Church on the Choppy Seas: The Washing We Needed (Titus 3:3-8)

It was a hot, humid day in the Caribbean and in the West Indes. Safe havens abounded – even for crews like this. And, most people thought, thank God there weren't too many crews quite like this. Calico Jack was at the command. Other feared names had been, were, or would be aboard his ship. Right now, though, no one was aboard his ship. They'd lowered their insignia – the rectangle of black fabric with the crossed swords and the leering skull. They'd found an isolated cove and run the ship just barely aground during high tide. And now, at low tide, with fortifications on the beach and their cannons ashore, they tilted the ship toward its side, exposing half the hull to the open air. In short, they careened their vessel. And they set to work.

The hull, you see, was afflicted. Some of the wood was rotten. Other wood had holes from cannon fire. Some of the hull was infested with shipworms – tiny mollusks that love to burrow into the wood from the sea. Some was covered with barnacles that needed to be chipped off. Some was spattered with spots of mold. And across the whole, trails of seaweed, sickly green, streaked and dangled. And that wasn't good for the ship. It was bad enough that such afflictions hastened the deterioration of the wood and made it precarious to sail. But with so much build-up on the hull, so much junk sticking to and clinging to it, the roughened surface slowed the ship's top speed to half what it ought to be. Not good when your line of work is all about being faster than your prey and faster than your pursuers. And so it wouldn't do to leave the hull like that. Merchant vessels could use dry-docks to get their chance to deal with the like problems. But not an option for this crew – for these pirates. And so they did what they could. They careened it – and they cleaned it.

Even today, with ships made of different materials and affected differently by the water, conscientious owners will still find ways to clean their boats. And the days of wooden vessels were, in principle, no different. While resources had to be replenished – old maritime narratives often made reference to ships being “wooded and watered” – the cleanliness of the hull needed to be addressed. One old British parliamentary record, recording the words of naval leadership, remarks that 'cleansing the ship' is “a most necessary and most important consideration.” And so it's unsurprising that the book that put crews like this on the map, 1724's heralded General History of the Pyrates, speaks of how just such crews came to a cove and “there made preparations to careen; they carried ashore all their sails, and made tents by the water-side, where they laid their plunder, stores, &c., and fell to work … employ'd in heaving down, scrubbing, tallowing, and so forth.” There's a lot of work to do to a ship when the hull is afflicted so.

Over the past six weeks, we've been exploring a letter from Admiral Paul to Vice-Admiral Titus, given charge over a fleet of churches based in first-century Crete. Those seas were choppy. They were also toxic. And so not only was it important to have a sure anchor in God's truthfulness – not only was it important to see the twin beams from the lighthouse of Christ, blazing grace from his first appearance and glory from his appearance that is fast turning 'round – not only was it important to navigate by the star-chart whereby the Scriptures describe the pattern of Christ our Sign – not only was it important to sail steadily onward toward the harbor of God's embrace – not only was it important to have good officers at the helm to steer the ship right – not only was it important to have good rations administered to keep spiritual scurvy at bay – we also heard how important it is to keep swabbing the deck clear of the toxicity of any compromised half-gospel.

But the hull of each church is still in contact with the culture and everything it contains. Which isn't inherently bad. After all, if the culture weren't there, we'd be marooned on the sea floor! And yet, sailing on choppy waters full of such dreck, there's a problem: a ship is going to get dirty. Out there, on your private dinghy, you'll find the very same problem. Barnacles will attach themselves to your hull and drag as you try to go. Seaweed will wrap you up and trail behind your bow. Shipworms will burrow their way in and weaken your defenses against the pressures of the cultural and circumstantial waters surrounding you. Holes and rot and mold will form, the signs of prolonged and untreated exposure. The result will be hindrance and deterioration.

And I'm sure, as each of you reflects on what you've endured in your life, or maybe what you're facing right now, you can think of some ways you feel like you just can't get those barnacles off, like you just can't get untangled from seaweeds and grasses, like you just can't resist the burrowing shipworms, like you're ready to fall apart at the slightest touch and rot and chip away. Have you ever been there? I'm sure all of us have. I know I have. That's just the effect of exposure to what's unhealthful in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America, like any other culture. Paul, writing to Vice-Admiral Titus, lists some of the afflictions of our private vessels: “Foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

And here's the problem. Like the pirates, you can look for safe places to run aground and try to deal with some of this – chances to rest and regroup, chances to wash off the muck and chip off the hindrances and cut through the weeds and carry out some repairs on your life. But those safe places are very few and very far between. The wood of each of our private dinghies has been hopelessly rotted for thousands of years – ever since teeth sank in fruit that wasn't for tooth and tongue to touch. It's true of every mere mortal who's ever lived: the ship of their personal, individual life is doomed to fall apart and sink into the miry deep. None can resist the toxicity of the world. There is a hopeless rot that cannot keep out the dirt. Try as we might, even when we get a chance to try our hand at repairs, even when we observe best practices for boat maintenance, even when we baby it as best we can – we're at a loss to save our ships.

I'm speaking, of course, of the rot of sin – the rot that we cannot cure. As much as we can try to manage it with virtue – as much as we may make an effort to replace bits and pieces of the rotted hulls of our lives with intact wood – we find it swiftly exposed to the very same infection and affliction. All around you, you see folks adrift on the choppy seas of life, and whether they can see it or not, beneath the waterline, they're falling apart. And so, on our own dinghies, are we. Most of us seldom peek below our waterline – we just don't have time, don't have space, don't have a safe place to get it exposed to the light of day.

But if we could, we'd see the problem in plain view. We'd get a clear sight of the rot of sin. We'd behold the tiny pricks eaten by all the worms. We'd cast our gaze on the barnacles and the weeds. We'd run our fingers over the holes in our own life that make us take on this toxic water below deck. Yet even if we could, the best we can do is patches that change nothing of the ultimate outcome. The rot will spread. The barnacles will cling again. The seaweed will once more dangle and tangle. The shipworms will eat, and one way or another, our boats will be destined for the junk pile – fit no more to sail on, never to dock at last in the good harbor where the coconuts are sweet and the scene is always beauty in God. Our own dinghies can never get us there. There is just too much hopeless rot; the vessels are too junky and dirty. Zu viel schmutz.  Zu viel schmutz...

We have so little chance to even interact with our own hulls, and when we do, we can scarcely chip off the barnacles and peel away the seaweed and patch up the holes and the rot, but the rot will spread anyway, and frankly we can just as easily make it worse. There is no hope that we can make these little boats truly seaworthy after all. If there could ever be any hope, it could not come from our own cleanliness; it could not come from our scrubbing and chipping; it could not be found in our repairs; or, to use the biblical idiom, it would not come from “works done by us in righteousness” (Titus 3:5).

“If only,” we dream, “if only there were a ship we could board. A ship bigger than our own private dinghies. A ship with a hull impervious to these waters. A clean ship, a safe ship, stable in storm and secure at sea. If only there were a ship that would not rot before it reached the bright harbor. If only... oh, if only...”

But hear these words! “When the kindness and philanthropy of God our Savior appeared, he saved us” (Titus 3:4-5)! Paul writes to Titus in words he knows Titus will know. In the days of Roman rule, there were many patrons who sponsored the bettered lives of individual clients; there were many benefactors who sponsored the bettered lives of whole towns, provinces, the empire as a whole. And the common praise for such a patron or such a benefactor was this: that they displayed 'kindness and philanthropy' in doing for others what others could not do for themselves; in giving to others what others could not attain for themselves. And so Almighty God shews forth a sweet kindness and a love for all the human wreckage he surveys with pity. And he rescues us – he appears precisely as 'God our Savior.'

We know – or we should know – that our rescue could never come from the repairs of our hands. Nor can we swab away filth by filth, nor can we free ourselves from the barnacles and weeds and worms, nor can we cure ourselves of rot, turn back the clock of decay. Human history is full of toppled monuments to our efforts to do just that. The crumpled pages of philosophers offer prescriptions. All at best slow and stem the symptoms. The great artifacts propose something that will never rot away. But they will, just the same as all the rest. In our own lives, we can see these things. We cannot sanitize the hull with alcohol, we cannot layer over the barnacles with concealment, we cannot patch the holes with self-improvement, we cannot rid ourselves of rot by any means – and so even if we could make it to harbor, we'd be forever quarantined outside, so contaminated are we by our blight! If God is to save us, it cannot be “because of works done by us in righteousness.”

