“A love child! Now? How?” {Genesis 18:10a}
I still remember the giggle from my friend Peggy when she told me her mother was expecting a baby. We were both sophomores in high school. Even though we thought we were very worldly and sophisticated—after all, we were sixteen years old—eyes popped and mouths dropped when Peggy told us that she was going to have a baby sister or brother by the end of our school year. We could not believe it. Peggy’s mother was expecting? Surely not; she was Peggy’s mom, and already looked like a grandmother to us, for heaven’s sake! Surely Peggy’s dad could not be the father! He was an old guy, balding at the top, bellying out at the bottom who wore thick glasses and tall white socks with his Bermuda shorts!
I remember that all of us got into trouble during our 8: oo Geometry class because we just could not keep the laughter down inside of us. It’s not that we could not believe Peggy. It’s just that we could not believe that Peggy’s parents were still having sex! They were so…well, so old!
Perhaps that is why today’s Lesson strikes us as being so unbelievably funny. Here are Abraham and Sarah, an old, old couple—they are both in their nineties—and regarded elsewhere in the Scriptures as being as good as dead—who are told that soon they will be expecting a baby. A baby! Some of us here recall having friends or family members who had much younger sisters or brothers who were born much later, often as completely unexpected surprises. We respond to today’s Lesson with the same amount of amazement that Sarah and Abraham must have had when they learn about this child who will soon join them and bring them much joy “in the autumn” or shall we say “in the winter” of their years. A love child! Now? How?
Well, we all know how love children are conceived; that’s what made us sophomores split our sides in high school when we adolescents regarded Peggy’s parents as being as good as dead, biologically. What really catches us is not the “how” so much as it is the “now,” the boundaries around its timing. That is what today’s story is really about, about all of us who conceive that the possibilities for new life are only for the young. Nicodemus certainly was one of those who could not imagine that being born again could ever happen to him. He was, after all, an elderly man. How could he ever fit again into his mother’s womb? Jesus in effect tells Nicodemus that his being born again isn’t up to his mother so much as it is up to God. Anything is possible with God.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you and I will get into trouble here in this sanctuary now because on hearing such good news, we cannot keep our laughter down inside of us. We have lived in this world for a number of years now. We are no longer merely sophomores trying life on for size. We have lived it and life has taken its toll on all of us. We have tried on our dreams and fantasies and visions and although some of them have worn well others never really fit our living in this world.
Even though only two or three of us here at First Church were born in Missouri, many of you have become like kin to us native skeptics. Show me! Show me some life again when I often feel as if I am as good as dead! Show me some hope when there are so many signs and symptoms of hopelessness around me, within me! Show me some vitality when so much of me has been devalued over the years by death, disease, and despair! I know, they’re not possible if they would be left up to us. Thank God, they’re not! Thanks be to God that life and its renewal, and its hope and its vitality are gifts borne to us from God: a child for Sarah and Abraham, Jesus from the Virgin Mary, life present and eternal for us human beings as good as dead. Good news, God’s news: Nothing is impossible with God! Amen.
