December 20, 2021 - Advent Week 4

 

 

Fra Angelica, The Annunciation (ca. 1426)

A Peaceable Life – with a Purpose

The Ecumenical Lectionary functions – in part – to expose us to “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27 KJV). So when the readings in the 4^th week of Advent take us through the Epistle to Titus, we should probably take it as a good admonition to read and pay heed. Yet at first appearances, finding something relevant to the season from the assigned passage for today seems a tall order:

[Writes Saint Paul] 2 ^1-6 Your job [Titus] is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. Also, guide the young men to live disciplined lives.

^7-8 But mostly, show them all this by doing it yourself, trustworthy in your teaching, your words solid and sane. Then anyone who is dead set against us, when he finds nothing weird or misguided, might eventually come around.

^9-10 Guide slaves into being loyal workers, a bonus to their masters—no back talk, no petty thievery. Then their good character will shine through their actions, adding luster to the teaching of our Savior God. (The Message Bible).

Titus – with the other Pastorals 1 and 2 Timothy – has received savage attacks from the Higher Critics from the early 19^th century onwards. Based on internal evidence: the written language (much more polished) and the ‘mundane’ subject matter, the Pastorals have an obviously different style from most of the other Epistles of Paul. The events cited and the timings of the various visits, trips and personalities mentioned in these letters do not fit well with the known history of Saint Paul’s life from the Acts and from what can be read out of the other Epistles. Good arguments have been raised against these critiques, almost all of which require further activities and adventures in mission for the great Apostle beyond Acts 28. But even if the critiques against authorship can be countered, surely “the Pastorals as a whole … evince what has been called a bourgeois attitude to Christianity, heavily weighted in favour of practical morality and conventional ethics. The virtues stressed are those of a settled, established community, and we hear much of moderation, self-control, and sober deportment” (J. N. D. Kelly, A commentary on the pastoral epistles, Baker, 1963, p. 17).

Perhaps, the faint whiff of suspicion that continues to linger around these three short books provides cover for the many moderns – outside and inside the Church – who would rather avoid the Pastorals because the domesticity and plain old-fashioned values that are so strongly admonished – as in the passage above – are out of step with modern mores and values. So if Titus is largely a book left closed – whatever the motivations – the Lectionary is precisely what we need to open its pages and reflect on this part of Holy Scripture precisely so that we don’t miss “all the counsel of God”.

But that brings me back to the beginning: why is it suggested as an Advent reading? Quite possibly, that was not intentional. To some extent readings must follow cycles and so if in every third year the 4^th week of Advent brings the book of Titus to out attention, so be it. But is it so inappropriate? Have not the majority of the approximately two thousand Advents of the past been celebrated in times of normalcy in the life of the Christian Church, settled times, of good order? And after all, should we not prefer that? In this second Advent of the SARS-COV2 pandemic, with news of escalating cases of yet another mutation threatening life and, especially, liberty; settled normalcy as Titus will advocate to his congregations in ancient Crete, why that may not be such a bad thing after all! In Tolkien’s imagination, just such a settled life of happy domesticity is sketched out in the Shire where the Hobbits live their comfortable – if slightly narrow – lives on Middle Earth.

Moreover, perhaps Saint Paul’s advice for order and good behaviour was founded on a very realistic assessment of the alternatives? As the passage states: We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. Perhaps Paul expected that Crete in AD65 was in a temporal equilibrium that could all too easily be disturbed. As the Hobbits of the Shire lived lives blissfully unaware of the gathering storm of evil emanating from Mount Doom and Mordor. As did we, whose lives were all turned upside down in a matter of weeks by the corona virus – who would have thought that was around the corner during Advent 2019? In truth, a settled happy existence is to be greatly prized, the more so when it exists on the knife edge of time. And I suggest to you that this is exactly the situation – in another passage assigned to this day – at the stupendous announcement of mighty Gabriel to a courageous teenaged girl ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ (Luke 1:30-33, NSRVA). By all accounts, Mary led a settled and devout life in rural Galilee, with a pre-arranged marriage to an up-and-coming contractor and every expectation of living a quiet life of domesticity à la Titus 2. All that would change in an instant, and she would not only risk bringing the child Jesus to the world under a personal cloud of suspicion, but would live on to witness His meteoric public ministry, the tragedy of execution, the exhilaration of resurrection. She would attend the ascension; participate at the giving of the Holy Spirit, at the birth of the Church. And likely within her lifetime, experience the wholesale destruction of Jewish Palestine in the Roman slaughter of AD70, followed by a massive refugee crisis as surviving Jews fled throughout the Empire. So, let’s pray for (a return to) normalcy and let’s live that sober life – with a purpose. Ready for adventure, should it come, in God’s good time.

-  René Boeré 

 

Musical selection: The Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack-02-Concerning Hobbits