No, it will have to be a radical act of change. It may well mean the dismantling of our ruined boats. It may well mean abandoning our rotted project wholesale, and boarding a ship not our own. It may well mean – in fact, it does just mean – receiving passage where we have no right in ourselves to be. It means enlisting in a crew that none of our past mismanagement could ever qualify us for. But none among the crew were qualified at their enlistment. The most fiendish pirates have found a place; the chronically seasick rest easy on this deck. We must receive passage on a ship not our own, where we have no right in ourselves to be. And that is being saved “according to [God's] own mercy” (Titus 3:5).

This ship is the body of Christ – the church. The mercy of God brings us aboard – we abandon our rotted lives alone and join a greater crew. Because God chooses to favor us, in spite of our past mismanagement of self and all, he enrolls us in the crew. Paul calls that being “justified by grace” (Titus 3:7). And so we're on this ship, the ship of the church, which sails the seven seas of the world but aims for the harbor we dream of. And yet we know so well all the problems of life at sea. We know how much can happen under the waterline. We've tasted the rot, we know the holes, we've brushed the barnacles and been tied by the weeds and hated the worms as they burrowed in. Every other ship we've seen has been afflicted by the same rot. How can this be any different?

Because of one thing. Our old dinghies, our feeble rowboats of our own manufacture and maintenance, needed desperately to be cleansed from the rot, from the dreck, from the parasites and all the rest. The solution escaped us; it was beyond our reach, nor did we even conceive of it, so obsessed were we in mismanaging the problem by replacing this bit and that bit, by scrubbing pitiably away here and there. We needed a shower of something potent, something to burn and dissolve away the parasites, to wash off the dreck, to seal the hull in pristine condition. There was a very special washing we needed.

And so, Paul writes, God saved us “according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:5-6). In its internal dimension, we know this as the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who enlivens faith to bring about a change of heart. In its external dimension, we know this as baptism – a literal washing outwardly with water, which is of one piece with the inward 'washing' of the soul. It's two sides of the same coin; we've spent too long trying to get out of it. Baptism isn't a work we perform; it's an act God does to us, not something we do ourselves. It's no mere symbol; it's the outward dimension of one and the same washing with the Holy Spirit. God was not stingy with the Holy Spirit. He did not sprinkle you with a droplet. Through Jesus Christ our Savior, God unleashed the Holy Spirit lavishly on us. We experience him in baptism, the other dimension of the same act whereby we're born again.

Paul calls this baptism – this Holy Spirit bath, experienced tangibly in water as we re-enact the death and burial of Jesus Christ and rise free from our drowning – he calls it here “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” And that's a fascinating choice of words. 'Regeneration' – it's an unusual word for Paul, but it's the word that another Jewish author named Philo shortly before had used for what the Flood of Noah did to the earth. When the floodwaters came and went on the earth, baptizing everything, this was a “purification … of all things beneath the moon,” Philo said, with “the earth being washed and appearing new again, as it was when it was first created along with the entire universe, … they became the founders of a regeneration” (De vita Moses 2.64-65). Just as Genesis describes the land emerging from the waters when God said, “Let there be...,” so Genesis depicts the land emerging fresh and clean from the waters again. The earth is renewed. The earth is reborn. Everything is started over without the baggage of the past. It's fresh, fresh as the dawn of Eden, clean and pure. The baptism of the earth in Noah's day made, at least physically, for a new creation, Philo's saying.

And what Paul is saying here is that baptism – not just the outward form, but the whole act of the Holy Spirit in external water and internal grace grasped by faith – this baptism, this “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,” it's the same thing. The ship of the church is the body of Christ, and “if anyone is in Christ,” if anyone is genuinely aboard and enrolled in the crew, then “he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). As a part of the church's crew, you are totally new. You are not dirtied by the pollution around you; you have been washed clean, as fresh as Eden's dawn. It's not anything you could achieve yourself by any works you could do. It's only an act of God's mercy, and we received it only by faith – by accepting passage in Christ, entrusting our lives and souls and selves to him.

And the Holy Spirit didn't just wash the surface of the hull. The Holy Spirit infuses the hull with sealant, the likes of which you'll never find in a store or mix up in your garage. The Holy Spirit is the sole efficacious seal against all rot and against all mold, against all shipworms and all barnacles. So this ship will never rot. So this ship will not be hindered as we sail toward harbor. So this ship will not fall apart on the voyage. We need not fear. This was exactly the washing we needed, this baptism of water by Spirit. And we continually return, by faith, to swab the decks and bathe ourselves anew in the same pure waters, the same Holy Spirit. “The one who has bathed” with this baptism inside and out “does not need to wash, except for [the decks], but is completely clean – and you are clean,” our Lord told his disciples and, by extension, us (John 13:10).

Baptism is a hard thing to wrap our minds around. We're so tempted to domesticate it, belittle it. And we've surely seen the danger when mere outward washing, the work of men and not the act of the Spirit, is given the same title and assumed to be the same thing. But in real baptism, where true faith meets true Spirit in the water, where death is dealt to death and all lifeless things dissolve, what's left behind is a new creation, fresh as Eden's dawn, and clean as clean can be, and sealed tight against all rot.

The church doesn't always meet smooth sailing. Seldom, in fact! The seas are choppy because the prince of the power of the air is enraged against “the kindness and philanthropy of God our Savior,” by whose mercy we are saved (Titus 3:4-5). And when you are out in your rotting rafts and dilapidated dinghies, you will find the seas unbearable, and you will be in grave danger. Return to the mothership. Sail aboard the church, and not in your own private vessels. The seas are not smooth, but the wind and waves can never prevail against her hull and her prow as she slices forward on the water.

Don't neglect this ship that's granted you passage. Don't neglect the washing of regeneration that made this ship – that made you – what you are. This baptism you experienced – it's the Holy Spirit's work on you and in you. It is the outward dimension of you having been born again, “born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13), born to “become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). And “you must be born again,” for “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5-7). Don't think you can be clean otherwise. Don't think you can in any other way be free from the rot, free from the dreck, free from the parasites and the entangling weeds. Don't think there is any other way to reach the harbor of God's embrace.

But on the flip side, if you are born of water and the Spirit, you are born again! You are renewed! You are truly regenerated, fresh as Eden's dawn! Whom the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36)! You are a new creation, no longer subject to the laws of rot and rubbish that once defined you – so don't sail like those rafts and dinghies you once called home! Trust in the God of this ship, the one who gave you passage and sealed you in mercy, and dedicate yourself – ourselves – to productive sailing. Live in your baptism; live in the Spirit; live in and as the church; live to “devote yourselves to good works” born from the same faith that gave birth to us all (Titus 3:8). Sail on in your cleanness and wholeness, church. Sail on. Amen.

Church on the Choppy Seas: Discipline on Deck (Titus 2:15--3:2)

The crew of sailors howled and jeered, hooted and hollered, crooned and spat. The lot of them were drunk. John was used to it. He was one of them. He'd seen it on every ship he'd been on, and ever since he was a teenager, he'd been on plenty. He'd been a halfway-decent kid when he started out. But being around sailors like these, well, he thought about it as the 'ruin' of his principles, their 'ill example' set for him. Bearing their whip-scarred backs as a badge of pride, they drank, they caroused, they were vulgar and filthy, they ran hither and yon, they cultivated smut like it was their garden, they cursed like it was an Olympic sport and they were aiming for the gold, they dreamed of a pirate life and from time to time whispered of mutiny.

John was notorious for the same. He remembered his penchant for composing dirty songs mocking the captain and secretly teaching all the rest of the crew. He remembered the day he was slow to get out of bed, so another midshipman sliced the cords to his hammock and dropped him unceremoniously to the deck. He remembered how his youthful faith had been snuffed to ashes by the schemes of clever atheists aboard the vessel. He recalled that evening of drinking where he'd gotten so wasted, drinking rum concoctions from a seashell, that he'd “danced about the deck like a madman” and tried to hurl himself overboard. And he'd seen the rest of the crew do nothing less. They blasphemed, they mocked, they were drunk so very enthusiastically. Even in the wake of near destruction, they soon forgot all about it, took no thought to the implications of their mortality. John alone did, and he had “reveled in all the sottish debaucheries and in all the murderous brutalities in which the crews of such vessels engage.” John was the sole sailor who let his heart be moved, though he was “notorious amongst rough and godless sailors for his blasphemy and cruelty.”

