Potency | Wayfarer

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Matthew 18:35 (NIV)

Every week our local gathering of Jesus’ followers says The Lord’s Prayer together. As we do, Wendy and I tend to paraphrase the traditional language a bit on our own. I think it’s funny and fascinating that the institutional church chooses to update the wording of certain things (music, translation of the Bible, the wording of the Apostle’s Creed, and etc.) but not others. Please don’t read what I’m not writing. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong or right. It’s the kind of ecclesiastical hair-splitting that have, for too long, gotten people’s undies in a bunch and caused more harm than good.

I see both sides of traditional words and phrasing for well-worn passages. Sometimes the traditional, yet out-of-date, wording is like a comfy old sweatshirt that wraps you in the warmth and comfort of something familiar which has been with you and seen you through long stretches of life’s journey. On the other hand, I have often found that as I press into new and unfamiliar stretches of life’s journey, I am challenged to address new and extraordinary circumstances that require me to find new layers of wisdom in traditional thoughts and meditations.

And, as the Bard famously said, “there’s the rub.”

I know, personally, that when I recite the same words over and over and over again, they begin to lose their potency. I’m just going through the motions. So, I tend to do what I was taught as I studied acting. You take the memorized line of a script and play with it, emphasizing a different word or phrase with increased inflection with each subsequent recitation. As I am fond of saying, metaphors are layered with meaning, and often as I emphasize and change my inflection with different words in the oft repeated sentence, it makes me consider different ways of considering the same words or phrases.

One of the phrases of The Lord’s Prayer that has taken on increased meaning for me as I have practiced this is: “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” This is a request with a stated acknowledgement of reciprocal relational responsibility. I’m asking God to forgive my sins, while acknowledging that I can only expect to be forgiven to the degree I am willing to forgive those who have wronged me.

In today’s chapter, Jesus unpacks this uncomfortable spiritual principle in a parable. A king has a servant who owes him a thousand dollars he has never been able to pay. Upon the pleading of the indebted servant, the king mercifully forgives the debt. This same man exits the kings chamber and runs into a fellow servant who owes him ten bucks. He goes postal on the dude, demanding the ten-spot without even considering the weight of debt from which he’d just been graciously and mercifully freed. The king finds out about the hypocrisy, hauls the ungrateful servant into his court and had him tortured until he paid every cent he was owed.

Now comes the intense and uncomfortable part. Jesus follows up this parable by stating quite directly: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat you, Tom, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Ouch. Hello, sobering Monday morning meditation. When I recited those famous words with my fellow followers yesterday, there’s potent spiritual punch lurking behind the well-worn words. Forgive me God, just as I have forgiven those who’ve sinned against me. Wait a minute. Maybe there are some heart and relationship matters I should have addressed before I showed up in my Sunday best to go through the religious motions.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself entering another work week thinking about my relational realities in light of my religious recitations. If there’s a disconnect between the two, then the latter was an impotent ritual. That’s the thing about a cozy old sweatshirt. If it becomes threadbare and filled with holes, it has lost its ability to accomplish the original purpose.

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This is the life-giving message we heard him share and it’s still ringing in our ears. We now repeat his words to you: God is pure light. You will never find even a trace of darkness in him.
1 John 1:5 (TPT)

In our present world of quarantine and shelter-at-home from the Coronavirus Pandemic, video streaming services are enjoying an increase in business. Interestingly, Wendy and I have been watching less television though we have managed to watch a few movies that we missed in the theaters. We watched A Star is Born the other night, which is the latest take on an old Hollywood tale. We both really enjoyed the film.

In Bradley Cooper’s adaptation, his character is suffering from Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and hearing loss. The never-ending ringing in his ears is one (of several) reasons the character has a drinking problem. As someone with a long history of Tinnitus, Wendy asked me if Tinnitus ever makes me want to drink, which it doesn’t. It can be maddening at times. There’s even speculation that Tinnitus may have been part of Van Gogh cutting off his ear. The truth is that it ebbs and flows, but nothing makes it go away.

On the heels of our conversation, I decided this morning to start reading John’s letters in a relatively new translation called The Passion Translation. I couldn’t help but notice when John writes: “This is the life-giving message we heard him share and it’s still ringing in our ears.“

The word picture is a fascinating one. I have thought about “ringing in my ears” in such on-going negative terms for so long, it jarred me to think about ringing in the ears being something positive. Even more striking is the fact that John’s letters were arguably the last New Testament epistles written from a chronological perspective somewhere between 85 and 95 A.D. It had been 50-60 years since John had been in Jesus’ earthly presence. The fact that the words of Jesus were still “ringing in his ears” says something about their potency.

I couldn’t help but think, as I meditated on these things, about a mysterious reference made by Paul:

The extraordinary level of the revelations I’ve received is no reason for anyone to exalt me. For this is why a thorn in my flesh was given to me, the Adversary’s messenger sent to harass me, keeping me from becoming arrogant. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to relieve me of this. But he answered me, “My grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through your weakness.” So I will celebrate my weaknesses, for when I’m weak I sense more deeply the mighty power of Christ living in me. So I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness and endure mistreatment—when I’m surrounded with troubles on every side and face persecution because of my love for Christ—I am made yet stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (TPT)

Scholars and believers speculate endlessly on what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was exactly. The truth is we don’t know, and I think it for the best that we don’t. The issue isn’t what it was but what it taught Paul. That his annoying (Level 1) “weakness” and suffering was a portal to experiencing God’s (Level 4) power and strength.

In the quiet of my home office this morning, I am mindful of the ringing in my ears. It never goes away. The ringing is omnipresent. Most often, I am able to ignore it and allow it to be nothing more than an additional layer of white noise in my life. Occasionally, it gets insanely loud and drives me batty. Sometimes (especially in my left ear where there is significantly more hearing loss) it becomes loud, intermittent beeps like someone translating the complete works of Shakespeare to me in Morse Code.

I’m thinking of my “weakness” in a new way this morning. I’ve journeyed through the Message perpetually for almost forty years. It’s always there. I’ve read it, memorized it, studied it, walked through it, taught it, contemplated it, and meditated on it continuously. Like John, it is still “ringing in my ears” even when it, at times, recedes like a layer of white noise in my consciousness.

When the ringing in my ears becomes maddening, I want to start letting it remind me of the Word that I have heard, that rings in the ears of my heart, which I am compelled to repeat so as to “release the fullness of my joy.”

“For those who have ears to hear….”
Jesus

All chapter-a-day posts from this series on 1 John are compiled in a simple visual index for you. There is also a simple visual index of Tom’s posts indexed by book of the Bible.

Read the other posts from 1 john

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