Living Into Our Potential

Micah 6: 1-8 & Matthew 5: 1-12

Roger Lynn

February 17, 2019

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We human beings have lots of potential. We are, in fact, loaded with it. There is the potential for powerful connection, transforming compassion, life-changing faith. We have the potential not just for goodness, but for greatness. In describing who we are, the writer of the first creation story in Genesis declares that we are a reflection of God’s very self, and that when all was said and done, God pronounced it all to be “very good.” In a similar fashion, the writer of Psalm 8 put it this way, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:3-5) According to ancient Hebrew wisdom, there is nothing less than the stuff of God at the core of who we are.

Which makes it all the more confusing to watch the ways things unfold much of the time. We hurt each other. We hurt ourselves. We hurt the planet. If we have so much potential, why do we keep doing things the way we do? The prophet Micah certainly understood this frustration. Things in Micah’s day had gotten so bad that he imagines even God is fed up. “God has a controversy with the people, and God will contend with Israel. O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” (Micah 6:2-3) What I appreciate about this image of God which Micah portrays is the way in which it reflects a God who seeks to remain engaged with humanity. Here is a God who will not give up on us, no matter what. Something has got to change. Things simply cannot continue as they have been.  But God can be counted on to hang in there with us through the often painful process of finding our way back to our potential.  And therein lies both the problem and the hope. We forget who we are. We lose sight of what it means to be human – truly, deeply, richly, fully human. And God will not give up on us until we remember – until we find our way home again. 

Too often we fall into the trap of thinking it is about doing something – saying the right words, making the right offering, performing the right religious act, behaving in some particular way.  But, of  course, it doesn’t really work that way. Done with the right motivation, such things might help us get in touch with our true humanity, but at best they are means and not ends. In the words of Micah, we already know what it’s really all about. It’s about participating in justice, and loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. These are not three separate things – they are parts of the same united and uniting whole. It’s about remembering that we don’t have to do this life alone. Indeed, we cannot do it alone. Being truly, deeply, richly, fully human requires that we reach out beyond ourselves and recognize our connection with the whole world and our connection with God. We begin to live into our potential when we start to get in touch with our true selves. Can we really keep hurting each other when we recognize that we are a part of each other? Can we really keep lashing out in fear when we recognize that we are a part of God? We are made for wholeness. We are made for connection. We are made for community. Healing begins when we remember that such truth lies at the heart of who we are.

In Matthew’s Gospel we find Jesus taking a different approach to the same concern. He seeks to remind people that there is nothing they can experience which can keep them from their potential as God’s beloved. Jesus’ words, which we commonly call the Beatitudes, are not a checklist of qualities to strive for. They are a reminder of our common humanity. Are you feeling lost? sad? scared? desperate? It’s OK – you are still connected to God, in the very midst of such experiences, even when you are in too much pain to see it. Are you feeling compassionate? in sync? peaceful? That’s also when you’re in touch with God. Even when it seems as if the whole world is out to get you and everything is falling down on your head, you are still connected both to God and to each other. It cannot be otherwise, because it is who we are and it is who God is. We are bound together with the God who loves us all and embraces the whole world. We often lose sight of this reality, and we suffer greatly as a result. But ultimately even our forgetting will not change who we are or who God is. Whatever brokenness we feel can be healed. Whatever distress we experience can be comforted. And it all begins when we remember that we are not alone.  In the words of singer/songwriter Dan Seals: “We are one – the flowers of one garden – the leaves of one tree – we are one!” In the Sufi tradition there is an Arabic phrase – “La ilaha illallah” – which can be understood to mean “there is nothing that is not God.”

Of course it isn’t easy. If it were easy, Micah would not have been so frustrated with the people of Israel. If it were easy, Jesus would have had no need to remind people over and over again about God’s ongoing, active, loving presence in their midst. It isn’t easy to remember who we really are in the face of the pain and suffering and confusion which we sometimes witness and experience in the midst of our living. But if anything is to ever change, we must begin to remember, and then remember again each time we forget. We must remember that God is present with us. We must remember that how we treat our neighbors matters, because we are all connected. We must remember that everyone is our neighbor, and separateness is an illusion. Because until we begin to remember, we cannot begin living into our potential. And we human beings have lots of potential.