So John was unsurprised as he watched the sailors howl and jeer, hoot and holler, croon and spit, as they mocked everything. They mocked God, they mocked Christ, they mocked John, they mocked each other's mothers and fathers, they mocked the captain and the midshipmen, they mocked the wind and the waves, they mocked kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers – they had a crude epithet for everything under the sun, not to mention the sun and every higher thing, too. They were quite as toxic, quite as grave a mess, as any bilge-scum that polluted the brig, as any rats that gnawed their rations or any scurvy-spotted bloody stain.

In time, John would learn the Scriptures – he had to, before he could sing of the sweet sound of God's amazing grace – and no doubt his memories of crews like that resonated with Paul's description of some people as “foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating each other” (Titus 3:3). Paul was writing, of course, to Titus, the admiral he'd appointed over the fleet of churches they'd built together in Crete, a large island of the Mediterranean, south of the Grecian coast. And over the past five weeks – this will be our sixth – we've been considering Paul's letter to Titus as something like a naval manual, something like an injunction to Vice-Admiral Titus for each ship in the fleet to take to heart.

And as we sail over the choppy waters of our own twenty-first-century American culture, just as Titus tried to bolster his fleet for the choppy seas of first-century Cretan culture, well, there's plenty for him to teach us. We've learned the importance of maintaining a sure anchor in a God who never lies – God whose promises cut through all the untruth and half-truth and 'post-truth' nonsense swirling around us. We've learned the importance of the radiant light of Christ, who shines from the lighthouse with twin beams of grace accomplished at the cross and glory turning 'round our way. We've learned the value of looking up to the star-chart laid out in the Scriptures, the pattern of Christ written as a Heavenly Sign by which to navigate toward the harbor of God's embrace. And given how toxic and diseased the waters are, we've learned the imperative of swabbing the deck clean from any compromised half-gospel and of having good officers at the helm who can steer the ship right and administer healthy teaching to keep spiritual scurvy at bay.

And given that we – each of us, Paul says – had rather too much in common with the sailors of John Newton's acquaintance, these ships' officers are charged to announce the grace and truth of Jesus Christ authoritatively, definitively, life-savingly, life-changingly. And they are charged with the responsibility to wield that same hefty burden of authority to correct and direct, to challenge and guide, all the sailors on this new churchly ship. That's why Paul says to Titus, “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you” (Titus 2:15). He wants to underscore the authority that Titus rightly wields to discipline his fleet, and which those whom Titus appoints as officers on each ship in the fleet will rightly wield to discipline their crews as they share in Titus' commission. Because it's very important that there be discipline on deck. The church cannot afford to be staffed by the sort of sailors Newton knew, at least without them being brought to heel and changed inside and out.

So what does it look like for a church-ship to have discipline on deck, discipline from port to starboard, from bow to stern, and in the bunks and the mess as much as up on deck, for that matter? First, Paul says, the spirit of mutiny has to be put to death. And Titus knew that was going to be a hard sell to the churches of Crete. Crete was infamous as a haven of rebellion. Centuries earlier, one Greek writer named Polybius commented that the populace of Crete was famously “engaged in countless public and private rebellions, murders and civil wars.” Polybius said that, “with few exceptions, you could find no habits prevailing in private life more steeped in treachery than those in Crete, and no public policy more inequitable” (Histories 6.46-47). The spirit of mutiny thrived in ancient Crete – and, I dare say, in modern America no less, which routinely sees its share of “public and private rebellions, murders and civil wars,” if not always the literal bloody kind. And is the American church really, truly immune from the spirit of mutiny, as it ought to be? I don't think anybody could believe it is.

And so the Apostle Paul, writing with Luke, commands Titus, “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient” (Titus 3:1). No doubt Paul is including the realm of civil society. The Christians of first-century Crete aren't to join in the rebellious frenzy of their neighbors. They're to set an example of orderly life, respecting and deferring to the governors sent there by the Roman Senate, even though the Cretan people had no hand in choosing them. They didn't ask for Lucius Turpilius Dexter, who ruled the island as proconsul when Paul wrote this letter to Titus; neither would they ask for Lucius' successor, Titus Atilius Rufus, or any of the rest before or after. How much more should we then have a healthy and respectful attitude toward the politicians of our days, advising and exhorting as need be but in a spirit of respect and not of mutiny?

And yet the American church is hardly known for being a mediating and peacemaking force in politics and civil life. But we should be. Paul says so right here, in black-and-white. We may well disagree vehemently with the policies and behavior of any civil ruler or any civil authority. We may well, as citizens of a republic, be the theoretical source of the authority any elected official wields. But does that negate the force of Paul's words? Does that release us from the obligation to bear witness by the attitude we bring into our engagement with civil rulers, civil authorities, and the law of the land?

But Paul probably has more than just civil rulers and civil authorities in view. He's writing this letter through Luke, and Luke used the same combination of words once: “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11-12). Luke probably talks here about synagogue rulers, religious authorities. And in this letter, it comes right on the heels of talking about Titus' authority, which he is commanded to enforce. Titus must remind the churches to be submissive and obedient to church authorities, like himself and the overseers he appoints (cf. Titus 1:5-9). Let's face it: church discipline is not a popular topic today. We withhold support, we rebel, if something doesn't suit us. We balk at the idea that anyone has any authority to correct and direct us, least of all by imposing discipline on us. We don't like obedience. But, well, there it is, isn't it? In our denomination, one of the questions that must be asked to candidates for membership is, “Will you submit in the Lord to the government of this church and, in case you are found delinquent in doctrine or life, will you submit to its discipline?” To which, if you are a member of the church, you answered, “I will, the Lord being my helper.” That was right before you promised to “seek to be faithful by attendance, and participate in public worship, fellowship, study, and service opportunities of this congregation.” Are you loyal to those promises? We have a God above to answer to.

But Paul's directions for discipline on deck go beyond submission to rulers and authorities. He also insists that the church's crew “blaspheme no one” (Titus 3:2). John Newton saw many sailors crudely curse God, Christ, the captain, each other, slandering everything holy and reputable. Paul forbids us to be like that. Not only must we not blaspheme God, which I hope we understand, but we may not blaspheme anyone – we may not drag any name through the mud. We may not rant and rave our abusive complaints about anybody. And that's hard for us – we're fond of griping. Younger generations are fond these days of blaspheming the older ones; and, just as in every age, older generations routinely blaspheme the younger ones. Democrats blaspheme Republicans, and Republicans blaspheme Democrats. Urbanites blaspheme country folk, and country folk turn around and blaspheme city-slickers. Move aside, baseball: blasphemy may be our new national pastime. But the church's crew is meant to be totally free of it. Scripture reports that even the Archangel Michael, the heavenly prince charged with Israel's protection, didn't dare to blaspheme even Satan (Jude 9). How can we justify blaspheming any earthly thing and drag its name through the mud? Blaspheme no one; slander no one.

Paul goes on. He says that the church's crew must “avoid quarreling,” or as the King James has it, “to be no brawlers” (Titus 3:2). I like that rendering. It's the opposite of what John Newton saw among sailors in his day – fistfights breaking out, fighting words blasting forth from gnarled lips, recreational violence as a cure for the boredom of oceanic monotony. No doubt some in the Cretan churches, before their conversion, were literally brawlers – belligerent people, ready to pick fights. For the most part, rural and small-town Lancaster County has a different culture. But perhaps there are some among us who, if not physically violent, nevertheless always seem to pick a squabble with somebody. Paul tells us to be no brawlers, and that includes verbally, emotionally, relationally. He tells us not to pick fights – and if our personal lives are perpetually full of them, maybe it's us.

And then Paul tells us “to be gentle” (Titus 3:2). That's an attitude. It's a civil attitude, a reasonable attitude, an attitude of moderation – exactly the sort of thing John Newton didn't see often on deck. It's an attitude and an approach of relaxing the letter of the law to fit the spirit of the law. It's an attitude that's fair, that's mild, that's suitable for the occasion. It's, well, gentle. 'Gentle' may not be a word you'd use for those who sail the seven seas, much of the time, but it's the word Paul wants used for those who sail aboard the HMS Church! Are we gentle? Are we fair and even-handed? Do we take into account the challenges that others might be facing, and treat them accordingly? Are we ready to lift up the fallen and cheer the faint-hearted?

Paul then tells us to “prove meekness to all people” (Titus 3:2). Some translations render it as 'show perfect courtesy.' Others try 'gentle' here. Still others go with 'humility.' But the idea is one of restraint. Our conduct is to be a proof that, whatever strength and energy we have, we have it under control. We restrain our strength, we restrain our energy, we restrain ourselves, out of consideration for others. When we have a tendency to go too fast, we slow down. When we have a tendency to get ahead of ourselves, we hold up. When we have a propensity to steamroll, we take a step back. When our first instinct is to push hard, we restrain ourselves. And that is a demonstration, a display of visible strength visibly under control, visibly tamed by the gospel. Have you been tamed by the gospel?

