Laughing from Empty Places

June 14, 2026

Opening Prayer

Note to leader: before the prayer, invite the congregation to pause, breathe, and notice they have arrived.

Opening Prayer

God who speaks promises into empty places,
we come carrying what we could not leave behind—
the exhaustion that sits heavy in our chests,
the hope we are too tired to name.

We come from rushing and waiting,
from striving and surrender,
from laughter that covered doubt
and silence that swallowed questions.

Meet us here
in this ordinary space,
where we gather with worn-out faith
and bodies that remember weariness.

Speak to us your ancient promise:
that what seems impossible to us
is never impossible to you,
that you make a way when there is no way.

Settle us now.
Open us to wonder.
Let us hear your word
as if for the first time.

Through Jesus Christ, the promise kept.
Amen.

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Call to Worship

Based on Psalm 116
selected verses

I love the Lord, who heard my voice,
who listened when I cried for help.
Death’s cords entangled us;
the grave had us in its grip.

We were overcome by trouble and sorrow,
yet we called on the name of the Lord.
The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is full of compassion.

The Lord protects the unwary;
when we were brought low, God saved us.
Return to your rest, O my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you.

You have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
We will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

How can we repay the Lord
for all the goodness shown to us?
We will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.

Come, let us worship the God who hears.

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Hymn of Praise

God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending, GTG #716

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Grace Spoken

Hear the good news:
Even when we are too tired to hope,
God has not forgotten the promises made to us.
Even when our laughter sounds hollow,
Christ meets us where we are.

The Spirit breathes life into our exhaustion.
We are not abandoned.

God speaks promises over empty places.
We are not forgotten.

Christ offers rest to weary bodies and souls.
We are not alone.

The Lord renews what we thought was dead.
We are loved. We are held. We are made new.

Trusting in God’s grace and mercy, let us confess our sins and brokenness together.

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Responding to God’s Grace

Unison Prayer of Confession

God of impossible promises,
we confess that we have stopped believing
in laughter that comes from empty places,
in life that springs from barren ground,
in hope when exhaustion has had the final word.

We have measured your power
by the limits of our bodies,
the failures of our past,
the silence where we expected answered prayer.
We have dismissed as foolish
what you have named as possible.

We have become cynical guardians
of our own disappointment,
trusting weariness more than your Word,
listening to doubt more than your promise,
laughing bitterly when we should have laughed with joy.

Forgive us for the ways we have shrunk your love
to the size of our understanding.
Revive in us the capacity to be surprised by grace.

(A time of silent prayer)

Through Jesus Christ, the promise kept.
Amen.

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Sharing the Peace of Christ

An Embodied Sign of God’s Grace in Christ Jesus

Friends, we have been reminded that God’s grace extends to all. We have confessed our sins, knowing that we have been forgiven and that God is making us a new creation — even when we cannot imagine it, even when we can only laugh at the impossibility.

In this spirit, let us share the peace of Christ.

The peace of Christ be with you.

And also with you.

(Share Christ’s peace in ways fitting to your community.)

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The Written Word

A Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures

A Reading from the Psalms

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Laughing from Empty Places

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Hymn of Reflection

God, How Can We Forgive, GTG #450

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Affirmation of Faith

Spoken together.

We believe in God,
who comes to us in our exhaustion,
who makes promises when we have stopped hoping,
who calls forth life from what we thought was finished.

We believe in Jesus Christ,
who meets us in our emptiness,
who speaks wholeness into our weary bodies,
who brings laughter back to mouths that forgot how to sing.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
who unsettles our comfortable despair,
who breathes possibility into our closed-off places,
who plants hope where we buried only doubt.

We trust that God’s promises outlast our skepticism,
that grace reaches farther than our faithlessness,
that resurrection happens even when we’ve stopped watching for it.

We believe God is still speaking,
still creating,
still making all things new—
beginning with us.

Amen.

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Prayers of the People

God who speaks life where there is only laughter born of exhaustion,
hear our prayers for your weary world.

For the earth groaning under the weight of extraction and exploitation,
for communities thirsting for clean water,
for ecosystems teetering at the edge of collapse—
we ask: where is the promise of new life?
Speak your word of creation once more.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For places where violence has exhausted all hope,
for children who cannot remember peace,
for mothers and fathers who have buried too many—
we ask: can these dry bones live?
Breathe your Spirit into the valley of death.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For leaders and teachers who labor without rest,
for those whose idealism has given way to cynicism,
for preachers whose wells have run dry—
we ask: how can we keep speaking your word?
Fill us again with your living water.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For our own lives, stretched thin and running on empty,
for the promises we once believed but now doubt,
for the laughter that sounds more like despair—
we ask: do you still see us in our tents?
Visit us with your presence, Holy One.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For those whose bodies ache with illness,
for minds besieged by depression and anxiety,
for souls who have stopped hoping for change—
we ask: is anything too wonderful for you?
Touch us with your healing hand.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For those the world has rendered invisible,
for the old ones society has discarded,
for the barren places no one notices anymore—
we ask: where will life break through?
Show us where you are already at work.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

For this community gathered in your name,
for our ministries that feel too small,
for our faith that wavers when we are tired—
we ask: will you really do what you have promised?
Remind us that nothing is impossible with you.
In our weariness, revive us.
(pause)

(A time of silent prayer)

Holy God, you met Sarah at the entrance of her tent
and spoke the impossible into being.
Meet us now in our exhaustion,
speak life into our empty places,
and give us grace to laugh with joy
when your promises come to pass.

Amen.

We pray together, saying:
(The Lord’s Prayer is prayed in the words familiar to the community.)

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Hymn of Sending

I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me, GTG #700

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Sending

Go now from this place of promise,
even when you are too tired to believe it,
even when laughter feels like a distant memory.

