Mr. Bean and the missed opportunity

 Reflection for Pentecost III, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY

Text: Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7), Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)

Rowan Atkinson is a British actor who played the character Mr. Bean on the British television comedy show of the same name. He more recently appears in a Youtube video telling a story of an encounter he had with a fan. The fan approached him in a store and told Rowan that he looked just like the character Mr. Bean, and could make a lot of money doing impressions. Rowan explained that he was that actor, but the fan wasn’t having it. He started to become irritated with this man who kept insisting that he was Rowan Atkinson, and this went on for a while until Rowan excused himself. I laughed at the story and its delivery, and then thought, “This fan got so close to having a good conversation with Rowan Atkinson, but he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that’s who he was talking to.”

Abraham had a somewhat similar experience in the desert at Mamre. He knew that he was in the presence of three important people, but he didn’t realize that he was in the presence of God appearing as three people. He offered them hospitality, inviting them to sit in the shade of a tree, and had Sarah prepare cakes to eat, and prepared a calf from his flock. Unlike Rowan Atkinson’s fan, Abraham was tripping over himself to show the three visitors hospitality, and that chance encounter, where God saw who Abraham was, led to something wonderful. In a year’s time his wife Sarah, who was past childbearing age, conceived and gave birth to a son. But in that moment where God says that Sarah will conceive, she laughs because she can’t believe what she had heard, and that laughter is later reflected in her son’s name, Isaac, or Yitzhak, Hebrew for “laugh.”

The disciples whom Jesus sent out to heal the sick and cast out demons from the afflicted participated in chance encounters with God, too, but they were in the opposite role that Abraham was in. They were in the same role as the three people who walked by Abraham’s tent, and they accepted the hospitality of the people they encountered, and from those encounters the people were relieved from their suffering. In both of these stories, an encounter with God leads to a significant event and a revelation of God’s activity in the world, and the kingdom of God is built up a little more. Both readings make the same point: they show what God does in the world, and what God is capable of doing. God promises to do something extra-ordinary, beyond ordinary, something so absurd that Sarah laughs in her disbelief. Matthew shifts the roles of the people in the story of Abraham to show that it is the disciples themselves who will do the extra-ordinary things that will gain people’s trust in them, in Jesus, and in the good news he brings.

But sometimes the doubt that God can work through us blocks the good that comes from us doing God’s will. We laugh like Sarah did, but it is not Sarah’s laugh. We laugh in disbelief, feeling foolish in believing that God can make a difference in the world today when it seems no one is paying attention to God. We laugh sarcastically when we have decided that nothing will change and we can’t do anything about it, like violence and injustice, despite attempts to stop it. We laugh mockingly at the people more powerful than us who maintain inequality. We laugh bitterly when we feel we have been let down by God, when God hasn’t answered our prayers and we have to face what we have been avoiding. We miss out on experiencing God’s extra-ordinary actions because we are angry over our powerlessness to make changes in the world, and we focus on the absurdity of God acting instead.

To hear someone laugh with joy and delight that I’m sure Sarah did when Isaac was born can seem naive and foolish in the face of skepticism, bitterness, and disappointment. It adds irritation to the mood we are in, and drives our cynicism deeper. We find that we can empathize with the people Jesus sent his disciples to, people “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” because they were like we feel now. And that’s the key, empathy, to know what it’s like to feel helpless, to be without a shepherd. Empathy is that foot pushed into a door that would otherwise close, and walking through that opened door connects us to people with similar emotions and experiences. We can then choose to bond with others like us, build a fortress around ourselves, and declare war on the world that we have lost our faith in. Or, we can choose to shake the dust of bitterness and disappointment off of our feet, and realize that God continues to act in the world in unexpected ways. We can defend the faith we have held onto until the bitter end, or we can look through Jesus’ eyes at the world and see where God is still present, still active. There aren’t always resolutions for troubles in life that we are looking for or want, but there is an opportunity to move on in purpose or to a new perspective as Jesus instructed the disciples to do.

A new purpose, or a new perspective can bring a different and positive direction in our lives. It is an opportunity to understand our relationship with God or people sent by God. We may be like Abraham, waiting for that moment when God finally arrives to do something for us. Or we may be like the disciples, sent out by Jesus to go out without money or extra clothes to do his work. If we wait like Sarah waited, we run the risk of being disappointed and angry at God for failing to make something happen. But if we go out to the lost sheep and show them that the kingdom has come near by how we live our lives, we will build up the kingdom of God and the people of faith. In doing that, we can watch for God’s will to be done as Abraham watched, and wait to discover how God acts as Sarah discovered, and know that God has acted like the people helped by the disciples knew. Our encounter with God comes down to how we see our relationship with God and our place in the world. To that end, Jesus tells us that we are called by God to be a part of someone else’s encounter with God. When you leave here today, think about where you have been when you encountered God, or someone called by God to be present with you. Think about where you could go to find someone looking for God.