5]
Laughter comes when we hear that Woody Allen quote, ‘I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens’. [6]
Faith comes when we can be there when it happens, because we’ve learned, through experience, to trust our life, and the hour of our death, to God.
‘God has brought laughter for me’, said Sarah. It is God’s delight to bring laughter - to those anxious about big changes coming late in their lives, anxious about being wrenched away from everything familiar, about journeying into the unknown, about losing a sense of belonging.
The 19th Century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard claimed he could not live without humour. On one occasion, he wrote of a dream he had when he was young:
Something marvellous has happened to me. I was caught up into the seventh heaven. There sat all the gods in assembly. As a special grace, there was accorded to me the privilege of making a wish. "Wilt thou," said Mercury, "wilt thou have youth, or beauty, or power, or long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any other glorious thing among the many we have here in the treasure chest? Then choose but one thing.”
For an instant, I was irresolute, then I addressed the gods as follows: "Highly esteemed contemporaries, I choose one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." There was not a god that answered a word, but they all burst out laughing. Thereupon, I concluded that my wish was granted, and I found that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste. [7]
Notes
[1] Michael Rosen, How to Make Children Laugh. p.30
[2] Michael Rosen, How to Make Children Laugh. p.11
[3] See Genesis Chapters 15-21.
[4] Reinhold Niebuhr, "Humour and Faith" in Discerning the Signs of the Times - Sermons for Today and Tomorrow. Quoted in Doris K. Donnelly, Divine folly : being religious and the exercise of humor. Theology & Religious Studies. 64, 1992. [PDF]
[5] Doris K. Donnelly, Divine folly: being religious and the exercise of humor. Theology & Religious Studies. 64, 1992. [PDF]
[6] Widely quoted online.
[7] Thomas C. Oden, ed, Parables of Kierkegaard. Quoted in Doris K. Donnelly, Divine folly: being religious and the exercise of humor. Theology & Religious Studies. 64, 1992. [PDF]
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