The Good Pleasure of God's Will

Readings, Jeremiah 31:7-14 and Ephesians 1:3-14
Image, Lee Krasner (1908–1984) Through Blue, 1963 

There are some pleasurable phrases out there you love to hear: “all inclusive,” “take your pick,” “I got both kinds,” “it’s all free!” Undoubtedly others come to mind. Characteristic of these is a freedom from imposition or limit, freedom from any concession or compromise, freedom from only if or only after. In hearing these phrases our decision is governed not by any consideration of external factors or tit-for-tat, but solely by the good pleasure of our will. 
 
Though it is not the good pleasure of our will that I want to focus on today. Instead, it is the good pleasure of God’s will that will occupy us, as we heard in today’s reading: God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
 
Why does Christmas happen? Why is the Son sent? At a foundational level, the Christian confession is that all this happens… according to the good pleasure of God’s will.
 
This doesn’t disqualify any other reason we might want to rightly ascribe to the why of Christmas and the impact of Christ’s sending. We might still say that Christmas happens so that we might know God is with us. Still say that Jesus is sent into the world in love so that the world might be saved through him. Still confess that Christmas signifies the beginning of the reconciling union of divinity and humanity which through cross, resurrection, and eventual return is the power which makes us children of God. All these effects can be rightly ascribed to the why of Christmas, the why of Christ’s sending.
 
But all these reasons come after, are subordinate to, and result from the good pleasure of God’s will. It is important to stress this. Because if it wasn’t out of the good pleasure of God’s will, we risk providing an explanation for Christmas, for the sending of the Son, for the spirit of adoption that is somehow external to God, to a force or need which forces God’s hand. These could range from human sin and disobedience, the tyranny of the devil, the encroachment of death. All of these would place an emphasis on the historical, the human act, on some creaturely decision, need, or situation that God is forced to respond to in order to right the rails. And yet, as the reading from Ephesians states with clarity: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Such a statement, particularly when heightened with the emphases on what God destined according to God’s good pleasure, leaves no room for something in time or history to force God’s hand, to cause God’s reaction. God, unlike creatures, is pure action, not reaction, and God can only be pure action when what God does is solely in accordance with God’s own good pleasure.
 
We might say this in short: In total freedom (free of compromise, free of concession, free of cajoling) God acts for us. And this action for us is not secondary to who God is, it is not an afterthought or plan b in the grand relation of God to the world. To speak of who God is, to answer that eternal question: what is God, is to say God is the one who destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ. God is the one who made Christmas happen by sending the Son in love, according to the good pleasure of God’s own will. Christmas is thus a true and perfect gift. Not a gift given in response to obligation or exchange, but pure gift given out of God’s divine disposition to be for us and our salvation.
 
Therefore it’s great that when we come to Christmas – and more specifically to Epiphany – that a star shines at the centre. I was explaining to the girls that when we look up to the stars we are looking back in time. That the starlight we see, which feels newly arrived with the night, has actually already been travelling toward us for days, centuries, millennia. This light which guides the way has been pulsing to us across time. So that even as it meets us in this moment, its origin belongs to a moment much older, long before we even thought to stop and look.
 
It is this ancient, primordial, elemental light which draws shepherd and magi alike to the Christ child. And perhaps a star was chosen as this symbol since it is one of the few things we can see that feels ancient enough to signify a time before the foundation of the earth. To place a star as the symbol of something new signifies that it is also something very old, something long coming – moving toward the scene before any of the players thought to look. In this way the star signifies that what is happening here at the birth of Christ is not something slapped together last minute, no price tag hastily ripped off, no birthday wrapping paper ham-fistedly repurposed as Christmas paper, no ‘quick we’ll just regift this.’ No, what is happening at Christmas is what God destined to happen according to the good pleasure of God’s own will. Christmas happened because God wanted it to happen, God willed it to be, God delighted that it be so. This is the founding, undergirding ‘why’ of Christmas, the why of the sending of the Son. All that Christmas means, all the incarnation achieves, all that Christ is for us, is the result of God’s free and perfect action, God’s pure and true gift, God’s uncompromising, uncajoled will, God’s good pleasure. We, as Christians, as those adopted as children of God through Jesus Christ, are these adopted children because God freely delighted that it be so. The light of the star shows that the way has always been the way.