Abraham “fell on his face” (17:3, 17). That is our story tonight in Genesis. We are dipping into the era of the patriarchs and matriarchs. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. Sarah and Hagar and Rebekah and Leah and Rachel. Abraham and Sarah’s story is meandering and covers no less than 15 chapters of the book of Genesis. And tonight we read one of the most famous episodes in their saga. In chapter 17, God comes to Abraham and announces that he, at age 99, is going to have a son. And God establishes a covenant with Abraham that from that son a multitude of nations will follow.
In which, “Abraham fell on his face.”
Twice actually. People in the Bible are always faceplanting. The phrase “fell on their face” appears all over the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Bowing with your face to the ground is a sign of respect, an acknowledgement of authority, deference, and awe. People fall on their faces in the presence of God, the glory of God, God’s messengers. People fall on their faces before other people, whether kings or others in authority: David bowed before King Saul (1 Sam 24:8), the magi before the baby Jesus (Matt 2:11). Sometimes falling on your face is an expression of repentance, like David and the elders, clothed in the sackcloth, falling upon their faces at the appearance of the Angel of the Lord. Sometimes falling on your face is a reaction of fear, like the disciples hearing God’s voice during Jesus’ transfiguration (Matt17:6). Somethings falling on your face is an expression of gratitude, like the Samaritan with leprosy who Jesus healed. For a variety of reasons, there is a lot of falling down in the Bible.
Abraham falling on his face here is traditionally interpreted as an expression of worship before the presence of God, which makes a lot of sense. But when I read this text, when I think about the story of it all, the things that are happening and being said and heard I can’t help but feel like it is more than just worship, or maybe even something else altogether. “Abraham fell on his face”—you bet he did. I mean, wouldn’t you? I know that Abraham worshipped and revered the Lord and all that. But I also wonder if Abraham just kind of fainted, was literally bowled over by the news God was bringing.
Abraham is a very old man. 99 years old. Sarah, his wife, is a very old woman, at age 90. Now they have had a pretty active last quarter of a century. Rather than retire, at age 75 Abraham received a call from God to leave, to pack up his entire extended family, all of his father’s household from their home in Harran, modern day Turkey, to modern day Israel-Palestine, a journey by my very rough please-don’t-quote-me estimate of about 600 miles.
And they had already done this once before, traveling with Abraham’s father from modern day Iraq to Harran, a journey of about 900 miles. Abraham and Sarah had spent their lives trekking across land, mile after mile. It is hard for me to conceive of these ventures, how they traveled on foot, with all their possessions and animals and children and elderly folks trodding behind them. After all that they must be tired. Their bodies have been through a lot. And they are very old.
Now there are a lot of famously really old people in the Bible. Methusaleh is the oldest, who lived to the ripe old age of 969. But there were others too. Noah himself just missed the record, clocking in at 950 years. And Abraham has a bunch of great-great-great-etc. grandfathers who put up impressive numbers: 500 years, 430 years, several in the 200s (Gen 11). The old age thing was not completely novel to Abraham and his father’s family.
I will not tonight be offering you any of the many and ultimately inherently unsatisfying explanations compiled over the years by scholars and well-meaning speculators for how or why Biblical folks lived so long. I’ve got nothing for you.
In part because I don’t think we are meant to have a tidy explanation. I think we are meant to be puzzled, to be incredulous when we read about these very, very old men. We are not meant to say, “oh that was just normal back then.” If anything it was the opposite. Ancient life was hard, and hard on bodies. Life expectancies were lower, not higher than they are today. Significantly lower. Abrham and Sarah, in their 90s, had likely already buried most of their friends and family in their generation, and likely had buried a good number of the children of their friends and family as well.
And the Bible itself is clear that the ages of Abraham and Sarah in this story are troublingly unusual. Abraham and Sarah both tell God straight out, “Really?!? Because we are really old…” (17:17; 18:12). Paul in Romans centuries later says the same thing. “[Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about 100 years old” and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb (Rom 4:19). The Bible is repeatedly, painstakingly clear: Sarah and Abraham’s ages are remarkable and make no sense. It’s super weird. And that is the point.
I can’t help but linger on their ages and the meaning of their ages, and for a particular reason. As many of you know, I spend a lot of time in my work with old people. Every week, nearly every day, I sit in the homes of folks in their 80s, 90s, and beyond. I am face to face with them in their lives, with in their bodies, which are beautiful. And, almost always, whether physically or mentally, frail. Because I am part of their medical team, I am privy to all kinds of details about the way their bodies function and at times fail. Sometimes due to illness. But often simply due to age. Bodies in old age begin to break down. Heck in my mid 40s I can already feel stirrings of that some days.
I currently have 3 patients who are all 101. They are completely remarkable people. One still lives in assisted living, so she gets assistance with meals and has people to check on her, but she lives in an apartment by herself and only recently has needed much help at all. Another enjoys every bite of food she eats more than anyone I know on the planet. She especially likes salty things, and will suck the flavor off of some bites even if she’s not very hungry. Another still goes to every activity available in his retirement community, and keeps a calendar of residents and calls them to play “Happy Birthday” on the harmonica, just like he has been doing for the last 25 years. They are vibrant, strong, lively souls.
And none of them, at 101, should be running around after a toddler. In the immortal words of our own Zach Yordy: absolutely not.
