Week 12 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 18:1-15; Luke 1: ; Matthew 8:5-17

We read two versions of the same story, from Genesis 16 and from Genesis 17. Genesis 17 tells of a conversation between the Lord (who identifies himself as El Shaddai) and Abram who becomes Abraham. In renewing the covenant yet one more time, God gives Abraham a promise and makes a demand, each of which seems like a joke.

The demand is for circumcision as a sign of the covenant. Why it should be so is not clear, it seems at least to indicate that the covenant is being taken seriously. sealed in the bodies of Hebrew males. The joke here is in the picture, perhaps better not imagined, of a ninety nine year old man being circumcised along with all the males of his household.

The promise is of a son, Isaac, who will carry on the family line so that Abraham can, as promised, be the father of a great nation. Here the joke is again linked with Abraham's age: a ninety nine year old man having a child with his ninety year old wife! Sarah laughs in today's reading, Abraham laughs at this in Genesis 16, and the name of their unexpected child, Isaac, is said to mean 'he laughs'. Who the 'he' referred to is remains unclear - perhaps God himself whose sense of humour can sometimes be perplexing if not perverse.

To what lengths will God go to show that nothing is too wonderful for him? What tricks might he yet pull from his carpet bag? Even to the point of raising someone from the dead? Is anybody laughing in Genesis 22 when Abraham is asked to sacrifice the one whom here God insists is to be the bearer of the promise?

The sense of the comic is said to be characteristic of the human animal, something only possible for beings capable of holding two things in mind simultaneously while at the same time seeing some kind of inconsistency or incongruity between them. Because God is infinitely creative and free there is any amount of space for humour in God and in his actions: think of Jonah, for example, or some of the absurd analogies in the parables of Jesus.

Another humorous aspect of Abraham's experience recounted today is the amount of running he does: we are to imagine a recently circumcised ninety nine year old man running to greet the Lord, rushing into the kitchen, then running back into the field to get a calf to cook for his visitor(s).

Strangely, there are here 'echoes beforehand' of the parable of the prodigal father: old, running out to greet his son, getting the calf organised for cooking. There too 'nothing is impossible for God' and the son's return is treated as a resurrection - 'he was dead and is alive again'. It is how Romans 4 and Hebrews 11 understand God's treatment of Abraham, whose faith was such that he believed God could even raise the dead. He was himself as good as dead (hee, hee!) when he and Sarah had Isaac (Rom 4:19; Heb 11:11-12). But his faith was in God who gives life to the dead (Rom 4:17; Heb 11:17-19). So God makes Abraham able to have a child and God restores to Abraham the son he was about to sacrifice.

But this is our (crazy?) faith also, Paul says in Romans 4:24: we believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Rom 8:32) and the resurrection of Jesus is God's greatest joke. 'He who sits in the heavens laughs' as he contemplates the inconsistency between our limited thoughts and ways and his own expansive and ever creative thoughts and ways. Although at times God's ways may be perplexing, he has the last laugh (with us, not at us) as he sees the barren bear fruit, the old run, the dead  raised, and the ones who thought their life was over coming to themselves and finding themselves in a very spacious place, full of new possibilities, life, laughter, joy and love. Being ninety nine years of age is no barrier to fruitfulness in the Kingdom of God.