Surprising Hope
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2 Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” 3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”
Frederick Buechner offers a wonderful interpretation of today’s Scripture by stating, “The place to start is with a woman laughing. She hunches her shoulders around her ears and starts to shake as she rocks back and forth in her kitchen chair. She is laughing because she is pushing ninety-one and has just been told she is going to have a baby. She can’t control herself, and her husband can’t control himself either. He keeps a straight face a few seconds longer than she does, but he ends by cracking up, too.”
“They are laughing at the idea of a baby’s being born in the geriatric ward and Medicare’s picking up the tab. They are laughing because the angel not only seems to believe it but seems to expect them to believe it too. They are laughing because if by some crazy chance it should just happen to come true, then they would really have something to laugh about.”
I think for many of us, if we were to receive this kind of news, we might laugh too. Perhaps Sarah was even experiencing a sense of skepticism. There was a part of her that must have thought, “You have got to be kidding me? You’re telling me that I’m going to bear a child? At this age?” It’s a laughable thought. And yet, there must have been another part of her that had a sense of hope. God’s promise had finally been fulfilled. What if this was it? What if she was actually going to bear a child? What if God actually makes her the mother of many nations? Even after all this time, the promise of a child still surprises her.
Twenty-four years had passed since Abram first heard this promise. Back in Genesis chapter 12, God said to Abram, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Not only had God promised him a child, but God had promised to make him into a great nation. The first time Abram received this news, he was seventy-five years old. He was eighty-six when Ishmael was born. Now, Abram is ninety-nine years old. He is hearing God’s promise for the third time. He is told that he will bear a son. At this point, Abram must have been impatient. Many years have passed, and I’m sure he was frustrated. I think there might have been a part of him that shared in his wife’s skepticism. I think there might have been a part of him that shared in his wife’s hope as well.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “It is a hard thing, to believe in a promise - to live by it, day after day, to see it in the night sky and hear it in your name and see it in your lover’s eyes. It is a hard thing, to believe in a promise with no power to make it happen. Everything is in the future tense - the land, the son, the blessing. Everything will happen, by and by, but in the meantime, what is there to live on now! And yet. What better way to live than in the grip of a promise, and a divine one at that? To wake every morning to the possibility that today might be the day.”
Perhaps the strangest bit about this passage is that, Abram at ninety-nine and Saria at ninety, are given new names. Can you imagine being given a new name at that age? I think it might have been difficult for them to make that type of transition after spending so many years with their original names. It might have been especially difficult, because they did not get to choose their new names… Instead, God does.
No longer will they be called Abram and Saria. They will now be known as Abraham and Sarah. This is a common theme in the Scriptures. For example, Jacob becomes Israel. Hosea becomes Joshua. Simon becomes Peter. Saul becomes Paul. New names mark a new beginning. God does not let this moment pass without joining in this name-changing ceremony. God says, “I am God Almighty.” The new names mark that this time, the promise will actually be fulfilled. Now, it is finally time, and the couple are given new names to celebrate.
This moment is full of surprise, laughter, and joy. It is a happy occasion. This old couple will soon share in the delight of a baby boy. This is not what we expect during the Lenten season. Jesus is on his way to the cross. Jesus was not laughing in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples were not laughing during Jesus’ trial and conviction. The women who went to Jesus’ tomb weren’t laughing. The surprise, laughter, and joy that rose within them when they were around Jesus during his life, must have been replaced with fear and anxiety in his death. In Jesus’ darkest hour, they had given up hope.
During the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century, German pastor Paul Gerhardt and his family were forced to flee from their home. One night as they stayed in a small village inn, homeless and afraid, his wife broke down and cried openly in despair. To comfort her, Gerhardt reminded her of Scripture promises about God's provision and keeping. Then, going out to the garden to be alone, he too broke down and wept. He felt he had come to his darkest hour.
Soon afterward, Gerhardt felt the burden lifted and sensed anew the Lord's presence. Taking his pen, he wrote a hymn that has brought comfort to many. “Give to the winds thy fears; hope, and be undismayed; God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears; God shall lift up thy head. Through waves and clouds and storms He gently clears the way. Wait thou His time, so shall the night soon end in joyous day.”
We need a bit of hope in our lives, don’t we? When is the last time you were surprised by hope? I mean, really surprised! For those who attend one of the churches of the that I serve, I would like to think that they experience a sense of hope every week in my sermons. But I’m not naïve enough to think that this might actually be true. Being surprised by hope can be quite rare.
We look around, and we are reminded of the evil that exists in our world. We see examples of terrorist attacks and gun violence. We see examples of those who suffer with illness and disease. We turn on the news and only hear about what is wrong with the world. Easter cannot come soon enough. In his book Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright states, “Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”
Easter is a time for us to be surprised by hope. It is a time for us to celebrate in the redemptive power of God’s love. Some of us live in this hope. Things are not the way we want them to be right now, but we have hope for a better future. Hope can motivate us. Hope can keep us alive. Hope can, at times, surprise us… especially when a promise is finally fulfilled. Especially when we experience the hope on Easter morning. But before we can get to Easter, we have to experience Lent. Before we can experience the resurrection, we have to go to the cross.
We are only a few short weeks into the Lenten season. The journey to the cross has really just begun. During this time, we are invited into the painful process of confronting our sin and confessing our guilt. We are in the midst of forty days of reflection as we examine the nature of our own covenant with God Almighty. It is a time to ask some important questions. Where am I in my relationship with God? Am I fully living into my covenant with God? Is there anything that is holding me back from having a deeper relationship with Christ?
Lent is a time for us to ask these questions, but it is also a time for us to experience a sense of hope. It is a time for us to find hope, here and now, in the midst of this Lenten season. As one theologian states, “Even in the darkness of Lent and under the shadow of the cross, the promise that God made to Abraham remains. God is our God, and we are God’s people. This is a covenant that cannot be broken, even as we follow the one named Emmanuel, whose destiny is our destiny: the cross, the grave, the skies.”
