Despite the fact that once a year I plan an entire church service that revolves around humor, I do not consider myself to be funny. I definitely could not be a stand up comedian. I think that comedy is a challenging career to pursue in large part due to the fact that humor is subjective. What I find funny you may find cheesy or ridiculous or confusing. For example… Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers? He’ll stop at nothing to avoid them. Some of my favorite comedians are those who deliver their jokes with a straight face. Steven Wright is one of the best at this. He will deliver some hilarious one-liners without even cracking a smile. He’ll say things like, “I went to a place to eat that said ‘breakfast served any time’. So, I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.” Or this one, “Sponges grow in the ocean. That kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.” Humor is an interesting thing. For me, the humor lies in the unexpected joy. That moment when the punchline comes and it’s not what you thought it would be…in a good way.

Life can be funny at times. That humor is not always the sort of “ha ha” humor we might get from listening to a comedian, but it does often have the element of unexpected joy, moments when life does not go the directions we thought it would go…in a good way. If someone would have told me thirty years ago that I would become a pastor one day, I probably would have laughed in their face. In fact, I did just that when the chaplain at my college suggested I might make a good pastor. At the age of 20, I was still a pretty young Christ-follower. Having made the decision to follow Jesus at 16, I was only 4 years into my journey in my new faith tradition. I was also pretty shy. You would not catch me volunteering to pray in front of others, and the only public speaking I would do was theater or required assignments in my classes. I didn’t like school, so the idea of going on for a Master’s degree seemed ridiculous. I had different plans for my life. I wanted to be a musician. Lead the songs at church, write music, perform concerts with my band. That was my dream. But you probably know the old joke: How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plan. My plan was not what God had in mind.

Abraham and Sarah had longed for a child for years. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many, yet Sarah was barren. They had become so desperate for a child that Sarah gave Abraham her servant girl Hagar that she might conceive a child for him. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. As Abraham and Sarah moved into old age, they had given up hope and were planning that Ishmael would be Abraham’s heir. I imagine that Sarah was feeling pretty bad at that point. A wife’s main role in that culture was to bear children for her husband, but Sarah had failed to do that. She probably felt useless and hopeless.

So here are Abraham and Sarah traveling, as God had called them to do, and they have set up camp by the oaks of Mamre. Abraham was seated at the entrance to their tent during the heat of the day, when he looked up and saw three men standing near him. Now, the Oaks of Mamre were a sacred grove, so Abraham likely viewed the arrival of these men as some sort of message from God. Abraham quickly got to his feet and began to serve these visitors. He ordered Sarah to make some bread, and he sent his servants to prepare some meat to feed his guests. When the food arrived, Abraham waited while they ate. Upon finishing, one of the men asks, “Where is your wife Sarah?” How do they know her name? I wonder. Perhaps Abraham had mentioned her. Perhaps they heard him talking to her in the tent, though why would they not know where she is then? There are some questions here we don’t know the answers to, but Abraham doesn’t seem phased by any of that. He simply responds, “There, in the tent.”

This is when the conversation gets interesting. One of the men says, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Now, wait a second. Weren’t we just saying how Sarah was old and barren? As the text says, “[I]t had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” We learn later in Genesis that Sarah was likely in her late 80s when this occurred. Yes, that’s right. Sarah was ultimately 90 years old when she gave birth to Isaac. How many of you would like to give birth to a child at 90 years old? Sounds fun, right? It also sounds impossible. Even with the advances we have with technology in the medical field, I’m not sure a 90 year-old woman could safely give birth to a child. It just sounds ridiculous.

Now, Sarah was eavesdropping from the tent entrance and heard what the men said to Abraham. And when they said she would have a baby soon, she most certainly thought they had to be joking. The thought is so ridiculous to her that she lets a laugh escape her lips. And she says to herself, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?” Then the text says that THE LORD spoke to Abraham. I’m not sure how this happened that the Lord spoke to Abraham. Was it through the visitors? Did the Lord speak directly to Abraham from the clouds? The text doesn’t clue us in on that, and it doesn’t entirely matter for us as we try to understand the overall story. The Lord speaks to Abraham and says, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.”

Clearly, Sarah’s laugh was overhead and the Lord wants to know what she thinks is so funny. Now, Sarah must still be eavesdropping because she hears what the Lord says and she comes out of the tent and responds. “I did not laugh,” she says. But the Lord responds, “Yes, you did laugh.” Now, that may seem a little like a rebuke, but I don’t really think it is. I think the Lord is simply calling out the truth. She laughed. That’s a fact. But he doesn’t criticize her for it or make fun of her. He doesn’t scold her or threaten to remove the promise. The Lord just acknowledges the truth of the situation. And maybe that, in and of itself, is an acknowledgement that what has been promised to Sarah seems highly unlikely to actually happen. In fact, most people would say that it is impossible and could never happen. But God performs miracles.

God still performs miracles today. I know that some of you have experienced that. But the truth is that we often dismiss the possibility of miracles happening for us. We say that we are too old or too young or too poor or too busy or too shy or too weak or too afraid. But God likes to make us laugh. God likes to do things in our lives that seem impossible. It may not be giving birth at 90, but God does the impossible for us in smaller ways too.

Some time ago, April and I were in the car on the way to meet friends for dinner. We were headed down the road and our car started making a weird noise. It sounded like the tire was flat or something. I pulled over, got out, and walked all around the car to see if I could find the source of the problem. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong. No flat tires. Nothing dangling from the car. Nothing. So I got back in the car and started driving again. Same noise. I pulled over again to check. There was still nothing and now we’d wasted a minute or two of time checking our car. I got back in and continued driving. The noise was suddenly gone. As we got to about a block away from an intersection with stoplights just down the street, the lights for us had turned green. I was excited that we should make it through without having to stop. Just as I thought that, a semi-truck came barreling through the intersection at what had to have been at least 50 miles per hour. It completely ignored the red light. As it sped away, I thought to myself, “I’m sure glad we didn’t get to that intersection about a minute or two earlier or we would be dead.” That noise our car made was a little miracle of God to save us from what might have been. And you know what? The car never made that sound again.

God likes to do the impossible. Sometimes that is something small while other times it is something big, like having a baby at 90 years old. Singer/songwriter Amy Grant, between songs at a conference I was at where she performed, said to the crowd gathered there, “Dream big, because those are the dreams that God loves to make come true.” Sarah’s dream of having a son to be Abraham’s heir had been a big dream of hers for years. And now she was old. She had given up on the dream. But God had not given up on the dream. But at that point, the dream seemed so ridiculous, so impossible, that Sarah couldn’t help but laugh at the suggestion that it could still become reality. Comedian Bob Hope once said about laughing, “I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.” Sarah’s dream of having Abraham’s child had all but died. She had already grieved, the pain of it still raw in her memories. But that laugh, that burst of hope amidst the hopelessness, was a pin prick that began to let the light back in.

In a world so full of war and disaster and hatred and depression, we can feel weighed down and hopeless. We may feel barren and weary. Our hearts may have hardened and our grief turned to just painful memories. But God is just outside the tent. Our promise of hope is out there, preparing to surprise us, and probably make us laugh at its ridiculousness. But our God is a God of miracles. When all seem impossible, God makes it possible. When all seems lost, God finds a way. That is the hope we can hold onto. That is the little dot of light that illuminates the darkness. Hang onto that. Allow yourself to laugh at the ridiculous possibilities that may be out there just waiting for us. Dream big, knowing that our God loves to make big dreams come true. Trust in the goodness of God and watch what God may do. Amen!