God’s announcement to Abraham, and later to Sarah, that they will have a child at the ages of 99 and 90 is completely absurd. It makes no sense. It doesn’t even seem to have precedent among all those old age stories in the Bible: most of Abraham’s forefathers who lived so so long, they had their kids in their 30s. (The exception is Noah. But with the whole ark thing, let’s just acknowledge that Noah is pretty exceptional). And the real kicker here is Sarah’s age. Chapter 18 states clearly that Sarah is no longer menstruating, so she can’t have children. Sarah laughs at the news, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, am I now going to have sex?!?” (Gen 18:12)
The story in Genesis, of God coming to Abraham and Sarah to announce that they will have a child in their 90s, and that a multitude of nations will find its starting point at this time, in this way, is strange.
I can’t tell you why God did it this way. It is all kind of weird. God—is kind of weird. God is always doing things that are bizarre. Sometimes God’s weirdness is wonderous: the Red Sea parting, water turning into wine, Lazarus walking out of his tomb into the arms of his friends. Sometimes God’s weirdness is scary: Isaiah’s vision of sixed winged seraphim, Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, Revelation’s lake of fire. Sometimes God’s weirdness of confusing: Jesus’ instructions for the disciples to leave behind their families, Jesus’ parables, Jesus’ apocalyptic pronouncements.
And then there are times when God’s weirdness not only baffles me, it bothers me. I have notes. God’s way of doing things is at times nothing short of disturbing. Perhaps the greatest example of this is in our passage tonight from Mark. Jesus is talking to his disciples, and per usual is saying a bunch of things they don’t understand. But then Jesus gets even weirder. He starts to tell them how he is going to undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed (Mark 8:31). He will eventually repeat this clearly, explicitly three separate times, as if he knows the disciples aren’t getting it.
I’m with them. Just like Peter, when I hear Jesus’ words, I want to object. Surely, Jesus, there is another way! A way without all the suffering and rejection and death. Without a cross.
But Jesus says no. This is the way it is going to go. And not only am I going this way, if you want to follow me, you will have to take this path too. You will have to also take up your cross.
Jesus’ cross here isn’t the ordinary burdens of our lives, the way we often interpret it today. When Jesus said “cross,” he referenced a Roman tool of political oppression, torture, and execution. Cicero wrote that “the very word ‘cross’ should be removed from the eyes and ears of Roman citizens…it is unworthy of a free man.”1 Crucifixion was a way for Rome to remind foreign populations, including the Jewish people, of their servitude, and control them through intimidation and terror. The word “cross” to Jesus’ disciples would have been extreme, startling, repulsive.
Embracing a cross is a deeply, deeply weird thing for a first century Jewish teacher to do. It is perhaps the epitome of how God’s weirdness is not only hard to understand, but hard to accept.
So my question tonight is: why is God so weird?
Why is God so weird?
Like any good theological question, and any preacher worth their salt, I don’t have a definitive answer for you. “God is God and we are not.” (One of the lessons of Job, another guy who experienced the weirdness of God.) God is mysterious and ineffable. But there is a pattern to God’s weirdness that I think we can uncover, and that I think gives us some ideas.
The thing is that the strangeness of God, God’s wild, untamed weirdness, it always leads to: life. God’s ways are so weird that even death, even death on a cross, leads to life. In Mark, for all the baldfaced honesty of his announcement of suffering and rejection and death, Jesus includes the marvelous (and also weird) good news that after three days he will rise again (8:31). John Calvin says, “But [even] as the bare mention of the cross must, of necessity, have occasioned heavy distress to [the disciples’] minds, [Jesus] presently heals the wound.”2 “After 3 days [the Son of Man] will rise again” (8:31). “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me…will save it” (8:35). In the midst of his terrible announcement, Jesus keeps circling around and repeating, “life…life…life.”
Among other things, the weirdness of God keeps us on our toes. As Tana said a few weeks ago about the transfiguration (also weird): it keeps us asking, “God, what are you up to?”
And what God is up to, over and over again, is life. If the weirdness of God keeps us on our toes, it is not meant to throw us off balance. It is meant to keep us looking for the life God promises. The joy of a weird God. Because that is how God works: around every strange and surprising corner in the story, God is working to bring life.
We could point to dozens of examples throughout Scripture. But the one we have for tonight is Sarah and Abraham. It’s a weird story. But it isn’t hard to find the life and the joy in the weirdness.
So back to Genesis.
Chapter 17, as the Hebrew Bible often does, repeats itself, and then adds a little riff on what it said before. Verse 3 says that “Abram fell on his face.” Then later, in verse 17, after a lengthy explanation of the details of the promise and the covenant and the kings and nations that will flow from Sarah’s womb, it comes back around again to say, “Abraham fell on his face and he laughed.” It goes on. “And [Abraham] said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90?’” Here we have it: father Abraham, knocked to the ground in amazement, chuckling and muttering to himself is awe. I wonder—maybe he fell down in worship? Maybe he fainted? Or maybe he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stand up.
It is this joy from the depths of absurdity that jumps off the page to me tonight. Abraham’s laugh in the face of God’s weird plan. Sarah will laugh later too. And when she is embarrassed and afraid, so much so that she lies to God, “No, I didn’t laugh!” God merely responds, “Yes! Yes, you did laugh.” (Gen 18:12-15).
And after Sarah’s 90 year old body has carried a child to term and given it birth, in what can only be an affirmation of Sarah and Abraham’s laughter, the miraculous son is named Isaac. Which means, “he laughs.” Sarah says when Isaac is born, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me” (Gen 21:3-6).
God is super weird. God is always doing things that don’t make sense and are baffling. God is always doing things that I truly do not understand. But the story Sarah and Abraham remind me the truth of our faith: that in all God’s weirdness, God is always working to bring life. God is in the business of life and joy, however uncanny.
And, like Sarah, God invites us to join and laugh along.