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Abraham and Sarah                        Genesis 18: 9-15                   June 15, 2008

Think with me, for a moment, about the famous couples you have read about, or seen in movies or television.

There's Adam and Eve, of course, who I guess we could say were the original couple; but for Shakespeare lovers we must include Anthony and Cleopatra, and Romeo and Juliet. Movie lovers would include Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Baccall. And, I suppose that no list of famous couples would be complete without including John Lennon And Yoco Ono, Bonnie and Clyde, Eleanor and Franklin, Burns and Allen, and Ozzie and Harriet. . . You get my point. The list goes on and on.

Some of these couples are famous because of the pivotal role they played in a great piece of literature or film. Some are famous because of something wonderful - or possibly something horrible - that they did. And still others are famous because they were talented entertainers.

No couple, however, irrespective of their fame or notoriety, is more worthy of our attention than the one we heard about a moment ago in our text for today: Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham, you'll remember, is the father of the people of Israel - and our spiritual ancestor as well. The great promise known as the "Abrahamic Covenant" sets in motion the whole Biblical story of God's great love. "I will make of you're a great nation," God tells Abraham, "and will bless all who bless you and curse all who curse you."

The problem, however, is that when we encounter Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, in the passage we just read, he and his wife Sarah are childless. And old. Really old. Nearly 100 years old, in fact.

And the fact that they didn't have children looks like it's going to be a major obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promise. After all, God can't very well make a "great nation" out of the descendants of someone who doesn't have any descendants.

As our story unfolds, God first tells Abraham that he is going to have a son - to which he responds, after he picks himself from having laughed himself onto his face, with something like "right, God, sure I am."

Then, a little later, some visitors show up at Abraham and Sarah's tent and repeat the same prediction. "I will surely return to you in due season," one of the visitors says, "and your wife Sarah will have a son."

This time Sarah is the one who laughs. You see, as the text puts it so delicately, "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women." Today we would say that Sarah was out of estrogen. Past the stage when she would be troubled by hot flashes. Or, if we wanted to be delicate, like the writer of Genesis, we might say she was "beyond child-bearing age." Little wonder that she reacted to the prediction of a child by laughing out-loud.

You know how the story plays out. God's promise does get fulfilled. Sarah does have a child, despite her and her husband's advanced age, and the Nation of Israel is born.

"How could this happen?" you might ask yourself when you hear this story. "How can an old, barren couple have a child?"

You could, certainly, ask that question. Many scholars and skeptics have done so. But I think it is more productive, instead, to ask two other questions. First, let's ask ourselves this: "why did God wait for Abraham and Sarah to be so old before making good on the promise he made some 25 years earlier?" And then secondly, let's ask the follow-up question we always ask of every Biblical story: "What point was the writer of this story trying to make and what can we learn from that point."

Let me suggest a possible answer to each of those questions:

First, perhaps God waited before fulfilling the promise because God wanted us understand the importance of patience. To remember that God's promises often don't materialize according to our timetable. That God does what God chooses on God's terms.

And second, perhaps God waited so long before fulfilling the promise because God wanted it to be laughable. Because God wanted us to understand how important it is for us to keep the laughter in our lives.

Be patient and keep laughing. Two lessons we can learn from Abraham and Sarah. Two lessons that every couple could benefit from learning and applying to their relationship. Two lessons that every one of us could benefit from applying to our lives.

With God, nothing is impossible. We've heard that truth a hundred times. From Abraham an Sarah we learn that to truly grasp that promise we need to be patient and we need to keep laughing. I can't think of a better message for Father's Day, or any day.

                                                                             AMEN

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