Go and speak the word of life
into exhausted places—
your own heart, your neighbor’s struggle,
the systems that grind people down.

Notice where God is already at work
in what seems worn out and finished.
Sarah laughed because she knew her body.
God laughed back and gave her a son.

When despair whispers that nothing can change,
remember: God makes promises
to people who have every reason to doubt,
and keeps them anyway.

So go—
not because you have energy to spare,
but because the God who visits us in our weariness
is already preparing the impossible.

And may the God who speaks life into empty places,
the Christ who was raised when all hope was buried,
and the Spirit who births joy from exhaustion
go with you now and always.
Amen.

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Reflections for Later

Sharing God’s Word Together

For Newcomers

Maybe you came today worn down by the weight of something you’ve been carrying too long. Maybe you’re here because someone invited you, and you’re not quite sure what to make of it all. The story we heard this morning is strange—an old woman laughing bitterly at an impossible promise, then lying about it when confronted. Sarah stands in the doorway of her tent, eavesdropping on a conversation about her body, her barrenness, her exhaustion. When the stranger says she will bear a son, she laughs. Not the laughter of joy, but the laughter that comes when hope has run out and you’ve learned to protect yourself from disappointment.

If you’ve ever felt that kind of tired—the kind that makes promises sound cruel rather than comforting—then you’ve stood where Sarah stood. The good news isn’t that God scolds her for laughing. The good news is that God shows up anyway, speaks the promise anyway, and a year later brings life from a place that had known only emptiness. This is what the gospel keeps insisting: that God meets us in the exhausted places, the bitter places, the places where we’ve stopped hoping. Not because we’ve conjured enough faith or fixed ourselves first, but simply because God chooses to.

You don’t have to believe it all at once. You don’t have to pretend the promises don’t sound absurd. You’re welcome to laugh—Sarah did. What matters is that you’re here, and that the God who kept showing up for her keeps showing up still. If you’d like to keep exploring what that might mean, we’d be honored to walk alongside you. There’s no pressure, no timeline. Just an open door and a table set for you.

For Those Rooted in This Community

You know this story. You’ve heard it preached a dozen ways. Sarah laughs, God promises, Isaac comes. Neat and tidy in your mental filing system of Sunday School memories. But when was the last time you let yourself actually feel the barrenness? When did you last sit with the exhaustion of waiting so long for God’s promise that the waiting itself becomes your identity?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: we who have been in the faith for years can become experts at sanitizing Sarah’s laughter into “a lesson about trusting God’s timing.” We can exegete the theology of divine promise without ever admitting that we, too, have grown tired. That there are places in our own lives—in this congregation’s life—where we’ve stopped expecting anything new. Where we’ve made peace with emptiness and called it wisdom. Where we’ve learned to speak the language of hope without actually hoping for anything that would disrupt our carefully managed faith.

God’s question to Sarah is God’s question to us: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Not too hard. Too wonderful. The Hebrew word speaks of marvels, of things that make you catch your breath. And perhaps that’s what long faithfulness sometimes costs us—the capacity to be astonished, to laugh not in cynicism but in the startled joy of recognizing that God is still up to something we didn’t plan, didn’t predict, didn’t try to control.

What promise have you stopped laughing at because you’ve waited too long? What wonder have you dismissed as impossible because you’ve grown too familiar with the way things are?

For Churches Without a Pastor

Sarah laughed because the promise sounded impossible. She laughed because her body knew what hope had cost her. She laughed because sometimes laughter is the only honest response left when you’re too tired to believe and too faithful to walk away. Your congregation knows something about that kind of laughter — the kind that rises from empty places, the kind that comes when you’re running worship with whoever showed up, when the pulpit stands vacant but the work continues, when you’re exhausted from holding things together and still God keeps showing up anyway.

Here’s what Sarah’s story says to you: God doesn’t wait for perfect conditions or proper credentials to speak promises into being. The word came to Abraham and Sarah together, both of them listening, both of them laughing, both of them recipients of grace they couldn’t manufacture or control. You already have what you need for this moment — you have each other, imperfect and tired as you are. You have the Spirit, who distributes gifts widely and refuses to be contained by organizational charts. You have the Word, which speaks whether or not someone with a seminary degree is reading it. You have a tradition that survived worse disruptions than this one.

The promise didn’t depend on Sarah’s energy or Abraham’s faith or their ability to imagine how it could possibly work. It depended on God, who specializes in making life spring from places that look finished. Your congregation isn’t finished. You’re in a hard season, yes — one that tests your capacity and asks more than feels sustainable. But this is also a season when you might discover gifts you didn’t know you had, when shared leadership stops being a committee structure and becomes actual ministry, when the whole people of God remember that we’re all called, all equipped, all responsible for bearing witness to the gospel.

So keep laughing — the honest kind, the kind that knows this is hard and holy both. Keep showing up for each other. Keep reading scripture and breaking bread and asking hard questions and praying prayers that feel inadequate. Keep trusting that the One who promised life to Sarah can sustain your congregation through this wilderness. You’re not doing this alone, and you’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing what the church has always done: living into promises you can’t yet see, held together by a grace that precedes and outlasts every human arrangement we try to build around it.

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Rights and Use

© Church Commons. 2026

Written by Rev. Matthew J. Skolnik unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

These materials may be used and adapted for worship and educational purposes within Christian communities. They may not be sold or redistributed for commercial purposes without permission.

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Resource Details

Date: June 14, 2026

Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15

Theme: Laughing from Empty Places (Psalm 116, Genesis 18:1-15)

Lectionary: RCL Year A

Scripture on this page is from The Shared Word Translation (SWT), an ongoing translation project within ChurchCommons.org.