The last instructions of a very short letter. Titus 2 grounded its ethics in an appearing; Titus 3 does the same thing again, and more starkly — it puts a vice list and a grace sentence back to back with nothing between them but the word when.
What happens
"Beloved: Remind them to be under the control of magistrates and authorities, to be obedient, to be open to every good enterprise. They are to slander no one, to be peaceable, considerate, exercising all graciousness toward everyone. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deluded, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful ourselves and hating one another. But when the kindness and generous love of Theos our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the HolyBreath, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternallife."
What to notice
The vice list is seven items long and it is about us, not about outsiders: ēmen gar pote kai hēmeis, "for we too were once." The last two are the sharpest and run in opposite directions. Stygētoi — loathsome, detestable — is the passive one: the kind of person other people cannot stand, a word related to Styx, the underworld river of hatred. Then misountes allēlous, hating one another, which is active. Both ends of the relation are named: we were unbearable, and we could not bear each other. Then the turn, and the verb is yesterday's: hote de hē chrēstotēs kai hē philanthrōpia epephanē — "but when the kindness and the philanthropy appeared."Philanthrōpia is a political word: what Hellenistic subjects praised a king for — love of humankind, the virtue of a ruler who does not have to be kind and is. Decrees and inscriptions are full of it. Titus applies the courtly compliment to Theos, pairing it with chrēstotēs, kindness, which second-century Christians liked to pun against christos, since chrēstos and christos sounded identical in their Greek. The denial is emphatic in a way English flattens: ouk ex ergōn tōn en dikaiosynē ha epoiēsamen hēmeis, "not out of works in righteousness which we did." The pronoun is unnecessary and therefore stressed. He put it in on purpose.Dia loutrou palingenesias, "through a bath of rebirth" — loutronbeing the ordinary word for a bath or a bathhouse, not a ritual term, and palingenesia, "again-becoming," occurring only twice in the New Testament (here and Matthew 19:28 of the renewal of all things). It was a Stoic term for the periodic rebirth of the cosmos after conflagration.Titus uses a word for the remaking of the universe and attaches it to a wash. And hou execheen eph' hēmas plousiōs, "which he poured out on us richly" — ekcheō is the libation verb, the same one Paul used in Romans 5:5 and Philippians 2:17. Nothing in this vocabulary is measured out.
The psalm has two halves and two metaphors, and it is the second one that today's gospel calls for. Psalm 23:1–4 is a shepherd with a flock. Psalm 23:5–6 is a host with a guest — and a guest is somebody who has been let in.
The selected verses
Psalm 23:1b–3a."Yahweh is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul." Psalm 23:3bc–4."He guides me in right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage." Psalm 23:5."You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." Psalm 23:6."Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of Yahweh for years to come."
What to notice
Lo echsar — "I shall not lack." The verb chaser is the one Deuteronomy 2:7 uses of the wilderness years: lo chasarta davar, "you have lacked nothing."It is a wilderness word, not a pasture word.B'ma'g'lei tzedeq is usually "in paths of righteousness," and ma'gal is more specific than path: it is a wagon-rut, the track worn into ground by wheels going over it repeatedly. Not a road anyone built — a groove made by use. Then the second half, which is a banquet. Ta'arokh l'fanai shulchan neged tzor'rai, "you arrange a table before me, in front of those who besiege me" — arakh is to set in order, the verb for drawing up a battle line and for laying wood on an altar, and neged means directly opposite, in full view.The enemies are not removed and they are not blindfolded. They are given a seat with a view.Dishanta va-shemen roshi is blunter than "you anoint my head with oil": dashen means to make fat, to enrich — "you have made my head oily" — the gesture of a host at a good dinner, not a coronation. And kosi revayah, "my cup is saturation," a noun rather than a verb: my cup is a drenching. And the pursuit at the end: ak tov va-chesed yirdefuni — goodness and mercy shall hunt me down.Radaph is what an army does to a fleeing enemy. The psalm ends with the speaker being chased by kindness.
Luke's long journey to Jerusalem is still running, and he gives an odd geographical note — dia meson Samareias kai Galilaias, "through the middle of Samaria and Galilee" — which does not describe a sensible route. Luke is less interested in the map than in the fact that this is the borderland, the strip where the two populations touch, which is exactly where a mixed leper colony would form.
What happens
"As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, 'Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!' And when he saw them, he said, 'Go show yourselves to the priests.' As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifyingTheos in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, 'Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to Theos?' Then he said to him, 'Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.'"
