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Is Anything too Wonderful for God?: The absurdity of faith and the nature of the divineIncongruous. As I read through commentaries for this week’s text the word incongruous kept coming up. In case you’re like me and it’s one of those words that you think you know what it means until you have to tell someone what it means, incongruous basically means that something is out of place, doesn’t fit in with our expectations, or, unlike our fabulous choir, lacks harmony. Going a bit deeper, incongruous experiences are often a reminder of how little control we have over our lives and the world we live in. Like being told when you’re almost 100 years old and unable to have children that you’re going to have a baby. As a relatively new parent I can’t even begin to count the number of times over the past 7 months that incongruous has aptly described my life. I felt out of place when, after 2 days in the hospital, we arrived home and were supposed to be ready to take care of Rowan. Being a male and the primary caregiver for Rowan until she enrolls at the midweek school here in August, I’m often made to feel a bit out of place as I’m walking around the grocery store and inevitably someone comments, “Oh, does dad get to stay home from work and play with the baby today.” I didn’t expect to be so okay with baby poop or the rainbow of colors baby poop would be. I didn’t expect to love Rowan as deeply and profoundly as I do. Oh, and the screams of a baby being sleep trained, definitely lack harmony. Like Sarah, as I’ve found myself in these incongruous moments I often can’t help but laugh, or cry, or laugh and cry at the same time…because when we are faced with the messiness of life, particularly in those unexpected, out of place, inharmonious moments where we realize just how small we are and just how little control we have, what else are we to do? As I started writing this sermon in my head I kept coming to that part where Sarah is faced with an incredibly incongruous declaration from God, so incongruous that she can’t help but laugh, and God responds to Sarah’s laughter asking “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?” Or as some translations read “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” It’s easy to read this story and gloss over that question because we know what the answer is supposed to be and, if we’re familiar with the story, we know what is coming…but as I read the question time and time again things like the division in the United Methodist church, the transition from a beloved pastor of 10 years here at Belmont to someone new, the political division in our country and yet another shooting on the heels of the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, kept coming to my mind as I asked myself “Is anything too difficult or wonderful for the Lord?” And amidst my struggle with that question I was humbled as this story of Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and God is described by Walter Brueggeman and other Bible scholars as a prequel to the birth of Jesus that begins with a promise and ends with the fulfillment of that promise revealing to us a people who often screw up and get it wrong but keep trying to move toward God and a God who is faithful and keeps promises, even in what seem to be impossible circumstances. As Brueggman explains, “we have the central fulfillment within the Abraham tradition. The birth of the child is the fulfillment of all the promises, the resolution of all the anguish." Now just in case you’re not familiar with the backstory, let me catch you up real quick. In Genesis 12 -- God makes an initial promise to a man named Abram, who has a wife named Sarai that is unable to have children, that 1) he would have a land; 2) he would become a "great nation" (that is, have many descendants); and 3) he would be blessed to be a blessing: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (12:3). In Genesis 15 God speaks to Abram again in order to renew the promise. God took Abram outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. . . . So shall your descendants be" (15:6). But Sarai remained barren, the sky-full of descendants were nowhere to be found, and they kept getting older.Then in Genesis 16 -- Sarai was tired of waiting for the promised child. She suggested that Abram try to have a child with her slave, Hagar…And finally -- a son named Ishmael. Abraham was in his 80s and happy because he felt like God was finally upholding their deal…and Sarai wasn’t thrilled because she was left out of the promise! In Genesis 17 God appears yet again to Abram to repeat the promise yet another time. God changed Abram's name to Abraham, "for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations" (verse 5). And makes it clear Sarai is part of the covenant, too: changing her name to Sarah and proclaiming “I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her."So those are the highlights, minus a whole lot of Abraham making lots of bad choices with a few good choices sprinkled in, and since we know how the story ends it’s all warm and fuzzy, but what happens when we think about this from the perspective of Abraham, or even worse, Sarah. Waiting on a promise. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting without the ability to control any of it. Not minutes, not hours, not years, but decades of waiting and receiving reassurances while not getting what God has promised. Waiting so long that the promise of God, the covenant, has shifted from the expected to the incongruous because after so long it would just seem out of place for God to finally keep the promise. And that brings us back to the question in our text for today, “is anything too difficult or wonderful for God?” Of course Sarah laughed because in that moment the absurdity of it all must have been overwhelming. Surely she wanted to scream are you serious?! Yes! Obviously yes! How can you possibly be asking me that question right now when I’ve been waiting for so long for you to keep your promise?! Is anything too difficult or wonderful for God? I want us to sit with that question here because in many ways I think Brueggeman is right about this story being a prequel to Christ…the way we answer that question is the foundation upon which our very hope in, and relationship with, God exists. “Is anything too difficult or wonderful for God?” It’s the primal question of God’s people, of all people really. The question that echoes in all our places of doubt and disbelief when we wonder at the promises of God. It’s the question born out of those moments when we realize things are out of place, they aren’t as they should be, they lack harmony, and we wonder what, if anything, can be done about it. And it’s easy to say a quick no to that question, of course nothing is too hard or wonderful