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Several years ago Danny Thomas got a good burst of laughter from his audience. At the close of his program, Mr. Thomas was introducing some of the performers on his show when he came to the man who was the musical director. Thomas said the man was his accompanist and had been with him 23 years. He made some complimentary remarks about him and then he said, "And now, by contractual agreement, it is necessary for me to say that he is a Lutheran. You see, this guy sat here for years hearing me tell stories about all different kinds of people. Then one day he came to me and said, 'I hear you tell stories about Italians, Jewish people, the Irish, and Catholics, but you never tell any stories about Lutherans. And so he put it in his contract that I should tell stories about Lutherans.' " Then Mr. Thomas turned to the man and said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't really being discriminatory. It's just that I have never met a funny Lutheran." The laughter rang from the rafters.

That's worth thinking about, especially in these days, when we know the value of laughter in reducing stress. Occasionally Lutherans can laugh at themselves, making quips about lefse as mammoth manna or waving arms in church as the work of the devil. We need some help in not taking ourselves quite so seriously. Thank goodness for Garrison Keillor. But then, someone said, "A Lutheran is a person who thinks Garrison Keillor's stories are factual."

Laughter is healthy. It sounds the same in all languages. It provides a way for us to share common experiences without translation. It can help us get ourselves in perspective. It can change our perspective on the world around us. It feels good. It relieves stress. It aids digestion. It is good medicine.

There was a lot of laughing going on in and around Abraham and Sarah's tent. Some of the action at the camp seems downright absurd. Sarah is eavesdropping outside the tent--flap while Abraham is talking to angels. She hears one of them say that she would have a son at this time next year. She laughs. (One of the divine visitors is eavesdropping on her and hears her inner laughter.) Sarah is thinking, of course, that the visitor doesn't know how old she is. In the preceding story (chapter 17), Abraham laughed so hard at the news of his approaching fatherhood that he fell on his face laughing. How could a swaying, creaking, knobby--kneed old man like Abraham father a son? And how could Sarah birth one? It took her ten minutes just to get up from the cooking fire, bones aching and knees cracking in an orchestrated sound of disapproval. Why wouldn't they laugh at such an absurd idea?

And we laugh with them. It seemed impossible that God could use these two old--timers to fulfill a covenant promise of descendants like the stars. The central fact of the covenant itself is a miracle: a birth which defies explanation, an event totally against reason. A covenant based on a miracle seems absurd. All previous assumptions are gone. Logic has flown out the tent--flap. This event is beyond explanation. Laughter flows like water from a fountain long dry. God makes outrageous promises and then keeps them. The faith of the people of Israel is grounded on a miracle, a gift from a God who keeps outrageous promises. There can be little confidence in human power any longer, but only wonder, amazement, celebration, and laughter. All attempts to bring order to human destiny are futile before such a God. Sarah and Abraham learned this first hand. They are asked to believe a God who isn't hampered by human constrictions. Their laughter goes from fear to embarrassment to disbelief to joy. So their son is appropriately named Isaac, "he laughs," and we are invited to rejoice and laugh with them.

Annie Dillard tells about hiding pennies as a child. She always hid the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk on her street, putting it in the roots of a tree or a crack in the pavement. Then, with a piece of chalk, starting at the end of the block she drew huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. When she learned to write she began to label the arrows: "Surprise ahead." Then she would hide and the excitement would mount as she waited for the first lucky passer--by who would receive, without merit, a free gift from the universe. When it happened, she laughed with glee at the surprise she had brought about.1

This is the kind of God we have, a God full of surprises, a God that defies human logic and brings blessings barely dreamed of. Abraham said to the divine visitors, "Let me bring a little bread ..." (v. 5), and God caused manna to descend for forty years. Abraham said, "Let a little water be brought ..." (v. 4), and God caused a well to rise up for Abraham's offspring in the wilderness. Abraham said, " ... rest yourselves under the tree ..." (v. 4), and when the nation left Egypt, God " ... spread a cloud for a covering and fire to give light by night" (Psalm 105:39). Abraham watched over his divine visitors, "... he stood by them under the tree while they ate ..." (v. 8), and God protected his descendants in Egypt that they would not be stricken by the plagues.

And so Abraham and Sarah learned to walk in laughter and surprise, held in the grip of a promise almost too good to believe. They let go of their best plans and the notion that they could plan their own destiny. It was not an easy road. They could not have foreseen either the possibilities or the demands occasioned by the birth of this miracle child. But they awoke every morning to possibility and surprise, searching the faces of strangers for the look of an angel, following chalk arrows, having faith without being able to prove a thing, walking to a new land with no map. And they laughed. They laughed because only crazy fools would do what they were doing. Only a camel with sunstroke would believe that two doddering old people would birth a child. They laughed because God believed it and expected them to also. They laughed because, in a little hidden place under their ragged, wind--torn robes, they did believe it. They laughed because the laughter felt good, relieved the stress of their futile planning, and changed forever their perspective on life. The laughter helped to keep them going, and they became convinced that God was able to do what God had promised, as outrageous as it seemed. Perhaps they even died laughing, for they had discovered that the promise was not just a future thing but was lived out and laughed over in the lives of common desert nomads every single day. Perhaps they believed the promise would go on, even without them. A poet said it well.

Let me die laughing.
No sighing o'er sins past; they are forgiven.
Spilled on this earth are all the joys of Heaven;
The wine of life, the cup of mirth quaffing.
Let me die laughing! - S. Hall Young
I bet they did. Amen.

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1. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 14.