Is Anything Too Wonderful for the Lord?
A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2023
The Rev. Robin Teasley
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. 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. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 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.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. 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.
They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” 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. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” 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? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”
The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” 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.”
Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
After spending a week with our five year old granddaughter, I was once again reminded why we have children when we are young. I discovered I could still ride a scooter, but my muscles complained the next day! Our bodies have this natural way of helping us have children while we still have enough energy to raise them.
People don’t usually procreate in old age. If they do, they wind up on social media – Al Pacino, at 83 has just welcomed his 4th child, and Robert De Niro welcomed his second child last month at age 79. Granted, the mothers of these newborns are much younger than Al and Robert, but that only makes Sarah’s case stronger in our reading from Genesis this morning. It excuses Sarah’s skeptical laughter, and we laugh with her, because we just don’t expect the elderly to have children.
As we heard in last week’s reading from Genesis 12, God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have many descendants and be blessed. God had to remind them of this promise several times. In Genesis 17:7 God reminded Abraham again, and this was his response: “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” That time, Sarah was out of earshot and it was Abraham who laughed.
In today’s text Abraham and Sarah host three visitors with the gracious hospitality that God’s people are expected to offer the stranger in their midst. These messengers were there to reiterate God’s promise and this time they wanted to be sure Sarah also heard it. And Sarah laughed. Perhaps she did think it was a ridiculous impossibility, that it was too wonderful for the Lord. Or maybe she was afraid, incredulous, jaded after years of disappointment. Maybe we can relate after waiting a long time for something and seeing no possibility or hope.
Sarah and Abraham are held up as models of faith, and they were, but make no mistake, they were not perfect. Abraham lied that Sarah was his sister and gave her to Pharaoh to save his own neck. Sarah demanded that Hagar and Ishmael, Hagar’s son with Abraham, be cast out into the wilderness because they reminded her of her barrenness. These are only two examples of their human imperfection. They were sinners just like the people around them then, and as we are today.
Eugene Peterson, biblical scholar and translator of the Message, commenting on the imperfection of biblical characters, puts it this way:
The history in which our Scriptures show that God is involved is every bit as messy as the history reported by our mass media in which God is rarely mentioned apart from blasphemies. Sex and violence, rape and massacre, brutality and deceit do not seem to be congenial materials for use in developing a story of salvation, but there they are, spread out on the pages of our Scriptures. It might not offend some of us so much if these flawed and reprobate people were held up as negative examples with lurid, hellfire descriptions of the punishing consequences of living such bad lives. There are punishing consequences, of course, but the fact is that all these people, good and bad, faithful and flawed, are worked into the plot of salvation. God, it turns out, does not require good people in order to do good work. God, we realize, does some of his best work using the most unlikely people.(1)
This sounds like pretty good news, doesn’t it, that God will keep the promise even when we don’t or cannot; that God is present in every circumstance even when we cannot recognize the holy presence right in front of us.
Have you ever moved from the laughter of disbelief and impossibility to the laughter of joy and fulfillment? From cynicism and doubt to hope and possibility?
Have you ever looked back on a once impossible situation and your unmet desire for that situation, and been able to see that indeed God was there all the time and that the answer was not at all what you asked for but was exactly what you needed?
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What is impossible for you in your life right now? Are you able to entrust this impossibility to God? Your greatest loss, your deepest fear, your biggest failure or regret, your certainty that nothing can change? Timing is everything and God’s work takes time. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit priest has prayed, “Trust in the slow work of God.”
Look for God’s presence in your life, especially in the most unexpected people and places. When have holy visitors blessed your life?
Sarah did conceive, and bore a son they named Isaac, which means laughter. Sarah was then able to say, “everyone who hears will laugh with me.” No longer a skeptical laughter but a joyful laughter. Sarah finally understood that there was indeed nothing too wonderful for the Lord.
The three visitors, as seen here in this beautiful icon written by Anne Piland, and similarly depicted in a famous Eastern Orthodox icon by Andrei Rublev, have long been interpreted to be a portrayal of the Trinity. This story has been described as the Triune God visiting Abraham and Sarah to remind them of the promise. Maybe we need to be reminded of God’s promises as well.
As we look at this icon, we see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forming a circle around the table. Gazing at the icon we begin to see connection and continual movement between the three. And yet, there is an empty place at the front of the table, an invitation to join the three, to share in the holy communion.
I wonder if the Triune God waits for Sarah to take her place at the table. Something to think about as our Southern Baptist friends deliberate over women pastors. I wonder about others we might be denying a place at the table in the Church and in our society in our time. Whom do you imagine God might be welcoming to the table?
Here is the truth. People who are different than us, who do things differently than we do; people who laugh, doubt, worry, and behave badly; that is to say all of us who have been wonderfully created by God, have a place in God’s plans, in God’s story of salvation.
There is an empty place at this table waiting for you. Could it be that following Jesus is really as simple as paying attention, witnessing what God is already doing, and then joining in, fully expecting to see the wonderful works of God?
Title Image: Abraham and the Three Angels, Marc Chagall
(1) Eugene Peterson, "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 140-141.
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