It's important that we are, because the one other direction Paul gives us is “to be ready for every good work” (Titus 3:1). God has a lot of work that needs doing on this earth, and for those of you who farm, have you ever tried to catch a wild horse and hook him straight up to the plow? Good luck with that! They need to be tamed, broke, domesticated, before they have a share in the labor. So must we. But once we're visibly tamed by the gospel, there's work to be done. All sorts of work, as a matter of fact. All sorts of good work out there. Sharing the gospel – there's a good work. Offering shelter to the homeless – there's a good work. Nursing the sick back to health; encouraging the downcast; feeding the hungry; setting free the captive; forgiving the hurtful; showing mercy to the offensive; sharing the good things of creation with those who lack – those are all good works. And there are many more, countless forms of the works of mercy and works of piety.

Paul tells us here that we do not each have a certain limited subset of good works we should be on the lookout for. I don't get to drive down the street, see someone hurt and bleeding by the side of the road, and think to myself, “Well, my good work is forgiving people, not dealing with that.” Nor do I get to hear someone express spiritual anguish and think to myself, “But my good work is feeding the hungry and offering hospitality, not talking about Jesus.” Paul talks about “every good work” here, for all of us. We don't know what opportunities for good work God will put in each of our paths. It could be this one, it could be that one. It may suit our specialty, or it may not. But whichever one it is, Paul tells us we need to be “ready.” Vigilant. Prepared. Fit for the circumstance, whatever the circumstance will be. That's a hard thing! That's a whole-life thing, to really be ready for every good work. And without the resources of the Spirit in us, we can't do it. But when the Spirit fills our sails, we – each of us, and the church together – can be ready for every good work.

Submissive to rulers and authorities. Obedient. Ready for every good work. Blaspheming no one. Avoiding all quarreling. Gentle. Demonstrating full meekness toward all people, knowing what a difference it made that we were saved from our former slavery and foolishness by “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior” (Titus 3:4). These are all things Titus has to insist on, “so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works” that are “excellent and beneficial for people” (Titus 3:8).

John Newton knew full well, and we can readily imagine, what a ship looked like when the sailors were vulgar and uncouth and brawling and blasphemous and rough and filthy and undisciplined. And such a ship is a brutal mess. That is not the sort of fleet Paul wants to see. Nor is it the sort of fleet Jesus wants to see. Christ longs to see a fleet full of ships that have discipline on deck. Only with discipline on deck can the ship itself be ready for whatever maneuvers the Lord commands; only with discipline on deck can the ship offer a true alternative to the storms of chaos that roil the air and sea outside; only with discipline on deck can the ship sail safely and securely for the good of crew and cargo and for the attainment of her mission. May we be just such a ship, with just such discipline on our deck; may you be the kind of crew Paul prays for the ships of this fleet to have. Take heed, O church, to these words – and sail on. Amen.

Church on the Choppy Seas: Lighthouse Ahead! (Titus 2:11-15)

I'm sure you've heard this story before, or something like it. I know I have. It was a dark and stormy night. Well, not so much stormy as foggy. The choppy seas sloshed beneath a sopping wet blanket of fog, thick and heavy. There was a great big ship, trying to make it through the fog. They had their own lights, trying to slice a way through the black shroud. But they could scarcely see a yard in front of their own faces, even with their lights at their brightest. With the fog so heavy, they couldn't see heaven. With the fog so heavy, they couldn't see ocean. With the fog so heavy, they couldn't see earth, with all its threat, nor any other ships on the water.

Suddenly, in the distance, they saw a light that looked so much like theirs. It was directly out in front of them – in their path! The captain grabbed his radio and signaled ahead. “Warning: We are headed in your direction. Please change course to get out of our way.” The captain watched the sole spot of light in the fog. It had no flicker, no deviation. The radio crackled. “Negative. Change your course.” The captain was not used to this. He was a decorated veteran. This was a military ship, and a big one, too. It was hard work to turn it, and beside all that, the captain was proud. He fired back, “Negative. You change your course. We will not be changing ours.” He glared at the light, daring it to stand still. Which it did. The radio crackled again. “Negative. Again, change your course.” Now the captain was irate. He snatched up his handset and yelled into the radio, “This is Captain Reginald T. Waterstreet of the H.M.S. Leviathan, the second-largest ship in Her Majesty's Royal Navy. On the authority of the Crown, I order you to change course this instant!” The captain fumed. Sweat rolled from his brow. Silence; all was still. Then the radio crackled. “Greetings, Captain Waterstreet of the H.M.S. Leviathan. Message received and acknowledged. This is a lighthouse – you change your course!”

Well, don't that just beat all? That's the thing about being on course to a lighthouse. You have to react. It won't be moving for you, no matter how hard you bluff and bluster, no matter how you flail and fume. No matter how much sweat, blood, tears you add to the equation, it makes no difference. The lighthouse is a constant. And yet how awful it would be for the lighthouse to not be there! For us to be abandoned in the darkness of the night, beneath the oppressive load of that isolating fog, with no glimpse of reality anywhere we turn! Many a captain, thinking clearly and setting aside his pride, has been mighty glad for the life-saving service rendered by many a lighthouse. Because the lighthouse shineth into the darkness, and the darkness and the storm and the fog and the waves and the wind – well, the lighthouse shineth in, and all this darkness has not overcome it.

So it is on many a shore. And so it is in matters of the spirit, matters of the soul, matters of the world. Friends, the waves of our culture are choppy. The waters can be plenty toxic. That's the truth about this life. The world is awash in brackish water, churned into a frenzy. So little out there makes for smooth sailing. In and of itself, it is dark out there. It is foggy. It is just plain impossible for us to see a yard before us, beside us, behind us, whichsoever way we bend our benighted gaze.

How often have you sensed the darkness and the fog descending in your life? I know I've run up against it my fair share in mine. A loved one dies, interrupting or abbreviating a relationship you thought would last a lot longer. Thus thickens the fog. A plan fails, a hope shatters. The fog thickens. Precious cargo plops overboard, lost to the waves. Fog thickens. Sickness infects the body, turmoil afflicts the mind. Fog, thicker fog. Chaos seems to reign. Everyone, everything seems so confused. It's all incoherent,, all jumbled and put together wrong. Elementary truths are forgotten out there. Fog, thickest fog, all so dense, all so heavy. And this very moment, so many around us – maybe we ourselves – are scratching at each other's throats, at our own throats, running around and flailing, because we're feeling claustrophobic with so much fog 'n smog clogging the air.

Ever since the swords swished at Eden's gates with us on the wrong side and no key, thick fog has been the natural environment of humankind. It didn't take long for us to forget where we were. Sometimes we thought we were so far away when we were so close. Often, we thought we were so close when we were so far away. You can see it in our sordid lot of religious endeavors; you can behold it in our cultural enterprises. We think we can build a tower all the way up to the very top, and we've misjudged the distance so badly, because we're working blind. The radio is not silent. It crackles, it hisses, it speaks. But most of our story is the history of willfully tuning it out. We drift in the fog, lost and feeling alone; when the fog thickens harder, we feel isolated from even our own shipmates, if we have them, let alone everyone else; and yet we sense the prospect of threats out there in the great unknown.

We build the tower – it collapses into fog. We maintain empires – they collapse into fog. We prostrate our soul and mind before lifeless things – the dark'ning fog blinds us to what they really are in the light of day. From our pyramids to our great walls, from our fast-paced hippodromes to our huts and houses and holy shrines, there's just so much fog. We knew not whence we came from; we knew not whither we were headed; we dreamed up eight billion dreams, but lost in the fog we were, and at our better moments we knew it. It was a dark and foggy night, so bitter cold. Long had the radio crackled. But few had ears to listen.

And then, from far away, photons leapt faster than any fog-bound thing! A blessed ray pierced through the cold night. It slashed the fog to ribbons where'er it went. When there was no other way of finding our bearing, no stable point of reference, the light shined in the darkness, the light shined in the fog, and all the fog and all the darkness could not overcome it (John 1:5)! The light fell upon our faces, shining bright, coming from straight ahead, puncturing our path and letting us not only see it, but finally catch a glimpse of each other.

