The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 6, Year A, 2008, June 15, 2008, St. Bartholomew’s Church Nashville

“The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, `Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” (Gen. 18:13-14).

Strange things are going on out there in the culture. I read somewhere the other day that some folks draw a lot of their information about the world and what’s happening from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, a program on the Comedy Channel that mixes satire and interviews with reporting on current events. Its intellectual antecedents are more with Saturday Night Live than with Walter Cronkite, but for many folks it’s their daily news. Don’t mistake me: I’m not complaining. I like a good laugh. Apart from my own quick read through the morning paper, and a few minutes of National Public Radio, Jon Stewart’s show is my own closest brush with daily news reporting.

That people might gain their information about the world from a comedy program makes more sense than you might think. There’s an ancient connection between understanding and humor; between our apprehension of the truth and the brilliant burst of comic recognition that goes with laughter. There’s a longstanding tradition of social satire in the novel and in political commentary; just think of Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, for instance. The Daily Show is only the latest in a long tradition. Even preachers (like Dean Swift) have been known to use humor, and with good reason. There are parts of life that are absurd, and it’s good to recognize them and even to laugh at them. But even when we’re laughing, we recognize the truth, don’t we?. Laughter even has the power to transform us, opening us up through the great belly laugh to new insights and understanding and a different apprehension of the truth.

So now we come to the place in our first reading where Sarah laughs; to the point at which absurdity and truth come together in the nervous giggle. There’s no satire here, but there is an announcement of something that is unbelievable, the absurdity that Sarah can conceive and bear the son that husband Abraham has been waiting for so long. The idea is comic, absolute nonsense, but it is also God’s plan. Comedy conceals as well great joy, the laughter and happiness that wells up within us when God is at work. As our reading says, “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” God is bringing into being a People, from which the Savior will be born, and new life appear. Truth is being revealed, human limitation uncovered and exposed, and God’s power is shown forth in Sarah’s comic situation. “Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’” (Gen. 21:6). Who says God doesn’t like a good joke?

God’s call has a comic dimension, no doubt about it. When Jesus calls the disciples to follow him in our Gospel today, he’s doing something as improbable as making Sarah a mother. He’s taking a rag tag group of folks and calling them to constitute the new community of faith, an act of playful humor if there ever was one. Our own call has its own comic dimension as well. We recognize the humor even as we come to know the truth.

Sarah’s laugh, of course, is a nervous one; laughter in the presence of disturbing truth. It’s not the laugh of doubt so much as the laughter of someone who is convicted, in spite of herself. It’s the laughter of someone whose life is about to be transformed in the service of God, and who recognizes what absurd lengths God will go to.

Can we own the humor of our situation, acknowledge it with a transforming laugh that let’s God know that we “get it”? It’s ridiculous that God should call a person like Sarah, folks like the disciples, but can we recognize ourselves in them and give ourselves up to a good laugh? Today is a day for holy laughter, a day of great joy, as we recognize together what God is doing in our lives. In the lives of these persons, being confirmed and received today; but also in our lives, as God transforms us. “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” I don’t think so. God’s at work, and the joke’s on us.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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