for God. Like reciting the Lord’s prayer or singing the doxology, so familiar that we say the words before giving thought to what we are really proclaiming…easy to say no when it is asked in the abstract, but when we think about our lives and this world…when we read the news and see story after story of violence, racism, sexism, greed, hatred, and the persistence of evil all around us the answer is not so easy. And when it becomes personal and our own lives get turned upside down by those same forces the answer gets harder still. As one of the commentaries I read explained, like Abraham and Sarah we know the right answer is nothing is too difficult or wonderful for God, but still “we cordon off segments of life that we functionally believe are simply impossible”…and it’s “not that we would actually deny that [God]?could?work [in whatever those places are]. But we are really convinced that [God] simply does not do so very often, if ever…” (). …and perhaps we do so to preserve our faith because like Sarah we can only wait and hope so long before all we can do is keep moving and laugh. So what are we to do? What is the good news? This is the part where I tell you the moving and inspirational story that makes you leave feeling joyful and inspired…like the story of the Urugayean rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountain. A story so moving they made it into a movie called Alive. 29 people survived the initial crash and struggled to remain alive in the snow and freezing temperatures of the Andes for three months. An avalanche kills 8 of them, 5 others die from injuries and exposure, and then after concluding the rescue efforts must have been called off, 2 of the survivors begin the impossible trek out of the Andes to get help.As they make their way up and down peak after peak one of the 2 reaches another summit and says, “Come up here, man, you’ve got to see this, it’s beautiful.” Expecting the end is finally in sight the other reaches the top and the camera pans to his view revealing an endless horizon of snow-capped mountain peaks. No end in sight.He looks over and says, “We’re going to die up here.” And the other replies, “Do you know what it is that we made it this far? It’s impossible, that’s what it is. If we’re going to die, we’re going to die walking.”They keep walking and by the grace of God make their way out of the Andes alive and the closing scene of the film is of the survivors hearing helicopter engines as the rescue choppers come into view, the two friends after their impossible journey waving from inside.That is certainly good news...And a great story and there are countless other stories of people who by their faith, strength, courage, and determination accomplish that which was thought impossible. But what about those who died in the initial plane crash? What about the 8 who died in the avalanche or the 5 who died from injuries and exposure? Did they not have enough faith? Were they simply lacking in strength, courage, and determination? Where is the good news in that? Where is the good news in the decades of waiting for Abraham and Sarah? Where is the good news in our own lives when the promises of God feel so distant and things feel so incongruous? Is anything too difficult or wonderful for God?Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once preached about humor as a prelude to faith. More specifically, he talked about how humor, particularly the incongruous, the out of place, the unexpected, the disharmonious, can point us back to God because it is only when faced with our utter inability to control things and make them as we’d want them to be that we can get out of our own way, ceding our control and creating space for God to breathe new life into our tired bones and somehow turn that which is barren and empty into that which is fertile and full. As the Mennonite preacher Ben Patterson proclaimed about this text, it is when faced with the “ultimate incongruity of our lives, and therefore the impossibility of us ever being more than a giant contradiction, a bad joke in ourselves” that we are opened to the hope that exists in a God who sees us not as incongruous, but who created us, knows us, loves us, and comes alongside us to work toward that which is good, holy, and just. A God who comes alongside us in our bitter laughter and invites us to consider the impossible. A God who welcomes our laughter recognizing the apparent absurdity of faith at times while asking us to hold on to our belief the impossible can be possible and continue our journey together.Is anything too difficult or wonderful for God? It’s an overwhelming and potentially hope shattering question because if we answer yes, the world is simply what it is and not what it could be and God becomes something different than God altogether: perhaps still loving and kind, perhaps still deeply committed to grace, forgiveness, and justice; but no different than you or I really, playing our own little parts but rather out of our depth in the grand scheme of things, particularly when faced with the incongruous, unable to put things back in place and restore harmony. But if we answer no, then you and I can hold out hope that our messy incongruous lives are somehow divinely intertwined in the hands of a loving God who is constantly working toward a better world and constantly inviting and wooing us to play a part on the cosmic stage. And here’s the part where it gets tricky, because I want to be clear I don’t think this text is saying our job is to trust in God and stop working toward the kindom of God…nor do I think this text is saying if we simply have enough faith in God that everything will work out the way we think it should. This world and our lives are messy and we will be faced with the overwhelming and the incongruous. But the good news of this text, the good news that is far better news than the inspirational story of a rugby team that defied the odds, is that it demonstrates the impossible is not made possible by our faith or by our actions, but rather by the very nature of God as God. This text calls us to reexamine what we think God is about in our world, to stop and think about what areas we have cordoned God out of in our lives and in our world and what it is that we find ourselves laughing at. The text invites us to hold onto hope that even when we have lost hope and can do nothing but laugh at the absurdity of faith and God, we can’t stop God from being God and showing up in unexpected ways. This text reminds us God is not dependent on our faith or our actions which is great news because in the incongruous moments when we feel deflated and defeated and like there is nothing we can do, God is there inviting us to laugh and calling out “Is anything too difficult or wonderful for God?” ................
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