You see, amidst all the pervasive fog, there stands a lighthouse. And a lighthouse has bulbs stronger than your ship. A lighthouse has one purpose: to save your ship from destruction; to guide your ship to safety; to give you the gift of sight, the gift of getting your bearings about you. And friends, however lost you have ever been, however astray you have ever drifted, however dark has been the night where you found yourself, however thick has been the fog settling on your heart and mind and soul, however dense has been your confusion, know this: there is a lighthouse ahead!

For “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people” (Titus 2:11). That is just what I mean! As with the radiance cast forth from a lighthouse into the foggy night, the grace of God has appeared, slicing through our soupy skies, clearing a path in the darkness, which, however much it may resist, cannot but give way to such a powerful beam. All once was doom and gloom; but now there is a light shining. All once was wrapped in fog; but now there is a light shining. This light brings rescue and security to all who will but open their eyes and see things in its light, all who will see where it illuminates and be responsive to it. This light is called the grace of God. It is God's favor, God's gift.

As I said last week, when the grace of God appears, it is the opposite of God looking on you with contempt or dismissal or hate or indifference. If God shows you his favor, it means he is not opposed to your best interests, nor does he act without regard to you. You are very much in his consideration, as a positive factor. God acts for you, not against you, not apart from you. It's grace. It's his favorable disposition to bless you, not to curse you; to rescue you, not to abandon you; to welcome you, not to shut you out; to gift you, not to rub you; to build you up, not tear you down.

“The grace of God has appeared,” slicing through all our fog, all the fog of this world. Though we sail on wild seas – and go ahead and look at twenty-first-century America and tell me the seas aren't heaving and churning, tell me the fog hasn't gotten in people's heads, go on, tell me that – yet still the light shines and is not overcome, still the grace of God leaps forth into our darkly foggy world and our darkly foggy lives and our darkly foggy hearts and leavens our thickness with its lightness and brightness. But whence comes this grace of God? How does it appear?

We hear the call over the radio, not with so much static as before: “Jesus Christ … gave himself for us” (Titus 2:14a). That's the beam we see. There was a great trade. That was the gift. The gift given in God's grace is Jesus himself. He gave himself in our place, unto shame and pain and death and wrath and all the due penalty, all the due isolation, all the due wreckage and drowning – he gave himself for us. That was how the grace of God truly appeared: when, as a sign and seal of God's favor, and to secure it for us forever, he gave himself for us, so that he could forever give himself to us. What did all that accomplish?

He “gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness” (Titus 2:14b). In the world Paul was writing to, it was known that there was one good way a slave might get set free from a harsh master. There were temples that had a standing offer. They would pay the ransom price. They would buy a slave from his master. They said they were merchants negotiating the sale on behalf of the god they served, the god to whom they as a temple were dedicated. And so they would buy the slave. Legally, the slave would be sold out of human bondage to become a servant of the god – which was freedom from all those former chains. And that was how many slaves were redeemed: by legally becoming slaves of a god, and of no man.

We were slaves to many things, before the grace of God appeared. We were slaves to our bitter Mammon, and its greedy clutches. We were slaves to our desires and our lusts. We were slaves to political forces, religious forces, economic forces, that kept us on a short leash. Paul sums all this up by suggesting we were slaves to lawlessness – slaves to the culture's haphazard ways of ordering human life, slaves to all the waves that tossed us to and fro, slaves to our idols and our images, slaves to every rough thing, slaves to the criminal impulse that lurks in each of us and holds sway all around us, lawlessness masquerading as law, lawlessness that no mere law can uproot. And we were slaves.

But Jesus Christ, the high priest of God, yea, even the temple of God, made a standing offer. He wanted to get you away from this harsh master called Lawlessness. And that was the trade. He paid the price. Lawlessness unleashed all its chaos against him, in a storm of fury and mockery and agony and blood. The redemption price was paid. “You were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 7:23). So with a price, you were indeed bought. You were sold out of bondage to those former things, to become a servant of Jesus' God – which is freedom from all the former chains that bound you, the chains of shame and human esteem, the chains of greed and lust and pride, the chains of all prevailing ideologies, all dominant principalities and powers, earthly or otherwise. The chains you yourself forged – even those, he bought you away from. To “redeem you from all lawlessness.”

What's more, Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14c). Many teachers have come and given you a pitch of what else you must add in order to be really pure, to be really acceptable to God. Many teachers have offered you this law or that law, this twist or that twist, this rule or that rule. But Jesus gave himself to purify you, and to purify you entirely; in merely hearing his word of grace and receiving it into yourself, he pronounces you already clean, already pure (John 15:3). You have need of nothing else than more of this word. Any time you have ever felt dirty, any time you have ever felt unclean, any time you have ever felt unworthy, know this: he gave himself to purify you; it's accomplished. Simply live out in your life the purity already granted to us by his decree.

But the text does not merely say that he gave himself for us to purify for himself a person here, and a person there. We read that he aimed to “purify for himself a people for his own possession.” Paul remembers here the promise to Israel long ago: how, if they were faithful to the covenant, they would be a people, a corporate body, exalted above all nations as a collective royal priesthood, a holy presence in the world (Exodus 19:5-6). Jesus did not come to purify for himself an aggregate – a mix-'n-match batch of individual Christians, all leading their separate lives.

We are so fond of saying that you don't need to be part of the church to be saved. I don't know where anybody ever got that. Perhaps a delayed overreaction to fights picked in the sixteenth century. But Jesus did not come to purify for himself individual souls and individual lives disconnected from all the rest. We read here that he came to purify a people – a whole people, drawn from many scattered tribes and different tongues, from myriad walks of life, but forged into a new organic unity – once called 'no people,' now called 'my people.' Jesus came to purify for himself a people, whose organized expression we call 'church,' the body politic of the kingdom of God. Don't let the fog of do-it-yourselfism get in your brain; don't let the fog of stay-homeism or even of pew-sitterism get the better of you. We are purified together, to live together now, as one organism, one entity, one coordinated active expression of the body of Christ in our community.

Wait, look! The lighthouse has not just one beam, but two; it rotates 'round, we see something new! Where one beam emanates from the past, from the redemptive work of Jesus accomplished outside Jerusalem in the first century, the other beam is cast from the future, perhaps the near future. For we read here that not only do we live in the light of what Jesus has done, but also in the light of what he will do. We are “waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

This, too, illuminates our darkly foggy worlds, lives, souls. The grace of God has appeared, but his glory will appear. Jesus Christ is “our great God and Savior” – yes, you heard that right. Let there be no doubt: Jesus is the real deal. He is God and fit to be worshipped. He is the God who is mighty to save. And so he is our Savior. Many emperors, many kings, touted themselves – or have been touted – as 'god and savior.' Hellenistic rulers bore that title. It was applied to Julius Caesar in his memory. But they are a pale parody of what in Jesus is brightness and majesty. What so many kings, so many priests, so many politicians and economists and scientists and journalists and philosophers and theologians and celebrities and athletes and activists have cast themselves as, in olden times and in our day, they fall short, because they merely parody the real deal. Jesus is our great God and Savior. He will appear with glory. We are waiting expectantly for that, for its potentiality at every minute, every moment. And this will be our “blessed hope,” tethering us to our sure anchor in the God who does not lie, the God whose every word is truth and who shouts and sings grace, grace, wonderful grace.

In the meantime, while we wait, we live amidst the present age. That's the world around us. The world as we see it – or, rather, as we see the swirls and structures of fog in the dark. We live amidst the fog, we sail through the fog and over the choppy seas, but we sail in light of the grace that has appeared and in light of the glory that is turning 'round our way. We live between the salvation that's been brought and the salvation that's up ahead – they're of one piece, they shine from the same lighthouse, the same source, in twin beams that come our way. This is our hope – the hope that is the answer to all the plight of all our fog. All the confusion, all the chaos, all the questions implicit or explicit in our loss, our grief, our trial, our stress, our languishing darkness – all of it has, as an answer, “We wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” And in the meantime, the grace of God has already appeared, already smiled on us with favor, already lit up our rescue and beckoned us to safety.

As we wait, we catch word that light is tantamount to learning. The grace of God appeared, “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and pious lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12). Not only has grace appeared, but we are to be educated by grace. It's an education for all people, we read; you don't have to pass a prerequisite course to enroll in grace. But the light of grace will teach you – teach you to renounce, to forsake all those former masters, and to serve God alone in the way he bids, as the example of Jesus models for you, for us. He did, after all, come “to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14d). By no means are we saved by good works, but his end goal was to get a version of us who burn hotly to do 'em. Not just any kind of works, but the good kind, the kind that belong in the light for good.

