Readings

[Call & response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

The truly odd thing about the way our culture celebrates Christmas, a.k.a. the Holiday Season, is the contrast between its obligatory gaiety and the despair-encouraging darkness assumed in the Christmas readings. “The people who walked in darkness” in our first reading: in Isaiah’s time, the northern tribes just swallowed up by the Assyrian Empire. Or the Roman Empire assumed in our Gospel reading. As Ben Franklin observed, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Only under the most generous reading are the Romans guests, and they’ve been throwing their weight around for decades. That registration decree from the Emperor Agustus? The Empire needs—wait for it—more money.

Then there’s Crete. Earlier in the letter Paul writes about its inhabitants “It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ That testimony is true” (1:12-13). It would be understandable if he’d given the place a wide berth, but, no, he’s left Titus there to sort things out. So, in the verses before today’s reading, Paul’s focused on what various groups need to hear: older men, older women, younger men, slaves… Not the finer points of etiquette, but painfully basic stuff: the older women shouldn’t be slaves to drink; the younger men should show some self-control; the slaves shouldn’t pilfer…

Why? In all that darkness booze etc. sound like rational responses! Paul in today’s reading: “For the grace/gift of God has appeared…” Later in the letter he writes: “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (3:5). It’s a matter of remembering their identity, our identity. Every day we receive countless messages (print, TV, radio, social media, etc.) each encouraging us to experience ourselves in terms of a particular identity: consumer, tax-payer, citizen, privileged white male, oppressed white male… But we are baptized. Paul would have us use that as a filter, a spam blocker, if you like. How is this message relevant to us as baptized, in which Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, “all…one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28)?

Because, as Paul writes, there’s a point to God’s gift/grace: “that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” “A people of his own:” that’s a somewhat unwieldy translation for the phrase that occurs repeatedly in the Torah about Israel: “you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples” (Exo 19:5). God hasn’t given up on that, a people whose life is human, humane. As you may recall, Matthew uses “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” to celebrate Jesus’ arrival in Galilee (4:15-16). Jesus is the light. But then in the next chapter we hear Jesus saying “You are the light of the world” (5:14).

God’s gift, the gift that keeps giving in the lives of those who receive it. Our reading from Isaiah ended with “The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.” And if we wonder how that works, the ending from our reading from Titus supplies part of the answer: “and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”

“The people who walked in darkness…” A couple millennia on from Isaiah we have no lack of darkness, whether imported or home-grown. But, as Isaiah promised, we have God’s gracious gift, Emmanuel, God with us. The darkness will not get the last word. That Spirit that brooded over the dark chaos at the beginning of creation was given to us at baptism—or, better, we were given over to that Spirit at baptism—and the invitation of Christmas is to celebrate what that Spirit is stirring up in our midst.

[Call & response:] Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!