God Gets the Last Laugh

"Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God."  -Karl Barth


Texts:

Psalm 69:1-5, 30-36

Genesis 17:1-13

Romans 4:1-12

"We say, 'Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.'  How then was it reckoned to him?  Was it before or after he had been circumcised?  It was not after, but before he was circumcised.  He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.  The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness recknoed to them, and who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised."

At what point is a person's faith sufficient to make them righteous?  What must we do to be declared righteous?  We want these questions to make a difference in terms of our life of faith.  If we could simply make a list of the good we have done and the bad we have done and tally them up to determine whether or not we were righteous, the whole story would be all about us.

If our lives of faith and if our righteousness is simply about what we have done or what we have not done, I think our story of faith would be pitifully short.  Genesis 17 is the second iteration of the covenant God made with Abraham.  In Genesis 15, we find the first mention of the covenant.  Abram, in this version, is passive; he cuts the animals in half but, before they were consumed, falls into a deep sleep.  It is during this sleep that "the LORD made a covenant with Abram," (Genesis 15:18).  Doubting he would have an offspring, Sarai gave Hagar to Abram so that she could have offspring through her servant.  The covenant in 17 extends not only to Abraham (recently renamed!) and his family, but also to those who live within his household as slaves, absorbing those on the margins into the covenant.  It is in Genesis 17, after the sign of circumcision, that Abraham is promised a son by Sarah.  He laughs, incredulous that he would have a son at 99 years old.  The promsie of offspring is mentioned a 3rd time in Genesis 18, followed by more laughter.

"And Abram believed and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."  Really?!?  Abraham's belief seems to go only as far as what he sees in front of him.  He laughs in response to the indication he will have a son by Sarah.  Sarah laughs as well.  And, perhaps the real characteristic of righteousness is that God always gets the last laugh.

So often, we think it is about what we do, that if we do more good than bad, we will be declared righteous.  What if it is more revolutionary than that?  What if righteousness is God looking upon us and saying, "Yeah, I know the lists don't add up; that the bad often outweighs the good and that the hard times make you doubt I'm here at all," and then making us righteous anyhow?  What if righteousness is the opposite of what we would expect; what if righteousness is nothing other than a child in the face of barrenness, nothing other than deliverance to people who cannot free themselves, nothing other than salvation in the face of sin and life in the face of death?  What if righteousness is the very place where God takes the world, shakes it up, and places it on its head because God has decided that the party wouldn't be the same without us?  It is here God takes the way we think the world works, our propensity to laugh when the promise seems too good to be true, and decides to laugh right along with us.