Straightening Out a Mess :1-16

Have you ever had a dinner party at your home with many guests enjoying a wonderful evening? And then at the close of the evening you’ve got a ton of dirty dishes, crumpled napkins, and crumbs strewn everywhere. It’s a mess that has to be straightened out. Or perhaps you let your children have some of their friends over to play. They got out the toys, pulled them throughout the house. They played dressed up and tried on every garment in the closet without putting it back in its place. Maybe they went outside and tracked mud in the house upon their return. It’s a mess. Sometimes the mess goes deeper and requires more energy and ingenuity to overcome. You may have taken a new which promised to be very challenging. And when you began you found out just how challenging it was. It appears the last person who had the job destroyed any level of trust among the employees. There are cliques and divisions. Communication has broken down. Morale is low and the vision of the workplace has been lost like a file on a rundown computer. Financial records are in disarray and you hardly know where to begin to straighten out the mess you see. I think of the man faced with increasing stress at work turns to alcohol or prescription medications to deal with it. The alcohol begins to isolate him from his family and they come to resent him. This only leads him to drink more which leads to further isolation. The children seek an escape from their pain at home through a similar experience with drugs or alcohol. It all begins to unravel. The wife wants to straighten out the mess in her home, but doesn’t know where to begin. Straightening out a mess. Sometimes we’re called to straighten out a mess that is not of our own doing.

Titus “Straightening out of mess” could serve as the subtitle of this thin, sliver of a book near the back of your called Titus. That’s what Titus was called to do. Paul wrote this letter to a young named Titus and basically asked him to straighten out a mess on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. We don’t know a lot about Titus. Surprisingly, the convert of Paul is not mentioned at all in the book of Acts, although he’s named 13 other times in the rest of the NT. We learn from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that Titus was a “partner and fellow worker” with Paul (2 Cor 8:23). Paul first mentions him in his letter to the Galatians (2:1-3), describing him as an uncircumcised Gentile. He must’ve immediately won the trust and affections of Paul, because Paul and took him to the Jerusalem church to present him as living evidence that the Gentiles were now part of the church and they didn’t have to be circumcised to join. Now you would think that would be sort of an embarrassing position to be in. You’re the number one example of a new kind of Christian and the highlight of your distinction has to do with private physical condition. Evidently, Titus was a good sport. The next time we hear about Titus he is with Paul in , when Paul hears disturbing news about the church in Corinth. If you have an familiarity at all with the letters to the Corinthians you know they had a mess on their hands: cliques, divisions, heresies, incest, out of control worship. You name it and it was happening in the Corinthian church. So what does Paul do? He does what he always does – he writes a letter. And he gives the letter to none other than Titus, this new, young Gentile of a Christian to take the letter to the Corinthians. Titus took the letter and didn’t immediately return as Paul expected. So Paul left Ephesus, we’re told, “with a troubled spirit” (2 Cor 7:5). He was in Macedonia, an Aegean Sea between him and Ephesus, when finally Titus shows up with good news. The Corinthians had received his letter with respect and submission. Things weren’t perfect in Corinth, but they at least recognized Paul’s authority and promised to deal with the mess they had on their hands per his instructions. What a relief! So Paul sent another letter to the Corinthians and made Titus the overseer of the offering they collected which made its way back to the mother church in Jerusalem. And that brings us to this letter written to Titus we have in our Bible, following the two letters written to another young disciple named Timothy.

