Go West, Old Man: Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 - Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

It’s said that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. But sometimes we laugh when God tells us his.

This is what happens in today’s reading from Genesis. Twenty-four years prior, God appeared to Abraham and told him to leave his home in modern-day Southeastern Iraq and go west to a land God would show him. God promised to give him the land and make of him a great nation. 

But there was a problem: Abraham and Sarah had no children. After eleven years of waiting, Abraham took matters into his own hands, and fathered a child with Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maidservant, and they named him Ishmael. But God promised to give Abraham and Sarah a child. So, they wait for another thirteen years.

Today’s reading begins with three strangers visiting Abraham at his tent. (Imagine living 2½ decades in a tent. This goes to show you how much Abraham and Sarah have “prospered” in the land God had given them.)

Arent de Gelder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As Abraham hurriedly makes preparations to host the three visitors in his home, one of them tells him, “By this time next year, your wife Sarah shall have a son.”

Sarah overhears what the man said from inside the tent and laughs. After all, she was close to ninety years old. Not exactly the age when a woman expects to become a new mom. If this was a joke, Sarah was justifiably fed up being the punchline.

Twenty-four years is a long time to wait. Think back to what you were doing in 1999, when Who Wants to be a Millionaire first aired and *NSync and the Backstreet Boys were battling it out for boy band supremacy. 

Twenty-four years ago, Abraham and Sarah likely assumed that they would live out the remainder of their days working in their fields and tending their flocks, just as they had for years. Then, God turned their lives upside-down, only to keep them homeless, childless, and often near starvation for 2½ decades. By now, God’s credibility was all but gone. There was no logical reason for them to believe what God had promised them. 

If we are being honest, we believe many things which are, based on the available evidence, quite ridiculous. We believe that God rules the world in love, despite all the suffering and evil. We believe in a Savior who was crucified and rose from the dead. We believe that faith God’s grace is made perfect in weakness, and many other things which people laugh at us for believing.

Some other laughable beliefs include that a church like ours can grow in spirit and membership… That neighbors will respond to our ministry with faith… That we can radically transform lives and communities … That God will make a way when there is no way…

In Sarah, we see how difficult it is to keep the faith and stake your life on the promises of God. 24 years was a long time for Sarah to bear the shame for something that was absolutely not her fault. Back then, childlessness was interpreted as punishment from God, with 100% of the blame falling upon the woman. So, too, was the failure to bear male children. 

Another sad twist to the story is that by the time the Ishmael reaches age 14, God tells Abraham and Sarah send them away, because God had a plan to make a great nation of him as well, though they are never spoken of again. 

Any way you look at it, it’s a daring and costly thing to stake your life on God keeping a promise. God can keep you waiting a very long time, and in that time, you will face difficulties, disappointments, doubts, and dangers. 

God is not in the business of instant gratification. Praying and having faith isn’t like putting coins into a vending machine and getting a can of Coke. Salvation doesn’t happen within 30 minutes, or your pizza is free. The way of trust and obedience is paved with struggle, hard work, uncertainty, waiting, and even failure. God doesn’t put these things in your way to make your life difficult. Rather, they serve a higher purpose. If you feel like God is “testing” you, God is actually teaching you and strengthening you.

Show me a life of comfort, security, and predictability, and I’ll show you a life without Jesus. Show me a church that’s holding onto the ways of the past and is unwilling to take risks and embrace change, and I’ll show you a church without a future.

If God is going to call you to a life of divine significance, if God is going to do big things for you, you should expect to wait, to work hard, to struggle, and to fail. If we are going to be a church which reaches new generations for Christ, we should expect to pay the price and do the hard work so that our congregation will be transformed, and we as individuals be transformed. Most of life’s important lessons are learned through adversity. You cannot become the person God created you to be without divine discipline. You cannot comprehend the significance of God’s gifts until you are forced to wait for them. You cannot live in Christ before you die with Christ. There is no resurrection without change.

Remember that joy and amazement we felt last week when we reached our fundraising goal for the bell tower? That’s peanuts compared to the joy God wants for you. When the time is right, and God has made you ready, you will laugh joyously with Sarah as God fulfills his promise and accomplishes the impossible right before your eyes. But that won’t happen until you trust and obey.

God does not make promises that God will not keep. You have nothing to lose by trusting God, because God is with you today, and your future is in his hands. No one has ever trusted in God, struggled with God, waited for God, or died for God in vain. Faith begins by letting go. In dying, you come to new life. No matter what, God will have the last word and you will laugh at last.

18 The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. ² He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground. ³ He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. ⁴ Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. ⁵ Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” ⁶ And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷ Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. ⁸ Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

⁹ They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” ¹⁰ Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. ¹¹ Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. ¹² So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?” ¹³ The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴ 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.” ¹⁵ But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

21 The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. ² Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. ³ Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. ⁴ And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. ⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. ⁶ Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” ⁷ And she said, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” (NRSVue)