From today’s Old Testament lesson from the Book of Genesis:

“Sarah laughed to herself . . . and the Lord said, ‘Why did Sarah laugh?’”

Why did Sarah laugh? Let’s explore Sarah’s reaction. To do that I ask you to do some remembering this morning. Do you remember when you were a child and going to school for the first time? You might not. It’s been a long time ago for some of us. Memory is sometimes kind. It often blots out unpleasant experiences, and for many of us the first day of school was unpleasant. Stop and think about it. Picture it in your mind’s eye: the child clings to the hand of parent. At one level, she wants to go to school, but at another level there is fear and dread, To leave the familiar, the familiar faces of mom and dad, the familiar surroundings of home, and to venture into the unknown world of school; to meet unknown people who are going to be his classmates: all of that is frightening.

Or think of other, similar experiences you’ve had: going to a party where you know no one; remember the desire just to make and excuse and stay home?Or going to someone’s house for dinner and you don’t know the hosts; or going off to college, or going into service, or getting married, moving to a new town: all of these are examples of leaving the familiar for the unknown. They are memories of screwing up our courage, of gathering up our trembling unsure selves and acting.

A sort of faith is involved in all of these situations. It is a hope that it will all turn out all right. But faith is more than hoping it will all turn out all right. Faith is not just a wild leap, a mindless gamble. The leap of faith is risk based on promise. Faith is risk based on promise.

So, why did Sarah laugh? To answer that let’s go back and recap the story of Abraham and Sarah up to this morning’s lesson. Abraham has always been seen as the supreme example of a person of faith. Abraham’s faith in God is a dominant theme from the earliest of the Hebrew scriptures to the latest New Testament reference. The writers of scripture saw in Abraham just what it meant to be faithful. The story of Abraham is the same story of God’s call and humanity’s response that is found throughout the Bible. After all, that is what the Bible is: a record of God seeking after us so that we might become what God designed us to be.

Abraham and his father’s family lived in Ur, which was located in what is now Iraq. It was in this town that Abraham married Sarah. The whole clan migrated north into what is now Turkey, to a town named Haran. Abraham’s call from God came to him there, “Leave your own country, your kinsmen, and your father’s house and go to a country that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation: I will bless you and make your name so great ha I shall be used in blessings … .” And so the 1500 mile journey of faith began. And so the life-time journey of faith began. First to Canaan (today’s Israel) where God told Abraham that it was this land he would give to his descendants (and we still see the violent results of that promise today). Then down into Egypt when a famine forced the nomads south; then later back up to Canaan.

The promise to Abraham was made through his descendants. That’s fine, if you have descendants, but Abraham didn’t. Throughout the long period of wanderings, God promised Abraham that his children and their children would be a great nation, a chosen people. And all the time Abraham and Sarah were childless.

It was the custom in the ancient middle east that if a wife was unable to have children, a slave could be her substitute in childbearing. So Sarah brought her slave, Haggar, into Abraham. And Ishmael was conceived.

You see, Sarah couldn’t believe that God’s promise would be fulfilled, at least not by her. So she decided to help God out! How many times have you decided that God wasn’t doing things the way you think he should, or wasn’t on your timetable? God’s timing never seems to be my timing. I understand Sarah. Sometimes I can identify more with Sarah than with Abraham.

That brings us up to today’s story in the first lesson. Three men come to visit Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah offer them the hospitality required by their culture and society. It quickly becomes clear that these are not just men.

(You’ve heard of entertaining angels unawares.) After dinner, the Lord, who is speaking through these mysterious visitors, asked Abraham where Sarah was. Of course she was in the tent…where women belonged! The Lord then promised that in the spring (nine months later) Sarah would have a son. Sarah was listening at the door of the tent. Remember, both Abraham and Sarah are old by this time, way past the age of child bearing. So Sarah laughed The Lord heard her laughing and asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Is anything too hard for the Lord?

And when her baby was born Sarah remembered her laughter and that’s what she named him, Laughter (Isaac). The rest of the story you know. Isaac was the father of Jacob, who became Israel, the beginning of the people of Israel.

Why did Sarah laugh? Because only a fool would believe that a woman with one foot in the grave was soon going to have her other foot in the labor room. She laughed because God kept making this ridiculous promise of children, a promise that it seemed would never come to be.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews said, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun. Faith is not being sure where you are going, but going anyway. It is a journey without a map. Tillich said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith. Faith cannot be proven or it wouldn’t be faith. Faith is not easy, at least not for me. If you think otherwise, fine. I rejoice for you. But I find faith hard work, a hard proposition. Dr. James Mullenburg, who, in another era, taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, used to say to his students, “Every morning when you wake up, before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say ‘I believe” for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again.”

The faith of Abraham and Sarah was not an easy thing: God called, God promised, they acted. They gathered up their courage and obeyed, moving out into the unknown on a promise, a promise that was not to be fulfilled in their lifetimes. Abraham knew, and Sarah learned, that God was faithful. Faith is based not on our ability to be faithful, but on God’s faithfulness.

God’s question to the laughing Sarah is a telling one, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” In a sense we are all Sarah. Mixed with our belief is our doubt. She discovered that God keeps his promises. Our faith is risked based on promise. Amen.