Titus in Paul has sent Titus to Crete, a large island in the middle of the Mediterranean, south of the Aegean Sea and north of the shores of Tripoli. But Crete wasn’t desirable place to live, much less go there as a Christian missionary. The situation is summed up in one blistering sentence in Titus 1:12: “Even one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons. This testimony is true.” This is Paul’s summary of the Cretan people based on his personal experience of planting the there during one of his earlier evangelistic journeys, as well as his vast reading of the literature available to him about its history, politics, and philosophies. The prophet he is referring to is Epimenides, a 6th century BC Greek philosopher , who wrote this about the Cretans 600 years earlier. Evidently, nothing much had changed in 600 years. The Cretans were still liars, brutes, and lazy gluttons. Aristotle referred to the Cretans as liars because they claimed Zeus was buried on their island. 1 Any young Greek teenager knew that Zeus wasn’t buried anywhere. He was the supreme deity who wasn’t dead, and if he was dead, he wouldn’t have been buried on that little out-of-the-way island Crete. Liars, liars, pants on fire. Well, Titus is now on the island when he receives this letter from Paul. Which makes it all the more interesting when he read earlier in the letter, “The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished” (Titus 1:5). The KJV puts it more starkly, “For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou should set in order the things that were wanting.” Combining these two thoughts we come up with this basic idea. Crete is a mess. I want you to straighten it out. So here’s the situation for Titus. Crete is a place filled with people who are always, not sometimes, but always liars, evil brutes, and lazy gluttons. It seems to me, that would be a good reason to leave Crete, doesn’t it you? Titus, is most certainly a young man. Why would Paul want to send him to a place that combines the worst traits of humanity; the lying of Washington, D.C.. the violence of the southside of Chicago, and the laziness of a Las Vegas resort area. But difficulty didn’t seem to dissuade Paul, but rather it seemed to stimulate him. He called on his disciples to step into the arena of adversity with him. He himself, never shrank from a challenge, and he didn’t want his followers to either. A hostile environment didn’t intimidate him, rather it stimulated him. There is something essential to the man in particular and the Christian faith at its best in that attitude. Crete was a mess. The Christian faith and a Christian disciple was called to enter the mess and straighten it out.

Your Crete and Mine Let’s think together about going to the island of Crete. I don’t mean pull out our smart phones, go to cheaptickets.com and booking a flight during the morning sermon. I would prefer that you keep your smarty phones asleep during the service. I mean think about going into difficult places and straightening out a mess. One way or another we are always finding ourselves in Crete aren’t we? There are many things that make our situations unique this morning. We are all different ages, different races, we have varying levels of education, we come from different states or countries, and our home lives growing up as children are quite diverse. But you can be sure of one thing we have in common: We have all been to Crete, we are all going to Crete, and many of us are in Crete right now. Further, we are human beings who yearn for peace, shalom, tranquility, and quiet. We don’t want to go to Crete, live in Crete, and if we are there, we want to get out ASAP. I imagine Titus was hoping to get a letter from Paul which said, “I know you are living and working in horrendous conditions. Take the first ship out of there. I have important work for you elsewhere.” Instead, in the language of the KJV, Paul wrote, “For this cause I left thee in Crete.” In saying this Paul was affirming a basic truth of life and the Christian faith: Happiness and joy derive not from circumstances, but from within. Happiness is not something you find over the rainbow where lies a pot of gold. It happens in the midst of life, even hard life when meaning and purpose are grasped with gusto and vigor. We create happiness more than we find it. We can search for the right home, the right job, the right city, the ideal set of circumstances and still miss out on happiness. On the other end, we can live in a place filled with liars, brutes, and gluttons and find joy, because joy comes from within. You see Titus could’ve walked around Crete lamenting the fact that it was filled with liars, brutes and gluttons. He could’ve picked up the newspaper each morning, read the bad economic news, scanned the criminal report, and perused the articles about politicians spending campaign money in illegal or unethical ways. And he could’ve laid the paper aside and said, “What’s the use? This is a evil, sorry world to live in. There is no point in picking up trash along the road when the next guy who comes behind me is just going to mess it up again.”

