Evening Prayer for Advent I Midweek

Titus 2:1-10; Luke 3:7-18

December 4, 2024

The first thing to note about tonight’s Epistle is that men and women are addressed differently. Men and women are equal in dignity and worth. Men and women are not the same in terms of callings and duties, temperaments and responsibilities. First, the older men are called to actions befitting their station, to love as they lead, and to be patient with those who are led.

The older women are called away from gossip and wine toward the teaching of the younger women. The woman is to be, the NKJ says, a “homemaker.” I don’t think it means a woman cannot have a job; the term literally means “busy at home” or “energetic at home.” The idea is that she is not lazy but working, within her own sphere, for the good of the family. And this is done under the leadership of the man. The older women teach the younger to be, the NKJ says, “obedient to their own husbands.” It’s better rendered as “under the ordering” of the husband. This should not be confused with “obedience” in some slavish sense. The Bible teaches a cosmic ordering, where everything is under a beautiful pattern directed by the Father. The young follow the pattern of the older, the children are submissive to their parents, the wife to the husband, the church to the pastor, the Christian to Christ; and Christ to the Father. These are communal relationships where everything is rightly ordered, not disordered.

We live in a disordered world. Today the Supreme Court heard a case on whether it is right to allow children to be mutilated by doctors and have their distinctive parts destroyed, with hormones befitting their body blocked and others introduced instead.

Meanwhile, this issue of male-female relationships has roiled Christians in the Reformed world. One question is put like this, “Does a husband have the right to order his wife to wear a particular color dress each day?” This is taken as some litmus test of whether or not the wife is obedient. But the kind of submission the Bible talks about is not that the wife is a slave to her husband. Instead, it is that he orders, or arranges his household toward what is good and God-pleasing. And the husband orders the household mindful that he is in all things to submit to Christ. You see that the wife is described as submissive, while the man is described as patient, loving, temperate, and sober.

We’ve come to the point where we cannot imagine relationships that aren’t either perfectly egalitarian or entirely servile. We all have much to confess in these areas. We live in a culture that has literally lost the distinction between men and women, and we cannot imagine a world where men and women have distinct roles and yet live together as a model of Christian love.

Why is all of this part of Advent? I wish the assigned reading had continued a few verses beyond, for there it gives us the context: we are called to

Live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. [Titus 2:12-14]

In other words, we live now in light of the appearing, the final Advent of Christ. Our purpose now is to be zealous for good works, and those are found chiefly in the household. We submit ourselves to our vocation in a radical spirit of serving our nearest neighbors in love.

Advent is a season of repentance, and John the Baptist is the chief preacher. On Sundays we hear in the preface that we are getting ready for the return of Christ, “Whose way John the Baptist prepared.” He prepared the way by calling us to repentance. You can see in tonight’s Gospel reading that when the people asked about what works to do, he focused on their relationship to their neighbors:

• The man with extra clothing should share with those who have nothing;

• The tax collector should stop defrauding people;

• The soldier should not abuse his office.

The repentance was to produce a reform in people’s lives. So tonight we each have to ask ourselves, How have I been disordered in how I treat the people God has put around me, at home, at work, at church? What would a rightly ordered relationship look like according to the Ten Commandments?

If we ignore this, the baptism of fire is coming, where the chaff is burned, and those who ignored God’s Word are cast into the outer darkness.

There is another baptism which John preached. He was anticipating the gift of Christ’s baptism. This baptism of the Holy Spirit gives what? On the day of Pentecost, Peter told us: it gives the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Going back to the beginning, the old men of the church are exhorted to patience and love. This is the demeanor of the Father to you; He is patient and loving, calling all people to repentance. He delights in forgiveness. You fit into the order of His cosmos. Our “great God and Savior Jesus Christ” has taken all of your failings, your sins, into Himself. They died with Him. Tonight you go to sleep in peace, forgiven; and tomorrow you rise to live a rightly ordered life, as the man or woman God calls you to be. Tomorrow, you begin to reorder society according to the pattern and purpose God gives you. +INJ+