Promises, Promises: When It Seems Impossible

If you had told me a year ago that Farmington Presbyterian would not gather for worship – or for a meal together – for an entire year, and that we would be as strong, if not stronger, at the end of that year, I would have laughed at you. It was impossible to imagine. It wasn’t the way things were. Worship online wasn’t the way things worked. I was no television preacher. We are what I would term relaxed traditional with an openness to artful creativity. I vividly remember being on the phone with members of session and staff and laughing at how crazy this all seemed. Surely we would be able to return to worship next month. Surely we didn’t need to plan for Easter apart, and then Pentecost, and then – how could this be – Christmas.

Last March and April, church consultants and authors on systemic change immediately began talking about the acceleration in decline that the church would see. “We had already seen a steady decline in membership and a shift in understanding of what regular attendance in worship means,” they warned, “now, people will grow comfortable in new routines and not return to churches when they reopen, if they survive.” Some lamented that the foreclosure sign on Christianity in America could have been erected as soon as youth sports on Sundays and then, of all things, travel teams, became a part of our culture. Truly, it was enough to make a pastor wonder whether it was worth it to try to keep going.

I found myself empty some days. I am part of a cohort of pastors in the Presbytery that meets every other Monday. We all shared our fears, our struggles, our exhaustion, and we encouraged one another. We were not alone. We would keep going.

I wonder how many times Abram and Sarai had despaired. It had been years since God had said to Abram “Leave your own country, your kin, and your father’s house, and go to a country that I will show you. I shall make you into a great nation; I shall bless you and make our name so great that it will be used in blessings.” When Abram and Sarai packed up and left home, they were retired already. Abram was 75! Now he is 99 – almost a quarter of a century has passed – they moved; 10 years in when there still was no heir, Sarai had her maidservant, Hagar, bear a child with Abram for her…Things sure didn’t go the way they had expected when they packed up and left Haran. Now the Lord comes again to Abram. The first time, God promised a great nation, now God promises Abram that he will be the father of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, a combination of Abba (father) and ram the Hebrew word for exalted or mighty. Now, your name will be Abraham, Abba (father) of raham (multitude).

Abram accepts the covenant. He accepts the name and the promise. Now, covenants in the Old Testament were confirmed by a physical sign. You “cut” a covenant; a sacrifice was made. So, an animal was slaughtered and divided and then the parties passed between the two sections of the sacrifice and said something like “If I break this covenant, let it be to me as it is for this animal.” But, God establishes a new sign for cutting this covenant. This covenant will be cut in the very flesh of Abram and his descendants. That very day, Abram at 99, his son with Hagar, Ishmael, 13 years old, and every male in his household was circumcised.

What confounded Abraham was the new name that God gave to his wife, Sarai. “You are to call her Sarah,” God said. Sarai in Hebrew means “princess.” “Princesses” give birth to royalty. Changing her name to Sarah just changed the pronunciation; God didn’t change the meaning. What God is saying here is that her name was no mistake! God says, “I shall bless her and give you a son by her. I shall bless her and she will be the mother of nations; from her kings of peoples will spring.” She was 90 years old! Is this even possible?

Abraham bowed low and laughed. This is the first laugh in the Bible.

Oh, what a lesson for us! When it seems like God is taking forever for God’s promises to be fulfilled, when we look around at the world and see injustice and hate, when the idea of melting down guns to make garden tillers seems naïve at best, when it seems like a prerequisite for being a politician is corruption, when culture is described as post-Christian and the influence of the church wanes, when there does not seem to be any way for God’s Will to be done, bow low and laugh.

It is these moments in history that are transformational. Jesus was teaching his disciples, and when he said that he would have to suffer and be rejected by the chief priests and the scribes and the elders, and be killed, they couldn’t imagine it. Peter pulled him aside and told him to stop talking like this…and Jesus instead called the crowds to gather round along with his disciples and told them, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

When the mountain that is in front of you seems too massive to climb, when the challenge is too great, when the vision too far beyond where you believe you can reach, bow low and laugh. Adopt the posture of respect and submission and then let yourself be amazed and overwhelmed by the “sense that God’s promise is too good to be true.” (Goldingay) And if that flows out of you in the form of a laugh, remember Noah as he agreed to build an ark in full view of the neighbors, Abraham at 99 as he told her that God insists that she will bear a son, Moses as he gets sent from exile where he is hiding out for murdering an Egyptian to tell Pharoah that he is going to lead all of the Israelite slaves out of Egypt and Pharoah is just going to let them go, Jesus as he says the least shall be greatest, turn the other cheek, love your neighbor – and your enemy – pray for them, deny yourself. Remember Mary coming up to Jesus at the wedding and telling him that the wine jars were empty…only when they were empty could they be filled and transformed.

You see, God’s vision, God’s promise is only achievable by God. It is only when we are empty, when we bow down and laugh because it is either that or cry, that we are open enough for God to do God’s Will through us. Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps best known for being the author of the Serenity Prayer, said that “laughter is the beginning of prayer.” United Methodist pastor, Rev. Shelli Williams says, “Maybe laughter is our grace-filled way of getting out of our self and realizing that, as ludicrous and unbelievable as it may be, God’s promise holds. Maybe it’s our way of admitting once and for all that we don’t have it all figured out, that, in all honesty, we don’t even have ourselves figured out, that there’s a whole new identity just waiting for us to claim.”

As Session discusses the logistics of returning to worship in person, the distancing and the masks, the contact tracing and sanitation, we are excited. We have waited so long to be together, and it will be good. But, I don’t think we have been through this wilderness for nothing. We have been hungry for community. We have craved worship. We have cherished opportunities for connection. We have grown in our faith. We have grown in our ministry, too.

When we worshiped together on March 8th last year, we had no idea the bowing and laughing that we would be doing over the next few months. As we left Wednesday night dinner on March 11th, we expected to be together again after Spring Break. And then we had occasion to bow, and often, we felt the laughter spill out of us. Laughter of submission. And God’s faithfulness has been steadfast. God’s promise has never waivered. And we have been open to God working through us.

And so the discussions of returning to worship in person include discussions of our ministry to those who will not be gathering in the Sanctuary, those who have mobility challenges, those who are sick, those who live in other places, those who are travelling, those who work on Sunday mornings, and for a time those who will not be able to attend because of space restrictions or health concerns.

It seemed impossible a year ago…but we have bowed low and laughed…and God has not forsaken us, in fact, God has blessed us. Thanks be to God. Amen!