Standing, standing ...
Featured in the current issue of The Text This Week, this wonderful painting by Marc Chagall alerted me that the Track 2* Old Testament reading for Sunday, July 21 (scroll down) is a favorite old time Sunday school Bible story. At least it's one of MY absolute top favorites.
As the story goes, after a full quarter century of Abraham's obedience, trust and faith, in long retrospect and for the ages of ages reckoned to him as righteousness (Genesis 15, Romans 4, Galatians 3, James 2, Hebrews 11), y'VAH finally comes through for Abraham. Though of course, it takes a jibe from Sarah, eavesdropping from inside the tent and snickering at the naughty man who is asking about her, to "get the ball rolling" so to speak.
In company with his "beautiful, sexy 90-year-old wife Sarah", as Dr Anderson my seminary New Testament professor put it, Abraham is now coming up against his hundredth birthday and "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women". Old Abe has patiently - - if somewhat by now bemused to the point of seeing his old drinking buddy as going off doddering and by now more talk than action, though still good for picking up the tab at the pub - - been Standing on the Promises of God since the Genesis 12 day back in Haran when Abram was 75, that y'VAH had enticed him out into the wilderness to start marking off his territory like some male animal spraying this tree and that rock and that fire hydrant to warn intruders out of the neighborhood. The promise, which the nation of Israel still ratifies today, of Land, and Descendants as numerous as grains of sand on the beach and stars in the sky, and Blessings, and that Abraham would BE a Blessing.
The promises have continued off and on over the years, to the point that Abraham simply takes it as beer talk that has come to be a standard part of y'VAH's occasional visits. This time, though, Sarah laughing at him gets the Lord so riled up that He keeps the promise in spite of Himself: Sarah won't have the last laugh on me, vows y'VAH angrily. Of course the grand finale of the story is that, sure enough, nine months after the Trinity visit, way later at Genesis 21, Sarah gives birth to a baby boy, a son, whom she promptly christens יִצְחָֽק Yitzaachk, Isaac, "Laughter", which basically means, and she means to have, "the Last Laugh."
*Track 2 in our Lectionary is the customary series of having Old Testament readings that relate somehow to the Gospel reading. In our parish we use Track 1, which is my preference because, instead of OT snippets from out of space, it gives us good old OT Sunday school Bible stories that I learned as a child. This one Sunday though, I would rather hear about Abraham and Sarah and God finally, seeing that Abraham and Sarah were becoming jaundiced about His word, went ahead and gave them the son who sired Israel nee Jacob, who perpetuated and eternalized the covenant.
Theologizing, it occurs to me, we Christians seeing this story as Abraham hosting the Trinity, to wonder about the same Holy Spirit who generations later fruitfully visited the Blessed Virgin Mary, here having likewise visited Sarah ("The one who said, 'I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son'," I mean, that's pretty graphic, eh? it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what's going on). That may be just me, but the old campfire stories of the Israelites are rife with subtle innuendoes for chortling enjoyment around the campfires those forty years of evenings in the wilderness (and it wouldn't be the only time Abraham willingly looked the other way while his lovely wife Sarah was visited by one king or other). Even this story is up for chortles, because the laugh is on y'VAH for thinking he could have the last word with Sarah; and the laugh is on Sarah for laughing that she was safely too old to go through the agony of pregnancy and childbirth, and the laugh was on Abraham for thinking himself foolish and innocent to continue Standing on the Promises of God. The laughs, we may notice, continue as Jacob twice cheats Esau out of his inheritance (yuk yuk, we really put one over on those stupid Edomites), and as Jacob is tricked into marrying the ugly older one and not realizing it until dawn the morning after his wedding night and she is already pregnant with Reuben.
Genesis 18:1-10a
The Lord יְהוָ֔ה 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 אֲדֹנָ֗י (adonai), 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. 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 have pleasure?” 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, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”]