What to notice
Porrōthen estēsan — "they stood at a distance." This is not shyness; it is the law.Leviticus 13:45–46 requires the person with the disease to live outside the camp with torn clothes and uncovered head, calling out a warning. The distance in this scene is a legal requirement, and it is the thing being undone. They call him epistata, "Master" — a title only Luke uses, from ephistēmi: an overseer, the man in charge of a job. Not rabbi, not kyrie; it is the word you would use for a foreman. Then the crucial mechanic of the story: they are sent before anything happens.Go show yourselves to the priests is the Levitical procedure for certifying a cure (Leviticus 14) — they are told to go and be inspected while still visibly diseased — and en tō hypagein autous ekatharisthēsan, "in their going they were cleansed."The healing happens on the road, after they have already set out on the strength of nothing. Luke then uses two different verbs and the difference is the whole point. All ten were ekatharisthēsan, cleansed — the ritual word, the one that gets you back into the community. The one who turns around does so idōn hoti iathē, "seeing that he had been healed" — iaomai, the ordinary medical word. The nine got a certificate. He noticed something had happened to him. And then Luke drops the identifier at the end of the sentence, as a punchline: kai autos ēn Samaritēs. The word Jesus uses for him is a shock in this setting: ho allogenēs houtos, "this allogenēs" — a rare word whose most famous occurrence is not in scripture at all. It is the word carved on the temple balustrade in Jerusalem, on the notices warning gentiles not to pass into the inner courts: mēthena allogenē eisporeuesthai, "let no foreigner enter." Two of those stones have been found. Jesus applies the temple-exclusion word to the one man in the story who came back — and the man is at that moment lying at his feet. The last line adds something the other nine did not get: hē pistis sou sesōken se, "your trust has saved you."Two different outcomes from one miracle, and the difference is entirely in the return trip. And the command is anastas poreuou, "stand up and go" — anistēmi, the resurrection verb.
How They Fit Together
Ten cleansed on the road; the difference is made on the way back
Two of today's three readings are about a gift arriving before anyone has done anything to deserve it, and the third is about what happens next.
Titus 3 states it flatly, and states it about the writer as much as the readers. The seven-item list is in the first person plural: we were foolish, disobedient, deluded, enslaved to appetites, spiteful, envious — and then the closing pair, stygētoi, misountes allēlous, detestable, and detesting one another.The passive and the active together: unbearable to others and unable to bear others. It is a description of a community, not of individuals.
And the sentence that follows contains no bridge. Not then we repented. Not then we sought him.Hote de… epephanē — "but when it appeared."Ouk ex ergōn… ha epoiēsamen hēmeis, not out of works which we did, with the pronoun inserted for emphasis. The only verb the letter allows us in the whole sequence is having been washed.
Then Luke, who gives the doctrine a body. Ten men stand at the legally required distance — porrōthen, far off, because Leviticus says so — and shout. They are sent to the priestsbefore there is anything for a priest to look at, and they go, which is the only thing any of them does. The cleansing happens on the road. Nobody kneels first, nobody promises anything, and the man who turns out to be a Samaritan is not sorted out of the group at the start. All ten get exactly the same thing.
And nine of them did nothing wrong. That is what makes the passage hard. They were told to show themselves to the priests, and they were on their way to do it; the nine are obeying the instruction they were given when the tenth breaks ranks. Whatever Jesus's question means — where are the nine? — it is not an accusation of disobedience.
What the tenth does is the difference between two words. All ten were cleansed, which is a status. He alone saw that he had been healed, which is a perception, and he turned around, which is a direction. He was already fixed; the walk back added nothing to his skin. And it is to him alone that Jesus says hē pistis sou sesōken se — your trust has saved you — a sentence the other nine never hear, about something they never lost.
Then the word allogenēs, which is the day's sharpest stroke. It is the word on the Jerusalem temple's warning stones, the notice forbidding foreigners to pass into the inner courts. The man who came back is, by that inscription, permanently barred from the sanctuary — and he is lying face down at the feet of the one who said, two days ago in this lectionary, destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will raise it.He has not entered the temple. He has arrived at it.
Which is why Psalm 23 belongs here rather than only on All Souls. Its second half is a dinner party — a table arranged, in the military sense, directly opposite the people who besiege the guest; oil poured on the head until it is running; a cup that is not full but is a drenching.For a man who has spent years shouting from a legal distance, a place at a table set in front of everyone who kept him out is the whole gospel. And the last line is not a stroll: tov va-chesed yirdefuni, goodness and mercy will run me down.
Today is also the memorial of a Roman soldier who cut his military cloak in half at the gate of Amiens and gave the other half to a beggar, and dreamed that night of Christ wearing it, saying "Martin, still a catechumen, has clothed me."He was not yet baptized.Titus 3:5 would say he had not yet had the bath. The dream did not wait for it.
A Question to Sit With
Nine men were doing exactly what they had been told, on their way to the certification that would let them go home, and there is nothing in the text against them. The tenth stopped, turned around, and went back — which delayed his own restoration and produced no medical benefit whatsoever. What he got instead was a sentence spoken to him alone. I am generally the sort of person who completes the errand. What have I recently been given that I processed correctly and never went back to acknowledge?