No one really likes tit-for-tat arrangements--do this for me and I will do that in return. We end up feeling obligated and manipulated. Resentment builds almost from the get go. A spouse cajoles the other into housework with the promise of a trip to a favorite restaurant. A friend cajoles the other into driving a hundred miles to and from a specialty shop with the promise of a home cooked meal in return. Worse are the slights-you didn’t do this, therefore I am justified in not doing this. A spouse forgets a birthday, so the other “forgets” an appointment. A child hurts another’s feelings, so the victim ransacks the transgressor in the circle of friends--it was deserved. In both sets of scenarios, the “tat” person is inevitably given a heap of guilt to deal with. One will act just to get rid of it.

So what are we to do here as the Apostle Paul invokes tit-for-tat in the way to follow the faithful life?

Paul could be an ornery cuss when he wanted to be. Just read the letters. He could be angry, stubborn, ham-fisted, and manipulative all in the same letter. In the final letters within the collected group, Paul addresses not entire congregations, but specific people--missionaries or church members--for particular counsel on specific situations. The letter to Titus comes within this set and is an instructional letter, similar to those penned for Timothy. One hallmark of these letters is Paul’s use of a tit-for-tat strategy as he “encourages” his protégés to follow his lead. Do this because you owe it to me comes through loud and clear.

What is striking about this paragraph from the epistle is that it is not about Titus’ relationship to Paul, but the believer’s relationship to God! God is manipulating us! God heaps the guilt on us and then we respond not because we actually believe in what we are doing, but because we are too guilty not to do so.

Can that be right? What does it actually say?

Paul begins with a bluntly honest confession--

Hmm, sounds like a couple of fraternities I recall from dear old Davidson College, or what a classic Southern preacher might label being “lost.” But, Paul continues, God does not respond with the fire and brimstone deserved, instead, God responds in grace, redeeming the spiritually vagrant through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, God’s own presence. Therefore, because God has acted completely without thought of recompense or judgment, letting the ungodly off without so much as a swat from a reed, Titus is to lead the flock into the practice of goodness, abandoning all forms of riotous living for the resolute life of faith and godliness. The unspoken premise is that God meets us with undeserved love while we continue to ignore God and act like fools in God’s presence, insulting the love of God with our faithlessness. We owe God more.

Tit for tat.

That’s a hard message to hear, but Paul seems to have no trouble whatsoever preaching it. I wonder if Titus had any trouble accepting it? It makes for a heck of a Dedication Sunday message--give because you owe it to God; look at yourself, how could you not empty your pockets?

The real kicker is that it is also true.

Dedication Sunday actually has very little to do with this particular church’s budget. Dedication Sunday is about God. As much as I want to at times, I cannot get away from the fundamental teaching of Karl Barth, my scribal mentor in theology. Mr. Barth’s Dogmatics (his 13 volume compendium of Christian theology) are rooted in the absolute dictum that theology and faith are all about God without exception or question. Everything we do or say within faith is a response to what God has already done and said, and what God has already done no one else can come close to doing--God ends the reign of sin and death. We cannot do that. We cannot free ourselves from that which ensnares us completely. In Christ, God has freed us to be who God intended us to be in our creation--the children of God to glorify and enjoy him forever. On Dedication Sunday, we are in actuality not responding to what is done and said here at church, but what God has done and said in Jesus Christ. There is no escaping that truth. We do, in fact, owe God our very lives. Our pledged offering is only a symbol of making that truth visible, not for the world to see, but for ourselves to see and feel and know.

Paul felt no compunction nor waffled for an instant in stating the case to Titus. This is the way it is, just deal with it and respond in kind within the church.

Such sentiment might make us itchy, but there is a way to scratch it--hear and do likewise. The amazing power of doing so is not to leave us burdened with resentment, as with other tit-for-tats, but instead to open to us a joy and a peace that makes our initial irritability seem inconsequential. God is gracious, to become gracious is to find God. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

Amen.