The Impossible Tomorrow

Genesis 18:1-15

Sarah gets a bad rep for laughing when she hears that she will have a son. But in the 17th chapter of Genesis Abraham falls on his face laughing at God when he is told he will be given a son by Sarah. In these stories, Abraham and Sarah are not presented as models of faith but as models of disbelief. Chances are your relationship with God’s grace is very similar to Abraham and Sarah’s relationship to news that sounds too good to be true. And God responds in similar fashion to our incredulity: “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”

“This is the fundamental question that every human person must answer,” says Walter Brueggemann. “And how it is answered determines everything else. If the question of the Lord is answered, ‘Yes, some things are too hard, impossible for God,’ then God is not yet confessed as God. We have not conceded radical freedom to God. We have determined to live in a closed universe where things are stable, reliable, and hopeless. If, on the other hand, the question is answered, ‘No, nothing is impossible for God,’ that is an answer which so accepts God’s freedom that the self and the world are fully entrusted to God and to no other. The question must not be given this answer lightly or easily.”[1]

If we’re honest, we can confess that we’re reluctant, maybe a little scared, to live into a world other than the one we have always known and experienced. Take a moment to think about how you would answer this question, right now: “Yes, some things are impossible for God,” or “No, nothing is impossible for God.” You don’t have to share your answer out loud, but at least be honest with yourself.

There are many reasons to take the first answer, many reasons for our faith to falter like Abraham and Sarah, many reasons to feel barren, hopeless, unable to fathom a future, many reasons to want to limit God. In a world of war and pain, of sickness and cancer, of shootings and lootings, of hunger and thirst, of injustice and oppression it feels offensive to believe that a God who loves us and wants what is best for all of us can do something about it, but for some reason, doesn’t. It’s less painful to simply laugh it off as nonsense.

It’s also a way of getting out of our covenant responsibility to participate in the world where “what-is-best-for-all-of-us” is possible. We’re used to a world where “what is best for most of us” suffices. It’s easy to laugh off injustice, so long as you’re in the privileged majority. But what happens when you try to complain about the ways of the world or try to cry out for justice from a minority group?

Jesus cried out for the minorities, the vulnerable, the poor. He also cried out for himself. Jesus, in one of his most human moments, prays “Father, all things are possible for you; remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” But God does not enter the human experience to circumvent the reality of suffering that we all face; that would have put God in a position of power and privilege that is not possible for all of us to attain. In the Christ, we see a God who loves us and wants what is best for all of us accomplishing God’s promises through the limitations of human possibility.

We, like Jesus, pray that God would remove the cup of suffering from us, too. But our world, our culture, and we ourselves, unlike Jesus, are sinful and selfish. Therein lies the problem and the common misunderstanding of the Scripture which tells us that “all things are possible with God.” In sin, we’re tempted take this to mean that faith makes everything we desire possible. And this belief in the hands of a person or a people who are wealthy and powerful enough to execute their desires under the guise of “what is good for all” turns into travesties like the Crusades, Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, the manufacture and use of atomic bombs, the justification of torture, and many, many more atrocities.

“[God] has promised a future in a new community, but not everything we would seek.”[2] In this new community swords are beat into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. That’s great poetry. But turn our guns into gardening tools? That’s laughable.

Take a moment in silent prayer to contemplate if we are truly prepared to embrace the kind of Kingdom in which God calls us to live and serve. And by we, I mean you. This is not time to cast blame, but a chance to offer the hospitality of your heart and mind to honesty.

I imagine that the hospitality of your heart and mind does not come so easily to certain ideas. That’s no different than it was for Abraham and Sarah. They welcomed their guests with impressive hospitality and became their humble servants. But they had considerable trouble offering the hospitality of their hearts to the promise of God that those guests delivered, the promise of (what seemed like) an impossible tomorrow. The word and will of God have always wrestled with human doubt and the established expectations of reality. Over and against our violence, selfishness, and greed God has proclaimed and promised a Peaceable Kingdom.

Fortunately for us, as for Abraham and Sarah, “the resolve of God to open up a new future…does not depend on our readiness to accept it.”[3] “Go ahead and laugh,” God tells Sarah, “but I’ll be back, and you’ll have a son.”

Now take a moment to sit with this confession: It is not God who stands in the way of God’s promises taking root in reality, rather it is our reluctance to welcome God’s promise with hospitality and to become humble servants of the Kingdom of God.

Let us pray for God to help us in our unbelief.

Let us pray that we would be transformed by grace to live with humility and gratitude as the Holy Spirit strengthens and guides us to serve as midwives while God gives birth to the impossible tomorrow.

Chaos into creation, the Ark floating above the flood, a son from Sarah’s womb, Israelites out of Egypt, and Christ, first from the Virgin Mary, and then again from the tomb: the history of God is replete with metaphor of birth from presumably barren, lifeless, hopeless places. All of this through the power of the Holy Spirit. I’ve been driving this point home for the past few weeks: the Holy Spirit dwells within you. Feel it stirring.

Romans 5:1-8

"Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

"While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

Friends, take heart. You are forgiven and freed from the barren bonds of sin. God’s promise is possible in you and through you. May you serve with gladness as God births the impossible tomorrow.

Praise be to God!

Amen!

[1] Brueggemann, Walter. “Genesis” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1982, Westminster-John Knox Press. Louisville, KY. 159.

[2] Ibid. 161.

[3] Ibid. 160.