11.7.26 – No Laughing Matter
Sarah said, "God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me." (Genesis 21:6)
Have you ever considered why Peter lists Sarah as a heroine of the faith (1 Peter 3:6)? With all that we have learned about her, it seems that her life of "grim realism" is more accurate than Peter's praise.
Betrayal, abuse, vengeance, revenge, anger, frustration, misunderstanding, and humiliation seem to be the proper words to describe her—certainly not submissive, dutiful, or a role model of godly obedience.
But perhaps we have not really heard the story. Perhaps we are so familiar with the narrative that we did not hear the cry inside—the deeper reality beneath the common human reactions to the situations Sarah had to endure. When God finally addresses her concern—not having a child of her own—the famous "laughter" passage is engraved on our recollection of Sarah. But what we need to do is enter into Sarah's thought if we are going to really know who this woman was. And Sarah's thought is all about the impossibility of changing the way that human bodies work in the world. Sarah lives in the internal world of conception. When it is too late, some things just cannot be fixed! Abraham lives about promises. Sarah lives about menstruation.
Sarah's experience is direct, physical, definitive. Matter is intractable and encloses her. God is more effectively hidden in her world; hers, therefore, is a more difficult faith than Abraham's, which is based on promises and transcendent intimations.
Have you thought about Sarah like this? That her faith had to be even stronger than Abraham's. He only had to believe that God would accomplish what God said. But Sarah had to believe that something physically impossible would happen to her, in her. Her faith came from the inside out; Abraham's came from the outside in. Have you considered that with those around you?
Perhaps Peter was right. Sarah is a model for all godly women. Sarah believed that what was entirely impossible in every human sense could still happen. Everything in her experience said, "No chance!" Everything she knew about what it means to be a human being in this world shouted, "Too late!" And yet, she laughed. "Maybe it will still happen. Maybe the world is not what it seems. Maybe even my own body is still territory for the divine." Without laughter, it remains impossible.
When Isaac is born, Sarah laughed. "Yes, God did what I thought could never happen."
To laugh is to make a choice; laughter is two-faced: here for mockery, there for joy. For Sarah, it is joy. For others, it is mockery. They do not know that internal, physical faith. They see only the external. But does it really matter?
On this Sabbath morning, it definitely does.
Shabbat Shalom!
Alan
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