On our voyage, we have to admit, much remains foggy. We don't have all the details of the answers; but we do have the Answer, our great God and Savior. Grace has already appeared to poke a hole in our fog, and the beam of glory is turning 'round. No matter how dark or how obscure things get, no matter how confused you may be, no matter how distressed or weary, no matter how sick, no matter how dead, rest in the light; it shineth for thee. The light fell on you when our great God and Savior gave himself for us all, to redeem us away from our harsh old master Lawlessness and into the freedom of his temple. The light fell on you when Jesus blasted away all impurity from this whole people, as a people. Real purity isn't following a rule. Real purity isn't submitting to a ritual. Real purity is being part of Jesus' people, the people purified as his own possession. And as we wait for that glory beam to turn 'round on us, we respond to this grace, this redemption, this purification by learning what the light came to teach us and by being zealous for good works – just like Jesus wants. We cannot keep to our old course. That's why the lighthouse shines for us. No matter how big or bad we think our ship is, we have to move – as the light shows us the way for spiritual sailing. The light is shining. No darkness, no fog, can ever overcome it. That's the grace we have and the glory we wait for. Sail on, church. Sail on. Amen.

When Calendars Collide: A Homily for Ash Wednesday 2018

It makes for a strange year when two calendars collide. On the one hand, you have the secular calendar – all the civic holidays, all the patriotic and cultural occasions, all the rhythms of our day-to-day lives. On the other hand, you have the church calendar – all the great fasts and feasts, all the days that bear explicit witness to deeper truths. Most of us have different levels of loyalty to both. And let me tell you, navigating that can be a big headache for a pastor! Balancing a congregation's thirst for the secular calendar's patriotism against the church calendar's witness to another kingdom – that's a doozy. Wrestling with how to integrate Mother's Day and Father's Day into or around a sermon series – that can trip up the momentum. And the Feast of Christ the King always seems to sit uncomfortably close to Thanksgiving – what a show!

And then there are years like this year. Oh, I'm sure you've already had a laugh when you realized that Easter Sunday will fall on April Fool's Day this year. There's a direct collision, and it may well lead to some quirky preaching! But before that big crash, there's this little one, which may not have occurred to you until today. From the church calendar, Ash Wednesday – the inauguration of the season of Lent, a time of fasting, of penitence to purify our hearts and lives as Easter approaches. But from the secular calendar, though originally cribbed from the church calendar, is the feast of St. Valentine – which in the modern secular calendar is a day, not for doom and gloom, not for sackcloth and ashes, but for cheer and sentimentality, for sugar and rejoicing and lightness.

Doesn't that make for an odd collision? What have chocolate and candy hearts to do with fasting? Or bouquets of roses with the grave threat of their wilting? What have pink balloons and teddy bears to do with prostration and lament? What have candlelight dinners to do with smears of gray ash? What have cooed words and the warmth of clasped hands to do with the chirping stillness and bitter chill of the graveyards in winter? What has “I love you, darling” to do with “To dust thou shalt return”? Crash. Crash. Crash. What do we do with that?

But perhaps the two are less unalike than we're prone to think. Perhaps this coinciding overlap of the ecclesiastical and the secular calendars is less pain and more providence. After all, what is Valentine's Day? Look beyond the outward shows, beyond the commercialistic mumbo-jumbo, beyond the twirl of inane advertisements and the mythologies of modern romance. What is Valentine's Day?

On days like this, you might hear the more cynical sort complain about the notion of a day set aside to celebrate love – as if we have so little love to give that we can limit it to a day! As if we need showy displays to communicate it! As if we need a reminder to reveal love to those whom we truly do love! I have been one of those cynics, in some years. But what if that's not what Valentine's Day is for at all? What if Valentine's Day is meant, not to compartmentalize love, but to renew it – to repent of its lack, its insufficiency, in the interest of a love that slackens not? What if Valentine's Day is the hope of new creation?

What do a man and a woman, romantically involved, do on Valentine's Day? They openly confess their love for one another. They give one another cards with sappy sayings and praiseful poetry – finding the best words to express what they ought to feel, ought to think, ought to do, every day of the year, but often fall short – sometimes a little short, sometimes far. They exchange gifts as tokens, symbols that represent their time, their energy, their resources, their very selves, for the sake of the other's use and enjoyment. They enjoy one another's company, and strive for deeper and more meaningful forms of intimacy; they cherish the opportunity to find delight precisely in their togetherness, in the experience of one another as man or as woman. They remind themselves of earlier times. Though time's advance leads the forms of feeling and the peaks and plateaus of passion to shift and change, on Valentine's Day, lovers refresh themselves and each other by drawing fresh water from that well – marking an occasion when they must return, must devote themselves anew, must wipe away former faults and begin again. And so all the gestures and symbols of Valentine's Day are efforts to rekindle the flame, recapture the spark; they seek to recommit the couple's lives to one another, to give and receive grace that not only forgives but refuels and renews. In short, Valentine's Day is a day in relationships when we return to the love we had at first – one might dare say, a day of repentance.

Spiritually, we have just as much need – no, more – of a renewal of love. Our tendency to let love go cold, to become sidetracked and apathetic, is every bit as damaging, but with vaster consequences, in our cosmic love story as in our earthbound ones. The prophets of old, and apostles of more recent but still ancient vintage, saw the relationship of Yahweh and Israel, and its further denouement in the relationship of Jesus Christ and his Church, as a betrothal – as a cosmic love story. We heard about that in the writings of Jeremiah and Paul, twin souls separated by centuries. The prophets looked back on Mount Sinai as a wedding ceremony, when the elders of Israel went up on the mountain to eat and drink in Yahweh's presence. Jeremiah recalled it as when Israel walked with Yahweh as a bride with her husband, when she followed him through the wilderness. That, he said, was the devotion of Israel's youth, her love as a bride.

But the love story was not an untroubled one. In ever-more graphic language, the prophets condemn Israel's unfaithfulness – her adulteries, her harlotries, her dalliances with idols and with political alliances with pagan protectors, as betrayals of Yahweh's love. All the gifts he gave her, she throws away on her many lovers. Hosea lived it out as a parable in his marriage to the harlot Gomer. Jeremiah spoke of Israel's relentless lust for anyone but the God who'd wed her, and her forgetfulness of her rightful husband. Ezekiel portrayed her adulteries as worsening time and again, becoming more and more flagrant in her betrayal of Yahweh. We might be tempted to think that, under the New Testament, the Church can never be unfaithful. But we know better. We might be tempted to think that, under the New Testament, we can never be as lacking in love for God as rebellious Israel was then. But we know better. Jesus himself reproached the Ephesian church for having “abandoned your first love,” and needing to repent and return to it.

Jesus Christ aims to present the Church to himself as a bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” but we seem so very eager to besmirch, smear, fold, crumple, tear ourselves in our fleeting, lackluster, and prone-to-wander love. Our love, even at its best, never equals his; and how often is our love even near our best? How often are we attentive, appreciative, affectionate, faithful, and true to Christ? Left to our own devices, we can become so oblivious of how far we miss the mark of loving him with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength, and to love proportionately all neighbors who bear his image, out of delight in his precious and beautiful image. We have a word for missing the mark of love: 'sin.' And left to our own devices, we not only sin more flagrantly, but become oblivious of it.

So to stop our natural obliviousness from running away with us and letting our love get too lukewarm, we build special wake-up calls into the calendar. Like today. Ash Wednesday calls us back – calls us sharply, calls us darkly, but calls us back all the same – to our 'first love.' It's the day where we confess our lovelessness – all the times we've taken even a foot down the adulterous and unloving path Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel saw Israel treading. It's the day where we repent of it, recommitting to our relationship with Christ. It begins a season of heart-cleaning through prayer and fasting; it shocks us back to the hearth from which we've wandered; it urges us to rekindle the flame, to recapture the spark, to re-surrender to the Spirit.

“We love because he first loved us,” we read. And because he first loved us, we must love. Because he wined us and dined us, because he opened his love to us, because he dared to be our protector, because he showered us with gifts and dotes on us daily and whispers his love in our ears every minute, but most of all because he is who he is: the Lover who sees in us his Beloved, even at our most spiteful, even at our most ungrateful, even at our most unfaithful. His love is life, is better than life; estrangement from him only sickens and kills us, and so, out of love, he woos us daily back to him. Ash Wednesday hits us hard, I admit, but it hits us hard only to knock the stuffing from our ears and the scales from our eyes and the crust from our hearts. It reminds us that we are dust – “such an earthquake as the image of God in dust,” certainly (as Chesterton quipped), but dust all the same – precisely to humble and reprove us for our offense, our coldness, our adulteries and harlotries and vain imaginings.

