“Realizing Our Potential”
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – June 15, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Gen. 18:15-21/Rom. 5:1-8/Matt. 9:35-10:8]

“Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’”

Sarah was a realist. That’s all there is to it. She saw the situation exactly as it was. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews called Sarah “dried up” and Abraham “as good as dead;” Sarah probably would have agreed. The thought that she would bear a child was preposterous, so she laughed. Laughter was the realistic response – wasn’t it?

So, do we laugh at names like Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Billy Graham or Mother Theresa? A realist, like Sarah, would have laughed at them, at least in their early years. After all, Einstein was thought “backward” by his family and never completed his formal education. Helen Keller was deaf, mute, blind and reacted to people in an almost animalistic fashion. Billy Graham couldn’t get a word out without stuttering, so he used to drive the Gospel Quartet around as his service to God. Mother Theresa was an Albanian nun in India who, without any official church support and no training, set out to care for “the poorest of the poor.”

A realist would laugh at the thought that these four people would or could make a difference in the world, but the laugh would be on him (or her, for that matter). Those four names are, of course, well known for their outstanding accomplishments, contributions and examples. When Time magazine honored the one hundred people who could be called “people of the century,” people who had impacted the twentieth century, those four were listed among them. They are people who have made a difference in the world because they realized their potential.

“Potential,” the dictionary tells us, has to do with “the possibility of being or becoming.” It is the adjectival form of the word “potent,” from the Latin for power – potestas. Potential, I think, is the power within us to become most fully what we are. However, the greatest potential lies in the One who is “omnipotent” – in God, who revealed Godself to Moses with the name, “I AM WHO I AM” or “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.”

When Sarah laughed at the prophecy that she would bear a son she was limiting God’s ability to keep God’s promise. She was saying that her perspective, as limited as it was, surpassed God’s perspective and God’s potential. God, however, as the old saying goes, can write straight with crooked lines and can make what is old new again. A year later, Genesis tells us, Sarah was pondering what had happened as she nursed her son, Isaac – whose name means “Laughter” in Hebrew. Sarah the realist became Sarah the believer and God laughed God’s covenant people into existence.

You and I are the children of that same gleeful covenant, all because God chose to do the unrealistic thing and speak God’s Word into human flesh. In Jesus the Christ God walked among God’s creation and knew us in the very inmost parts of our being. Jesus looked on those who flocked to him for healing, for wholeness, for fulfillment, saw them like sheep lost and alone, “harassed and helpless,” and had compassion on them. The wonder is that he continues to have compassion, to hold out to use the opportunity to realize our true potential as children of God.

The great teacher of the Church, Athanasius would say of this:

The Son of God became the Son of Man in order that the sons of men, the sons of Adam, might be made sons of God. The Word who was begotten of the Father in heaven in an ineffable, inexplicable, incomprehensible and eternal manner, came to this earth to be born in time of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in order that they who were born of earth might be born again in heaven. . . . He has bestowed upon us the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit, so that we may all become Sons of God in imitation of the Son of God. Thus He, the true and natural Son of God, bears us all in himself, so that we may all bear in ourselves the only God.

Jesus, then, brings the unrealistic possibility of humanity sharing the very life of God into reality and the Father laughs with joy. The Triune God, who visited Abraham and heard Sarah’s laughter, laughs in exultation as women and men are awakened to what can happen in them, through them as they realize their potential as children of God.

Abraham, who had heard God’s voice in Haran, leaving all to follow God, knew what it took to enter this relationship – he ran into the presence of God. He put himself in the presence and opened himself in service. Jesus began teaching us that same lesson by his own example of selfless love and by sharing his mission with the apostles. The kingdom of God was among them in Jesus who called them out – in good rabbinical fashion two-by-two – and then sent them out to do what he was doing: healing, raising the dead, cleansing, and casting-out demons. Jesus fulfils the covenant with Abraham by first ministering to the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” and then by extending Abraham’s lineage to all who are reborn by grace through faith.

Wonderful! Exciting! And still there are Sarahs who stand at the tent doors of churches through the wide world and laugh: “Can it be?” they say, “Maybe it was so when Jesus was here. Maybe it was so when patriarchs and prophets walked the land, but now?” You know what? GOD WILL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH!

Through his body, the church, Christ continues to see, to have compassion, to call and to send the means of healing. Now it is you and me – we are the ones to bring healing and wholeness to those who are broken. We are to raise those dead in selfishness and self-centeredness to new, outwardly-directed lives. We are to offer cleansing to those who long to know purity and fulfillment of their potential. We are to cast out the demons which oppress and limit; demons which go by the names of “fear,” “ignorance,” “intolerance,” and a host of others like them. We are to accomplish this mission by simply living Christ’s life in the midst of everyday happenings, letting those “lost sheep” know that there is a Good Shepherd who cares deeply for them.

We are enabled, called to realize our potential by placing ourselves in Christ’s life, to grow more and more like him each day by prayer, study and service. And, as a result, all of life takes on new meaning – even suffering. As Paul told the church at Rome, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” God can, indeed, write straight with crooked lines – God can use everything to bring us to be more and more in God’s image and likeness, and bring God’s people to realize their true potential.

Sarah laughed and could have gone on laughing, but she submitted herself to God and Isaac came forth from a “dried up” womb and one “who was as good as dead.” God can and will do great things in and through you and me, but only if we cooperate. God chooses to give us this gift of freedom. A wise spiritual writer of the Greek Church, Diadochus of Photike, said:

All men are made in God’s image; but to be in His likeness is granted only to those who through great live have brought their own freedom into subjection to God. For only when we do not belong to ourselves do we become like Him who through love has reconciled us to Himself. No one achieves this unless he persuades his soul not to be distracted by the false glitter of this life.

In short, we are to look beyond what we think our reality is and to see that relationship with God is the true reality. We have to do this freely, as Diadochus says elsewhere:

Free will is the power of a deiform soul to direct itself by a deliberate choice toward whatever it decides. Let us make sure that our soul directs itself deliberately only toward what is good, so that we always consume our remembrance of evil with good thoughts.

Thus, we are called upon not only to be “divinized,” filled to the brim with God’s presence and radiating it to the world, but we are also cooperators with God. God called, invited Abraham, Sarah, those first disciples, then Paul, and many others to walk God’s way. They accepted, and those who seemed so small became great as their potential – the image and likeness of God within them – was realized. It’s no different today. God still calls and waits for us to answer. God wants to laugh with us and the church – as I heard last week at a workshop on change – is dying of terminal seriousness.

I know, the temptation to hide behind the door and laugh, and in the wrong way, is real. Consider, though, what happens when God, who made the realist and reality itself, exercises God’s own potential. What happens when God, whose Name is “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE,” decides that it’s time to write straight with crooked lines? Babies named “Laughter” are born, babies named “Jesus” are born . . . potential becomes realized and the world becomes a different place, has a new beginning. You see, God is the ultimate realist, because God decides what is real – God decides what IS. This God calls us to see reality as God does and see God’s life in our own. God invites us to share God’s love and laughter – even Sarah joined in. Shall we? I hope so. Amen.