Epiphany at Mamre: Who Gets the Last Laugh?

And the LORD appeared to him in the Terebinths [oaks] of Mamre when he was sitting by the tent flap in the heat of the day. And he raised his eyes and saw, and, look, three men were standing before him [Genesis 18:1-2a, The Hebrew Bible, translated by Robert Alter].

The OT lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday, Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7 [the Third Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year A], is one of my favorites. I wrote about it three years ago when we were in the early months of the you-know-what. Many of you know the Genesis story quite well. It has at least one, perhaps two, humorous turns.

The Genesis narrator quickly clues us in that it is the LORD who has appeared to Abraham under the terebinths—the oaks—of Mamre, a spot that many years later would be part of the southern kingdom of Judah. Abraham looks out from the flap of his tent, across the heated landscape, and sees three men approaching.

Wait just a second. The narrator didn’t say there was a group of three. He mentioned only the LORD. Does Abraham see some sort of mirage? Is the LORD accompanied by two angels? Or is this, as some Christians have argued, an early appearance of the Holy Trinity? As to this last answer, recall my warning of two weeks ago. Just because an OT text mentions “three” in the same paragraph as Yahweh, it doesn’t automatically mean “the Trinity.”

Abraham runs quickly out to greet Him/them (at 99-years-old, he still runs). He offers them water to wash their feet. He asks if he can fetch “a morsel of bread” [18:5] then, instead of having Sarah prepare a “morsel,” Abe tells Sarah to prepare a feast. Abraham obviously senses that something is going on here beyond a simple visit from one or more travelers. According to Robert Alter, noted OT scholar and translator, the narrator uses “fetch” four times in rapid succession. He adds “hurry” three times. Is Abraham merely a nervous host? Does Abraham suspect who has come for a visit? After all, Abraham has met Yahweh before [see Genesis 12:1; 15:1; and particularly, 17:1].

Somethings’s clearly going on. Abraham stands at attention while they eat [18: 9], having earlier bowed humbly before them [18:2]. As the LORD, et al., finish dinner, the conversation apparently shifts from “men-talk” — perhaps inflation, politics, indictments, and such, to domestic affairs. “Where is Sarah your wife?” [18:10].

Ah, here’s another clue that something important—something divine—is happening. This apparent stranger knows the name of Abraham’s wife. Indeed, the stranger is no accidental tourist. I suspect that it is now that Abraham concludes the LORD has come a-calling. Still, remaining coy for the moment, Abraham merely allows that Sarah is in the tent. Perhaps he thinks, “My guest must want to compliment Sarah on the preparation of the veal pâté?”

But no, the stranger—I mean the LORD—startles everyone with a non sequitur: “I’ll return in one year and Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah, who is eavesdropping from just inside the tent, thinks to herself, “Yeah, right!” She’s heard this nonsense before. When her husband received the original promise from Yahweh, she packed up the household, left family and friends—everything that was familiar—and dutifully set out with her husband and a small entourage to a land that had not yet been identified (which reminds me of a gal named Jane back in 1986).

Sarah probably thinks something like, “How’s our wandering around worked out so far?” Indeed, famine drove them almost immediately to Egypt, where Abraham, to save his own skin, told the Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister (depending upon your Biblical research, Abram and Sarai might well have been half-siblings—but more about that another day).

Then there was that Hagar thing. Sarah thinks to herself, “Oh, I know, I know, offering my Egyptian slave to Abraham—Hubba Hubba—was my idea. It produced Ishmael, yes, but also a lot of strife.”

Now, 90-year-old Sarah hears some stranger tell her husband that he’ll be back in a year, and she’ll be nursing a son of her own. “What have they been smoking out there under the trees?”

As if we don’t need to be reminded of the geriatric nature of the couple in the Genesis story, the narrator reminds us that Sarah is post-menopausal. You have to love the delicate way the NSRV phrases the Sarah’s situation: “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” [18:11].

Look carefully at verse 12. The NSRV says that Sarah laughed “to herself.” The NIV agrees. Robert Alter translates it with some additional nuance. He allows that Sarah laughed “inwardly.” The NSRV and NIV versions indicate there was at least some subtle sound made by Sarah in her reaction. According to Alter, however, she might very well have made no sound at all. The next verse does indicate that she said to herself, “After being shriveled, shall I have pleasure, and my husband is old?” But who could hear those words? Her husband the the traveler/travelers are at some distance, with the latter reclining under the oak branches.

Sarah’s reaction to news of her potential pregnancy is understandable. Perhaps you’ve been there. You’ve cried and you’ve cried. When you can cry no more, sometimes all you can do is laugh. When you’ve tried and tried to no avail, when your prayers don’t appear to have been answered, when all your careful plans (e.g., Hagar/Ishmael) seem to have backfired, when your hope no longer lives, when you are totally out of options, you laugh; you can no longer cry.

And so, Sarah laughed. Maybe it was an inward laugh. Maybe it was a barely audible chuckle, but she laughed. All too often, her laughter has been viewed by others as a lack of faith. Can we see, however, that Sarah isn’t faithless; she’s emotionally exhausted. She’s heard the promise time after time after time. This time, as she hears it again from a stranger reclining under the oaks of Mamre, the camel’s back is broken. Just as one tends to disregard the warning after there have been so many cries of “wolf,” so also, but in a counter-balancing fashion, Sarah disregards the promise; it has been uttered too many times without evidence of its fruition.

Instead of labeling Sarah’s laughter as faithless, perhaps we’d be good to recall her husband’s reaction when, in the previous chapter of Genesis (17), Yahweh reiterates to Abraham (not to Sarah)—for at least the second time—the promise that Sarah will bear Abraham a son. What was Abraham’s reaction?

And Abraham flung himself on his face and he laughed, …. [Genesis 17:17, Robert Alter’s translation].

Faithful, Father Abraham laughs in God’s face; Sarah mostly keeps her sentiments to herself.

Whether the LORD heard a quiet chuckle over the considerable distance between the oak trees and the tent, or whether the LORD knows her/our reactions before any of us make them, the LORD turned to Abraham and asked, “Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, ‘Shall I really give birth, old as I am’” [18:13]. Then comes the pivotal verse in the entire pericope, “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” [18:14, NRSV; Alter offers, “Is anything beyond the LORD”].

Most of us know “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say. Some months later, Sarah feels the quickening within her ancient womb, and she realizes that what she saw under the oaks of Mamre was not a traveler or a stranger, but rather the LORD. What she experienced as she prepared a dinner for them was a veritable epiphany.

Still later, when she gives birth to her son, Abraham gives their son the name of Issac, which means “he who laughs.” I wonder if Abraham thought that in doing so, he had the last laugh. He didn’t, of course. That last laugh—and it is a joyous one—belongs to Yahweh.

After the Epiphany at Mamre, Sarah gives birth to Isaac, whose son Jacob/Israel becomes the forbearer of an entire nation, a nation which will much later produce a son via a different type of miraculous conception. Although miraculous, this son’s birth is even more scandalous than birth from a 90-year-old woman, for it is from a virgin. This son, part of the lineage of David, will be born in Bethlehem. He will save the world! Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? Is anything beyond the LORD?

Oh, silly, of course not.