Life is what you create Surely this principle runs through life at every phase. Life is not what you find; it’s what you create. Many people go through life searching for good people to surround them, good things to come to them, good jobs to fall in their laps, the good church to pave their highway to super spirituality. They never get it. Oh, they may have moments or weeks of ecstasy, but long-lasting happiness eludes them. They find existence. They are existing. They are going through the motions of life, trying to avoid all the bad things and bad people. Existence is what you find. Life is what you create. Let me give you some examples of this. I came across the story of Robert Florio on Youtube this week. I suggest you check it out this week. Robert Florio. As a typical young American boy he idolized baseball stars like Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles. At the age of 14 he had a swimming accident which injured his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the chest down for the rest of his life. Faced with such immense challenges he became depressed and wanted to end his life. In his darkness he came to put his faith in , and with a determination of incredible proportions he began to put his energy into painting. He uses an art brush with his mouth and has painted portraits of Jay Gibbons, first baseman of the Baltimore Orioles and has a youtube video of creating a portrait of President Obama. He also has begun to design video games as a means of creating income and offering inspiration to other paraplegics. He has now become good friends with Gibbons, attending ballgames at Camden Yards and showing him his latest work. Now, at the age of 30, Robert says, “I thank God for everything that he’s given me. I know that’s hard to say, ‘How do you thank God for you have this injury.’ I thank God because he’s given me an ability to see the meaning of life. And If you’re going to live to 80 and you think about how many people have come before you and how many are going to come after you, if you leave a legacy behind, it makes a difference.” Robert Florio was put on the island of Crete, a place no one would want to go, but he found a life there, a rich, creative life with meaning and eternal purpose. This is the life that Titus found in Crete. He went in with a purpose that he was going to make it work. He wasn’t going to focus on the liars, brutes, and gluttons and allow them to identify his life. They were mere characteristics of his surroundings, not his life. He didn’t want to exist. He wanted to live. So going back to the text, what did Paul want Titus to do in Crete? On a practical level what were his instructions? How was he to begin straightening out the mess of this island. If you look back to verse 5, as soon as Paul told Titus to straighten out the mess he told him to “appoint elders in every town” (1:5). Following this he gave instructions as to what kind of men should be elders. Notice the text:”blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believer and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.” Now, you may be thinking, as I am, where is Titus going to find men like that on an island in the middle of the Meditteranean. After all, this is a place where all the people are liars, brutes, and gluttons. Blameless? Where do you find blameless people in Crete? Well, no doubt it would difficult and time-consuming. I imagine it took years. The Holy Spirit would have to precede him, change people, and begin shaping them to live in new ways. It would be painstaking. It would be, ….well, like straightening out a mess.

