Friday • 2/19/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Deuteronomy 7:12–16; Titus 2:1–15 (and Saturday’s Titus 3:1–15); John 1:43–51

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Paul’s letter to Titus is a powerfully good read for the days right after Ash Wednesday. We wear Ash Wednesday’s ashes to confess, along with the people to whom Titus ministers, that we are confused about who God truly is, that we hurt one another, and that we are victims of our wrong desires. We, like them, apart from God’s own intervention, are “always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). We bear Ash Wednesday’s ashes because we want to put to death a life of dissolution, destructiveness, and despair. We want to die to all that (ultimately losing) way of living.

Towards the end of the second chapter of Titus, Paul shares the good news of how “the grace of God” (i.e., Jesus) appeared in order to teach us how to deny all those things, and how to live lives that are “self-controlled” (that is, not as lazy gluttons), “upright” (that is, not as vicious brutes), and “godly” (that is, not as liars [about God]—Titus 2:11–12). All this, because Jesus “gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). His working in us transforms us from where the destructive life begins: from the inside.

At the beginning of the second chapter of Titus, Paul describes something of what this looks like on the home front. When we treat the ones with whom we live with love and deference, with respect and even reverence, we “adorn” (Paul uses the Greek word from which we get “cosmetics”—Titus 2:10) the gospel. We make it more attractive, more accessible, more plausible. It’s of a piece with what Paul says in 1 Timothy (a letter he writes at about the same time) when he describes the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:14). With Jesus, when we die to ourselves and our selfish agendas, and live for others in him, we become the best argument for the truth of the faith.

A few verses into the third chapter of Titus, Paul further describes Jesus not merely as the appearance of God’s “grace,” but also as a manifestation of God’s “goodness” and his “loving kindness” (the Greek for “loving kindness” is philanthropia, literally “man lovingness”—Titus 3:). Christ’s coming shows God’s fundamentally loving disposition towards people. Remarkable!

We don’t have to find or manufacture a stairway to heaven, which is what the people of Crete were trying to do. God came, in person, down to us. We don’t have to climb up to him. God loves us not “because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:4). In Christ, God washes away the defilement and deadness of our being with the life-giving waters of baptism and graces us with the renewing energy of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5–6).

We saw how, in the second chapter of Titus, Jesus’s power as the “grace” of God shapes our home lives. Here in the third chapter, it is by equipping us for life in the public square that Jesus displays God’s “goodness” and “loving kindness” (or, to put it another way, God’s “affection for humanity”—Titus 3:4). “Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone” (Titus 3:1–2). We say a lot about who God is when we show respect to rulers and authorities, when we demonstrate a readiness to do our part for the common good, and when we engage in public discourse with courtesy and with agreeability (the Greek word that the NRSV translates as “be obedient” is peitharchein, which means “be persuadable”). Dear God, what pertinent words for our day!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: “Behold, I Make All Things New” by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0