Laughing with Sarah

I started preaching when I was 9, it didn’t matter that no one was listening; I lined up several empty chairs, stood in front of them and began my first sermon.The first time I actually had an audience was when I was 14, the young peoples’ group at church asked me to speak for 5 minutes. I preached regularly after that, at youth group meetings and women’s meetings. Someone once asked David how he felt about ‘letting his wife’ preach, he replied, “She was preaching when I met her, and I knew there was no stopping her.” Actually he was my greatest encouragement, all through our lives.I met David when I was 13 and he was not quite 16. When we met we had both already privately promised God, that we would spread the news of his salvation. David knew that God wanted him to be a missionary, I knew that the urge to preach was coming from somewhere outside of myself. Our pastor-friends advised us that all we needed was a good understanding of the Bible and the various experiences of church life that we could learn at our local church. After working under our pastors' directions and studying in the local church we were considered equipped and sent to Japan as missionaries. David and I still longed for more knowledge. When we had been married for 25 years, while we were living in America, we finally got the chance.I enrolled in college first and David the year after. It was while we were in college that we met Presbyterian Christians, and discovered that their way of being Church fitted with our way of serving and preaching God.In 1979, aged 51, I was at last judged ready to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA. The local Presbytery members would pray. and ‘lay-hands’ on me, and through faith, accompanying the action, the Holy Spirit would fit me for serving the congregation. The date of the ordination service was set, I had invited the speakers and all that remained was to choose the hymns. While I was choosing them David phoned me; he asked if everything was going according to plan and I replied ‘Yes, it’s actually going to happen.” Even before I put the phone down something else happened: I began to laugh, peal after peal of laughter, coming so fast I could scarcely breathe and all the while tears poured down my face. I couldn’t control it. Sober-faced, serious minded Jessie was having hysterics. I didn’t try to stop, because it felt like all the struggles to makes grades and pass exams were being wiped away. The laughter felt like a door had opened and I had gone through and entered into a new space. I continued to laugh and laugh for a long time. When I finally wiped my eyes and took a long breath I decided that I had something in common with Sarah. Sarah had said, “God has made me to laugh so that all who hear me will laugh with me.”Sarah was ninety years old when she said this. I wonder; had she stopped laughing in her old age? If she lived today she might have; life seems to get sadder as we get older: friends die, pleasures like eating whatever we fancy, running and exercise are discontinued, hearing seeing and moving get difficult. There are truly fewer reasons to laugh.We try to compensate for the lack of earthly joy by substituting spiritual joys, and there are many of these, but the choice is not an 'either or' choice. It can be both. God sent Ruth a daughter-in-law and a grandchild, Abraham married again after Sarah died, Anna saw the answer to her prayers. Until the perfect day dawns and the shadows flee away we live according to the promises, knowing (because we trust God) that they shall surely come true. The various answers to prayer that we experience reassure us that God is indeed with us, and for us. Because we know this; it will come about that sometimes and oftentimes, sober-faced Presbyterians, serious minded Lutherans, and industrious Methodists will join the Charismatics of the Church and laughter will ripple and spread. The enemies of the Church will hear it and wonder about it, the enemies of man-kind will hear it and wish that they could laugh too. It may be that when they hear the laughter they will grow wistful and wonder across their territorial lines, looking for us, asking if it is true that happiness can happen to humans. Let us laugh.