“When the Promise Feels Impossible” - Fr. Pete's Sermon for June 14th, the Third Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 18:1-15

​Last Sunday, we began our summer journey through Genesis with a call. God said to Abram, “Go.” And Abram went. With no map. No certainty. Just trust enough to take the next step.

But if last week was about beginning the journey, this week is about what happens after you’ve been on the road awhile. Long enough for the excitement to wear off. Long enough for the promise to begin feeling delayed. Long enough for hope to become… complicated.

Because today we meet Abraham and Sarah years later. And honestly? They’re tired. I know you probably can’t relate, but hear me out…

God had promised Abram descendants. A future. A great nation. But time has passed. A lot of time. Abraham and Sarah are really old now—Scripture goes out of its way to emphasize this saying, rather bluntly, that the usual rhythms of women’s lives have ceased.

Then these mysterious visitors arrive by the oaks of Mamre and announce to Abraham something that seems absurd: Sarah will have a son. And, listening to this secretly from inside the tent, Sarah laughs. Not a joyful laugh, not yet. More like the snarky laugh that slips out when something is too impossible, too late, too far gone to take seriously anymore. Ha!

That laugh is one of the most human moments in the Bible. Because most of us know something about promises that seem to take too long to be fulfilled. Haven’t we all laughed like Sarah did?

Oh, we know what it’s like to wait for healing that does not come quickly. To pray for reconciliation that never quite happens. To hope for peace in a family, or a church, or a country, and instead wake up each morning to another round of division and bitterness and noise.

We know what it’s like to carry a promise for so long that eventually we stop expecting very much from it. And maybe that is where Sarah is. Not faithless exactly. Just worn out.

I love that the Bible includes this moment. Because more prim and proper storytelling would have cleaned this up. Sarah would smile serenely and say, “Of course, Lord. Your will be done.” Like an Old Testament version of Mary’s Magnificat!

No, overhearing this promise, she laughs. Which makes sense to us. The remarkable thing is that God does not strike her dead for it! God does not say, “Well, clearly you are disqualified from the life of faith.”

Instead, God stays in the conversation. “Why did Sarah laugh?” God asks. It’s almost tender. Almost amused. As though God understands perfectly well what long disappointment can do to a person.

Dear siblings, there is a kind of faith that exists only in the abstract—faith that works beautifully in inspirational quotes on embroidered pillows.

But biblical faith is different. Biblical faith includes exhaustion. Doubt. Confusion. Delay. Abraham and Sarah are not young idealists setting out on an adventurous journey anymore. They are old enough to know how life usually works. And that is precisely why the promise now seems impossible.

Sometimes age brings wisdom. Sometimes it also brings realism. We become experts in our limits. We know what bodies can and cannot do. We know which relationships probably won’t change. We know the odds. Sarah knows the odds. That’s why she laughs. Who can blame her?

Yes, the older I get, the more compassionate I become toward Sarah. Because there are different kinds of unbelief. There is cynical unbelief that closes itself off entirely. But there is also wounded unbelief—the kind that comes after years of hoping and praying, with no results. And many people carry that kind of unbelief very quietly.

People come to church every Sunday carrying prayers they have prayed for decades. Some have watched dreams collapse. Some are caring for aging spouses or grieving people they loved or wondering what the future of the world will look like for their grandchildren.

And in moments like these, faith can become less triumphant and more fragile. More like: “Lord, I want to believe. But this feels impossible.” That is Sarah’s territory. And maybe ours too.

Meanwhile, the world itself feels a little like Sarah’s laugh these days. We hear promises about peace, but wars continue. We hear promises about justice, but divisions deepen. We hear promises about truth, but trust itself feels increasingly fragile.

And in that kind of climate, cynicism becomes very tempting. It is easier to laugh cynically than to remain hopeful. Easier to assume nothing changes. Easier to stop expecting God’s grace.

But the strange witness of Scripture is that God keeps working in places where we humans have concluded that nothing new can happen. An elderly couple becomes the beginning of a people. A shepherd boy becomes king. Exiles return home. A crucified Messiah rises.

Again and again, the biblical story insists that God is not limited by what we think is realistic. Which does not mean that everything we want will happen exactly as we imagine. But it does mean that despair does not get the final word.

In the Romans reading this morning, Paul says something extraordinary: “But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”

Now, if we’re honest, that sounds risky. Because most of us have experienced disappointment. But Paul is not talking about hope as optimism. He’s talking about a deeper kind of trust, a confidence not that life will always go smoothly but that God remains faithful within it.

And perhaps that is the shift Sarah slowly begins to make. The promise is no longer grounded in probability. It is grounded in relationship.

I think that may be one of the quiet lessons of the spiritual life. Eventually, faith matures from certainty into trust. When we are young, we often think faith means confidence. Having answers. Feeling sure.

But over time, faith becomes something gentler and deeper. It becomes the willingness to remain in relationship with God even when the future is unclear. Even when the promise feels delayed. Even when we laugh a little, well, snarkily….

There is one more detail in this story worth noticing. Sarah laughs privately. Quietly. To herself. And yet God hears it. Which means God is paying attention not only to our public prayers, but also to the hidden conversations of the heart. The doubts we never say aloud. The exhaustion we disguise. The hopes we barely dare admit anymore.

God hears all of it. And stays right with us in it.

Well, by the end of this story in Genesis 18, nothing has changed… yet. Sarah is not yet pregnant. The child has not arrived. The future is still unfolding.

But something important has happened. The promise has been spoken again. And maybe that is what some of us need this morning—not instant answers, not certainty, but simply the reminder that God has not forgotten us. That the story is not over yet.

That even now, for Sarah and maybe for you and me, in places that feel worn out or too late or beyond repair, God is still at work.

After all, this is the God who asks: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Oh by the way, later, in Chapter 21, spoiler alert: Sarah will say: “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Because God does make good on the promise.

So the journey of our faith is learning, slowly, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes laughing all the way— to trust that the answer to that question, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”… may be no.

Nothing… is too wonderful for the Lord. Amen.