Today is that day. And the collision is just the jolt we need, and a fitting one: Done right, Ash Wednesday is always our heavenly Valentine's Day. Done right, Ash Wednesday is always our day of repentance back to our first love, to the devotion of the Church's youth. And on this Ash Wednesday Valentine's Day, we enjoy this promise. From dust we are; to dust we shall return; but the story does not end there, for “love is as strong as death” (Song of Songs 8:6), and stronger still. The Lord of Love proved it; 'Dust' will nevermore be his name, for death no longer has any hold on him!

Tonight, this Jesus of love and mercy has invited us out on a date: back once more to his table where he'll wine us and dine us and let us fall in love with him all over again. On the way there, he offers us his sign, the cross, as we might offer one another rings and roses. Though we receive his sign in ash as our sign of repentance, let us receive it as a gift, as the seal of a pledge and a promise, from the One who loved us first and loved us to the last – and to whom all our love is due. For us he died. For us he rose. For us he's coming again. Hallelujah. Amen.

Church on the Choppy Seas: Charting the Way (Titus 2:1-10)

The wine-like sea wordlessly sloshed and sightlessly foamed. The artful forms of rock and cliff, harbingers of land, were, but for gentle caress of silver moonlight, wrapped in midnight's arcane embrace. To the eye, all was absent. But it was a familiar circumstance for Minoan sailors. Hailing from Crete, nearly two thousand years before any 'Paul' or any 'Titus' would touch toe to their land of labyrinths, they'd taken to this sea as to a home, a playground, a birthright. They were masters of these waves. But how to master what's lost to sight? How to tame what shrouds its shrewdness? How to find your way in midnight when all is nothing and nothing is all?

The secret, they'd learned, is not to look down or ahead. For overhead, above the open water of the wine sea, there were black seas staring down at them. And the black seas were luminous. A swarm of light, floating on the upward abyss. But no seething randomness winged its way there. No, the Minoans in their ship lifted up their eyes to signs and shapes, patterns and pointers, “for on every hand signs in multitude do the gods reveal to man,” they muttered. It was midnight. All around was obscure. But above were all the charts they needed, and in their hearts and on their tongues the poems that reminded them how to read their celestial cartography. Their 'map' was no parchment woven and written by human hands. Their 'map' was the stars.

Such was sailing in the heyday of the Minoans. Such, too, was sailing in the days Paul pressed precariously around Crete's southmost coast. Sailing was yet the same a few years later when Titus commanded, if not a fleet of ships on the Cretan waters, then a fleet of churches on the Cretan culture. And that was no easy sailing. Cretan culture, as we've heard in recent weeks, had plenty of corruption. It was a 'post-truth' culture, splintered and fractured like ours; naught could be known, naught could be trusted, naught was sacred, naught was serious. The institution of slavery had sabotaged the moral compass of countless lives. The noxious stew of frivolous arranged marriages and normalized sexual harassment and domestic violence had stunk up the place, making family life scarcely tolerable and too often loveless. Throughout all Greece, drinking was a problem, especially among the elderly – many a playwright toyed with the caricature of the old drunk – but Crete took it to an art form: people there could get so proud of their drinking habits that they'd literally boast and brag about it on their tombstones!

And to all that, Paul tells Titus, give 'em the words what'll make 'em well – you know, the healthy teaching, just what the Great Physician ordered: “As for you,” Paul writes him, “speak the things that are fitting to healthy teaching” (Titus 2:1). In this letter, which Paul wrote to Titus there and then but God preserved for us here and now, Paul is obsessed with healthy teaching – the kind of instruction that nourishes the soul on what's good and beautiful and, most strange to Cretan ears, emphatically true. It's the kind of instruction that never goes stale, never gets moldy and crusty. And it's the kind of instruction that puffs up the rich dough of the gospel to its full size and brings out all the flavors.

But why is it so important to hear healthy teaching? Because healthy teaching, healthy instruction, promotes healthy ways of spiritual living; and healthy ways of living, seen by the world around you, illustrate what's so healthy and delicious about this healthy teaching. But, to put it another way, Paul is laying out the map, the star-chart, by which we're to sail this church; and the definition of a good journey, a healthy journey, is one that ventures through dark times by navigating according to these stars, this chart.

What healthy teaching have we received? We'll discuss these words in greater depth next week, but listen to the sweet sounds of next week's passage. “The grace of God has appeared” – in other words, God is not wrathful, God is not sore, God is not angry with you! God is not dismissive of you! God is not contemptuous of you, nor does he ignore you! All those are the opposite of this word, 'grace.' In Jesus Christ, God looks on you with favor! So it's in Jesus Christ, in whom God's grace swirls like a hurricane of blessing, that you must be. For “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people” (Titus 2:11). No one is outside its reach; no one is too heavy with sin to get swept up in the grace-hurricane, no one is too light with insignificance to be hurled to a higher plane in it. And only the grace of God can save us, rescue us. No ritual, no social network, no accreditation or accomplishment could bring salvation down or raise salvation up; salvation is brought by God's grace alone. So we must just trust that God's favor has appeared, that salvation has been brought, in this Jesus. God's favor saves, and saves entirely; any 'Jesus-plus' program will inevitably be weighed down by tying grace to less lofty things.

This grace arrived, “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions” – it's because we are rescued by this grace through faith, that therefore we must abandon the things from which he rescued us. We dare not seek to tread those pathways, cling to those lifestyles, imitate those idols, ruminate in our ruin, any longer. The grace of God not only trains us in renouncing these, but also trains us “to live self-controlled, upright, and pious lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12), and promises a “blessed hope” on the horizon (Titus 2:13). We have been saved from one way of living, for another way. We have been saved from our soul-sickness for abundant spiritual health. We have been saved from lostness for clear navigation. To exhibit good character, spiritual health, is not a 'Jesus-plus' program. It is not a prerequisite to be saved; it is what we are saved for, the terraforming in the hurricane's wake, the effervescence bubbling up from our faith's embrace with grace. Spiritual health and life transformation are what we are saved for, because it's just what the life of Jesus in us does.

So as we hear the words of today's passage, take notice that Paul is spelling out what kind of life this healthy teaching should lead to for each demographic under Titus' care. It's the kind of life that the lively life of Jesus lives in us, works in us; it's the kind of life that answers the deepest needs and quiets the darkest suspicions of the age we live in, just as it did for them then.

He first turns his attention to the older men. And healthy living for older men, unlike everything Cretan culture tells them, means being 'sober.' The word Paul uses cuts them off from the favored pastime of Cretan elders; but in other writers, the word also got applied to an empty vessel set aside for sacred use, like our offering plate or our communion tray, all polished and clean and ready for service. That's what the older men of the church need to be: unstained with addictions, emptied of inward clutter, and polished up for a holy purpose (Titus 2:2).

Paul also wants Titus to tell them to be 'dignified' or 'serious' – to be respectable, venerable. It's the word you might use for an experienced general leading the troops: he isn't hasty to make his move, but he's firm and decisive when he sees the right time. That's what the older men of the church need to be: thoughtful, dignified, not readily swayed by passing fads, not impulsive, but decisive in the deciding hour (Titus 2:2).

And Paul adds that they need to be 'self-controlled' – we'll hear that word a lot here, but it more literally means 'safe-minded,' well-regulated, kept within safe bounds where life can flourish. It's when the mind doesn't get all wacky and bent out of shape; no, it stays in all the parameters for how a God-graced mind is supposed to work, and keeps itself running as well as can be, safely, where there's space for the kind of thinking God likes to eavesdrop on, the kind of thinking that's a sign of life (Titus 2:2).

Paul tosses in the familiar trio of theological virtues, the ones that last when all things fall apart. You remember them, I'm sure, from 1 Corinthians 13: faith, hope, and love, though of course “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). The older men of the church, Paul says, need to be “healthy in faith” – they need to have a deep trust in God, a profound reliance on Jesus Christ, an active relationship unburdened by sickly ideas or pointless doubts; they need to know they're at home in the hurricane of grace. But they need also to be “healthy in love” – deeply attached to God and to God's people formed in and around Jesus, attentive to the Father and the Son, but also to the Spirit and the Bride. Paul calls them to a deep attachment to God's people, not their own private projects. And finally, in the place of hope, Paul elaborates and urges them to be “healthy in endurance” – like a veteran sailor, experienced in weathering life's storms and pressing onward toward the final port. If you have health in those three theological virtues, you've got all the parts of a whole soul put together well; you're a full and flourishing Christian. And that's what Paul tells Titus to have the older men be (Titus 2:2).