Getting Help But the thing I want you to see is that Titus wasn’t to tackle this island alone. He wasn’t called to convert everyone, teach all the people, run himself ragged to tend to the needs of the budding, infant church that had just been planted by Paul. Paul didn’t tell him to preach the gospel door to door. Titus was commissioned, not to run the churches of Crete, but to appoint elders. He needed to invest in the lives of a few men in order to have influence on the entire island. It’s the same model that used when he called 12 disciples to establish the church on earth. Even Jesus, the Lord of the universe, didn’t try to carry his message to the world on his own. He chose a few others and depended on them to do it. Certainly, a lesson here for us is the necessity of seeking help when we are trying to straighten out of mess. At church we need deacons to share the spiritual load of visiting, praying for, and offering spiritual comfort to the people. Gloria Grogran needed a group of 20 leaders to carry out the mission projects yesterday in Operation Inasmuch. What a mess that would’ve been if God had told Gloria, “OK, I want you to blitz the city of Durham with good deeds done in the name of Jesus.” She would’ve died. But then, what about the mess in your home? You’re not going to pull it off on your own. It takes teamwork. And then if we begin to delve into the messes of our lives, and deal with all the Cretes that are filled with terror, sorrow, and horror, we’ll see we can’t go there alone. Or if we go there alone, we need to get help from others ASAP. I went to another church during my vacation a couple of weeks ago and heard a good analogy that illustrates what Paul and I are trying to communicate. The biblical idea is that God most often works indirectly in the world. Of course, God can work directly because he’s God. God can zap miracles into existence as he did in the creation of the world, but most often God works indirectly. God works through people. And here’s the illustration: If our right elbow itches our brain doesn’t send a message to the right elbow, “Stop itching.” No, the brain sends a signal to our left arm down to the hand and then to the fingers to say, “Hey, your buddy, the right elbow is over there freaking out with an itch. Do me a favor, go over there and scratch him.” And boom, in an instant the left fingers are over there taking care of the matter. It’s an indirect way for the body to care for itself. God primarily works the same way. When part of the body of Christ is hurting, God doesn’t normally just zap joy into that person. God tells another part of the body, “Hey, Don is hurting today. Go see what you can do. Send him a card. Text him. Facebook him. Take him out for lunch. Let him know you are there to support him.” It’s indirect healing. Which is why we need the body of Christ. We can’t heal on our own. We can’t receive power to conquer life on our own. We can’t live in Crete, a place of lying, brutishness, and laziness without backup. If we’re going to live in Crete, and some of you are living there now, and some of you will be moving there in the future, you’ll need the body of Christ to help you survive and thrive. It really is a better way to live. In fact, it sounds crazy but Crete may not only be the place you’re supposed to live, it may be the place where you thrive. Our instincts are to feel sorry for Titus, being sent down to that God-forsaken place in the middle of the Mediterranean. No luxury, only liars. No extraordinary brothers, only evil brutes. No lovely girls, just lazy gluttons. Do you pity him? I don’t. He probably had a more thrilling and rewarding life on that island than all those who habitually feed their souls on superficial glaze. For the thrill of life comes when obstacles are overcome, a challenge is met, a life is created from the raw bones of faithfulness and purpose. I don’t know, but I can only imagine that once Titus got started in Crete, you couldn’t have pulled him off that island if you wanted to. Conclusion And there’s evidence that he stayed. Church historian Eusebius in the 2nd century wrote about the church in Crete “noted for its virtue.” The ancient document Haggoi Delca which means “Ten ” describes the martyrdom of ten Christians in Crete during the Roman persecutions of 250-251. According to ancient sources the martyrs represented churches from all across the island. Later church historians record that from churches in Crete attended the great ecumenical councils on Nicea in 325AD and Chalcedon in 451 AD in order to participate in writing and approving the great orthodox creeds of the Christian faith. And perhaps most astounding is the archaeological digs of the early 20th century which discovered as many as 70 churches on the island and the most stately church of them all had them inscription on it … (Are you listening?)….. “ Titus” in the region of Gortyna.2 It leads me to believe Titus did straighten out the mess in Crete. He went to this young church in a land filled with liars, brutes, and gluttons and built the church and created a life. Oh, I doubt he had a spotless church when it was over. It was probably still a bit messy. But he entered into the fray, stepped into the mess, modeled the faith, appointed and trained some elders, and found his home in Crete. He embraced the Crete God had given him. He bloomed where he was planted. Some of you may be living in Crete today or called to Crete tomorrow. It may be the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to do. You may feel overwhelmed and underprepared to face the challenges that are before you. They may be challenges at home or work, challenges in your own mind and heart. Perhaps what this tiny book in the back of your Bible is telling you is “Don’t run away from Crete. “ Say to your island of Crete, “I’m not going to make you my enemy. I’m not going to go looking for your faults, weaknesses, and failures. I’m going to find opportunities within you. I’m not going to let you intimidate me or crush me. I’m going to surround myself with brothers and sisters in the faith, and live in my Crete. I don’t expect all the brutes to leave. But I’m going to share my love and faith with the brutes, because that’s where joy is found. Joy comes when we make our Cretes, our ministires and our homes. We didn’t come to this earth to exist. We came to live, and I mean live abundantly. Amen.

1 For more on this see M. Dibelius and H. Conzelmann, The Pastoral , Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) 136-137.

2 There are many websites containing this history. One of those is http://ecole.evansville.edu/articles/crete.html.