Everyone Who Hears Will Laugh With Me.

"If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I do not want to go there."  - Attributed to Martin Luther 


Texts:

Psalm 105:1-11, 37-45

Genesis 21:1-7

Hebrews 1:8-12

Sarah's joy in this passage is contagious.  Frederich Buechner's book, Telling the Truth, illustrates this beautifully (alas, it is one of the books that was left behind as we made our trek across the United States for internship year).  The lines that had formed a frown for so many years of hardship, of wandering, of being lost, now turned the opposite direction, as Sarah giggled to herself each time she remembered what had happened to her.  "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me."

She certainly had cause to laugh.  I wonder if she looked down at her 90 year old sagging swelling belly and giggled as she felt the life within her move, laughing from the inside out as she realized God is more strange and more ridiculous than she ever imagined. 

When we describe God, the words "hillarious," or "ridiculous," or "giving unnecessary abundance and undeserved promises," never come up.  We describe the majesty of God stuck out someplace in the vague unknown, even as God continues coming to us, bringing us laughter, bringing us joy, bringing us promises so ridiculous, so unnecessary, so over-the-top, that we shake our heads and giggle at the strangeness of the Gift.  

We are a people of the Gift, a people of the feast, a people of children in the face of barrenness, a people of who are home in our wandering.  Even during Lent, we embrace the gift of the ridiculous, the gift of the extraordinary coming out of the ordinary, of the God who so desires our laughter that the Creator would write a story that made no sense, give it to people who can barely understand it, and while they're scratching their heads, trying to figure it out, brings a twist that turns the whole thing on its head just to hear them laugh.

"Everyone who hears will laugh with us."  May it be so.