Let’s start with some wondering… I wonder what part of this story you like the best. I wonder what part is most important. I wonder where you are in the story, what part is about you.

Here’s another one: I wonder what kind of laughter Sarah’s laughter was. Was it bitter? Full of cynical disbelief? Or surprise, delight, hope? “Why did you laugh?” the mysterious divine visitor asked Sarah. We have a tendency to hear that question as a rebuke. However, before we take that path, we need to consider what happened in the previous chapter. Abraham was 99 years old. He and Sarah thought they had solved their infertility problem all on their own. At Sarah’s urging, Abraham took Hagar as his second wife and she bore him a son. (Biblical marriage, you know.)

However, even after Ishmael was born, God appeared to Abraham again to reiterate the original promise: he and Sarah would have a child and a multitude of nations would be descended from them. Genesis 7:17 describes Abraham’s response: “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed. […] He 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?’” So Sarah wasn’t the only one who laughed, not at all. Her laughter echoed Abraham’s. And I’m pretty sure God was laughing too. Because God said to Abraham, “Your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac” (Genesis 17:19). The name Isaac means “laughter”.

Of course, there’s a lot about this story that isn’t funny. The pain of barrenness, for example. In ancient society, the inability to conceive a child was seen exclusively as the woman’s problem. In a time when infant mortality was extremely common, and the continuation of family lines was always uncertain, having children was seen as the purpose of a woman’s life. The existential anxiety around child-bearing in this story probably also reflects the context in which it was composed. Genesis was likely written down during the time of the people’s return from exile in Babylon, as they rebuilt their home, temple and culture.

I’m thankful that today we think differently about infertility, childbearing, and gender. And yet, I imagine many of us can identify with Sarah and Abraham’s struggle, can imagine their rollercoaster of emotions. Going through those years of suffering certainly didn’t bring out the best in Sarah. As today’s Book of Belonging story emphasizes, Sarah was jealous of Hagar and treated her harshly. Even after Isaac was born, the tension continued. Sarah eventually pressured Abraham to banish Hagar and her son from their household. As we will hear in next week’s story, God also cared about and protected Abraham’s other family. Sarah’s insecurity and cruelty (paired with Abraham’s equally big character flaws) make it clear that God did not choose this legendary couple because they were particularly virtuous. They were, like most other “chosen” figures in the Hebrew Bible, unlikely heroes, seemingly unprepared and unfit for their assigned task of blessing the entire world.

I think maybe Sarah’s laughter, as she laughed along her husband and with God, was also subversive. “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’” (Genesis 18:12). The word for “pleasure” and the word “eden” share the same root in Hebrew. So it seems there’s a tie intended between the garden paradise of God’s newly created world and Sarah’s late in life intimacy. There’s something extremely surprising (in the patriarchal context of ancient culture) about the idea that Sarah’s pleasure (and not just her pregnancy) mattered to God.

Humor is often subversive. It has a way of defusing tension, interrupting violence, reframing intractable situations, and allowing a different point of view to be heard, seen and given power. We know all about that after last winter’s protests, right?. As the BBC wrote late in December 2025, “The revolution will not be televised, but it might have webbed feet and bulging eyes. It also might have a unicorn’s horn or a chicken’s feathers. As protests […] continue in US cities, demonstrators are adopting the energy of a community costume parade or block party. They’ve taught salsa lessons, handed out snacks and ridden unicycles as armed law enforcement look on. Mixing humour and politics—a tactic social scientists call ‘tactical frivolity’—is not new.”

Tactical frivolity, using laughter to subvert society’s norms, values, and coercive powers, indeed, is not new. It is biblical. In his book, The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, the famed UCC Bible scholar Walter Bruggeman described how this happens in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible: “The entire future of ancient Israel depends, in each generation, on the capacity and resolve of [God] to make a way out of no way. This reiterated miracle of new life in a context of hopelessness evokes in Israel a due sense of awe that issues […] in laughter:Now Sarah said [in Chapter 21, at the birth of her son Isaac], ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me’ (Gen 21:6). In subsequent Christian tradition,” Bruggeman concludes, “that laugh has become an ‘Easter laugh,’ a deep sweep of elation that looks death and despair in the face and mocks them. The ancestral narratives attest to the power of [God] to create new historical possibilities where there is no ground for expectation.”

Friends, let us join in the ancestral tradition of laughing with God. Laughing ourselves free of the barren places. Laughing at despair. Laughing to undermine oppression and cruelty. Laughing because God is ever at work, making a way out of no way. Amen.