Today, we might say that rules out going wild on a midlife crisis. It rules out getting too goofy and doddering around. It cuts the strings on addictions, whether to alcohol or opiates, and unhoards hoarded life-junk. Instead it models a strong faith, the wisdom of life experience, a fervent love for God's people, and a well-regulated life. And that matches the map. It matches the map because Jesus was all those things. And God's grace in Jesus cuts away all those hindrances, freeing our older men – and the rest of us – to faith, hope, love, and life.

Paul turns his attention to the older women next, and he goes right out and says that what he's saying to them amounts to basically the same thing. They aren't to be 'slanderers' with sharp tongues – literally, they aren't to be devils! That was a temptation for older women in Crete, I suppose, to gossip and tongue-wag and criticize and tear down others. But that's like getting inspired when Satan shows up on career day. Instead, the older women should find ways to build each other up. And just as Paul told the older men to be sober, so he urges the older women not to be “slaves to much wine” – something that's sadly becoming fashionable today again, just as in those days. No, they should be sober and free (Titus 2:3).

What's more, Paul asks them to be “reverent in behavior,” your translation might read, or “reverent in the way they live,” or – even closer still – “in behavior as becometh holiness.” Paul's talking about a demeanor, a deportment, settled habits that create an overall bearing for life; but it's one that isn't out of place when the place is holy. If the older men are to be like sacred vessels – the plates and tools of temple service, polished for God's purposes – the older women are directed to be just like priestesses: conducting their overall life according to the purity and dignity of the temple. As such, Paul calls them to be “teachers of the good,” able to illuminate and illustrate what's really worthwhile in life, and not the frivolities of fashion or the gripes of gossip or the harshness of harping, but the good, the beautiful, the true. Paul's call to the older women is: Live your whole life as priestesses in the rooms of a gilded temple. That's no place for gossip, bitterness, cattiness, destructive criticism and competition; such a temple is a hospital for healing others and, in fact, for passing along this teaching, this lifestyle, this ordination to a higher hope (Titus 2:3).

Paul's attention veers later to the younger fellows – the 'new men.' He calls on Titus to especially be an example for them, being just a few years out of that category himself. And, first things first, the younger men need to be “self-controlled,” safe-minded and well-regulated, just like the older men – even if it might be quite a challenge for those whose blood still runs so hot! But they have to keep that under control, release steam in safe ways in the bounds God has drawn for our good (Titus 2:6). Like Titus, they need to be devoted to good works – they can use the benefits of their youth to the advantage of others, being industrious with what energy they have before time takes its toll. Like Titus, they need to follow a pattern of “incorruptibility and dignity” – to imitate the character of Jesus, to learn from the older men how to handle themselves under pressure, to not goof around but instead to be thoughtful and steady. And like Titus, they need to turn away from shattered chatter and spoilt speech, from meaningless mouthings and muddy murmurings, and instead get practice with “sound speech that cannot be condemned,” with healthy words that are good and beautiful and true (Titus 2:7-8). Not much of that fits with dominant youth culture today – but let's not pretend the seeds weren't sprouting forty, fifty, sixty years ago, either. But with healthy words of goodness and beauty and truth, and a thoughtful and steadfast mind, and reining in the passions of youth, and diligently offering good works with their youthful energy, Paul has another style of youthfulness on the offer.

In between, he talks to the younger ladies – the 'new women.' In Cretan culture, it couldn't be assumed that, just because a girl was married to a man, that therefore she was drawn to him, affectionate toward him, satisfied with him, even at first, much less as the years tallied up. It couldn't be assumed that her husband and children took pride of place, which was the Greek and Roman ideal. In practice, though, moralists usually said that women should tolerate and respect their husbands, and all men in general; but Paul goes further and wants to see them actually be lovers of husbands, lovers of children – to be committed to their families and to cultivate the warmth of God in their homes (Titus 2:4).

So, too, he wants them to be 'homemakers' – not bound to the home, though in the first century it might seem like it, but governing the house well and productively. Paul asks them to be 'pure,' free from stain, just like the sacred vessels and sacred priestesses, and to be 'good,' or kind, in the most full and basic sense. He doesn't tell them to allow themselves to be beaten into submission under their husbands; but as a strategic move, he counsels them to voluntarily submit to their own husbands' direction, precisely so that God's good news of a grace-hurricane wouldn't be thought to capsize the family dinghy. Their very own husbands, and the husbands of unchurched friends, were to be astounded and impressed by how this subversive new teaching was building a better home. But, in everything, the younger women were to be “self-controlled,” safe-minded. Paul has no patience for ancient misogynists who thought women couldn't possibly be reasonable, women couldn't possibly be sane, women needed to be controlled by men because they couldn't control themselves. No! The younger women are called to be every bit as 'safe-minded,' as 'well-regulated,' as the older and younger men (Titus 2:5).

Now, Paul was writing to Titus who was ministering to first-century churches in Crete, filled with older Cretan men and older Cretan women, younger Cretan men and younger Cretan women. That just looked different than today, and in many cases it's good that things look different now. If Paul wrote to a right-hand man dealing with twenty-first-century American churches, I'd guess the instructions for younger men and younger women would read a bit more similar, because for generations it's been the norm now for women to work in the public world just as men do. But Paul still teaches plenty. Even in today's world, the younger women can be tenders of, and contributors to, the home being what St. John Chrysostom called “a little church.” And the character that makes a house into a home, and a home into a little church, is the same that overflows into any other arenas a young woman may feel called to conquer.

What Paul is describing to Titus here is a healthy Christian community birthed from the healthy teaching of the gospel. This is a community flush with faith, aflame with love, steeped in grace. This is a community working well, humming along, interacting productively toward the greater ends of the organic whole. And each piece is regulated well by a higher wisdom, is kept thinking the thoughts that thinking is for. Each piece is pure in its own way – polished like an empty vessel for the offering, elevated to the honor of priesthood, pure, pure, pure, incorrupt in word and deed. Each piece contributes what's distinctively, what's characteristically, its own; and each piece avoids the pitfalls that dent and scratch analogues that serve only worldly uses.

And what's important to see here is that each piece in this temple, each organ in this body, stands in a mentoring relationship; that's woven into the fabric of what this healthy community is. That's part of what makes it so healthy. The older women are told explicitly, for example, to 'train' the younger ones – it's part of that same word 'self-controlled': they're to bring the younger ones into regulation. As we grow in grace, we're to 'regulate' one another: help one another keep our minds in the safe bounds of Jesus' wisdom where real life grows (Titus 2:4). The Gospels have a different word for that: it's called discipleship. But even here, expressed in other words, the basic idea is the warp and woof of healthy community: it's where healthy teaching gets passed on; where the inward and outward signs of spiritual health get tested and encouraged, and where guidance and regulation don't restrict our Christian freedom but channel it into power. That's a healthy Christian community, the sort we need to be. Because all of what Paul is saying could be rephrased as how Jesus Christ would walk if he occupied your station in life – your age, your sex, your employment. He is himself our Heavenly Sign, the starry map up to which we gaze and in him behold the Way. Look on up to him, and see just what Paul means.

When we do this, it has results. One, Paul says, is that “an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (Titus 2:8). When we're all well-regulated and fit for God's temple, when we all reflect back the Heavenly Sign above us, then the health of our community, the soundness of our ship, the purposefulness of our course, will all be unimpeachable. And not only that, but all of this – from old and young, from man and woman, and from the richest of rich (like people able to afford massive stores of wine, though they shouldn't) down to the humblest manual laborer in poverty and subjection (Titus 2:9) – all of this is so that our teaching about the grace of God would be decorated – made appealing and inviting to each other and to our neighbors and our neighborhoods – in everything each one of us does, in all the ways we live and move and have our being together in God our Savior (Titus 2:10). No matter what age bracket you fall in, no matter whether you are a man or a woman, no matter where you stand on society's ladder of success and esteem, “in everything you may decorate the teaching about God our Savior” as displaying all the signs of the real health it really has. These are the stars by which we steer. And so we sail onward for another week, “setting our minds on things above,” the luminous Sign of Christ. Charting our way by him, we set sail. Sail on, church. Sail on. Amen.