Destiny and Freedom

Canberra Baptist Church

Christmas Day 2005

Dedication of Andrew Dickie and John Paynter

Luke 2. 34

“… this child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel …”

Soon after his birth, according to Jewish custom, Jesus was presented in the Temple, much as Andrew and John, have been presented by their parents today. There was an old man called Simeon who lived in the Temple precincts, devout and holy and looking forward to the kingdom. Simeon blessed the child and his parents and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”.

It was a strange sort of prophecy, but entirely consistent with Mary’s own song before the birth:

“He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones

And lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things

And sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1.51-53)

Mary and Simeon had great expectations of what this child would achieve – even revolutionary expectations! Simeon went so far as to say he was destined to do this. And this was said of a babe in arms, a peasant child from Galilee – son of a young mother, artisan husband, a very ordinary rural family of the time.

I wonder if any of us here today are prepared to predict the destiny of Andrew or John? Is there someone who can foresee the shaking of the foundations of the House on the Hill? Or the future leadership of the High Court? Or the transformation of Australian society by means we have not yet even conceived but is even now carried nascent in the mind of one of these little ones?

Speak up. Don’t be bashful.

It’s not surprising that no one speaks. The destiny of a child is a great mystery. Sometimes there may be a family history – perhaps a family business or professional tradition that generations have followed. Then one might venture an opinion. But we all know that such predictions can run wide of the mark.

Of course Andrew and John are not Jesus. Surrounding his birth there were portents and prophecies, signs and wonders enough to signal that something special was here, that God was acting in this little child. But you have only to look at the little ones in our midst, Andrew or John or Saskia or any of the other little children in this community to know that this was a huge expectation to place on a little one, and a huge act of faith to believe it was possible, and would finally come to fruition.

We know Herod committed mass murder to try to stop it, but Jesus escaped. We know that in his growth and development, in his Baptism or his temptation or any number of points along life’s journey right up to that last lonely night in the garden on the Mount of Olives Jesus could have forsaken his calling. For Simeon to believe that this was a child’s destiny and that it was as good as done (“Lord now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation…”) was an enormous leap of faith. And that faith had to live between two poles of possibility, just as we all must. Those two poles are destiny, and freedom.

In the Christmas event a Son was given, with all the expectations: his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting father, Prince of Peace. But what was given was a child, with swaddling cloths and nappies and colic and all the worries about disease and accident and how the child might turn out. If the Choirs and the seers sang his destiny then his parents, and his neighbours knew the terrible risk of freedom, all the things that might go wrong and divert a child’s development.

The marvel of Christmas is that God should run this risk! And it wasn’t just the risk of a fragile baby – it was the enormous risk of getting involved with human beings as partners in such a grand enterprise. Frederick Buechner writes of Gabriel visiting Mary with the announcement of the birth:

She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it.

He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something of the mystery that was to come upon her. “You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,” he said.

As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.

At any one of a hundred moments the promise of Christmas might have been subverted, all the planning and promise come to nothing. Often when we hear the Christmas story, we hear the overtones of destiny, a destiny announced and fulfilled, and repeated every year, thousands upon thousands of times all over the world until the story becomes fixed, dependable – almost existing outside ourselves – graven in the shape of the universe.

But the story involved unimaginable freedom and risk. The birth might have been ordained by the Spirit but Mary had to accept it and say “Let it be to me according to your word.” It might have been his destiny to see many fall and many rise in Israel , but Jesus had to freely choose his course and be faithful to his calling.

Every Christmas we are faced with a little baby, a weak defenceless thing empty of everything but promise, future potential. We hear an announcement of the meaning of the birth: of peace and goodwill on earth, the falling and rising of many, the coming of the Prince of Peace. These things are not set in stone: it requires the faithful exercise of Jesus’ freedom to realize that destiny, and it requires the faithful exercise of our freedom to appropriate them and become part of the Christmas story, agents of the dream inaugurated in this event. It doesn’t happen automatically.

His birth and his life, and his death and Resurrection might be a story repeated in the life of the church every Sunday, every yearly cycle, but until we freely respond to these events and place our trust and faith in them, nothing has happened for us. Destiny without freedom, is empty, a sham, a trick, a self-delusion.

In the dedication of Andrew and John we have respected this dynamic of destiny and freedom. Their parents are people of faith, and we would hope that in the fullness of time they too come to faith, that this is their destiny. This church has committed itself to be the kind of place in which Andrew and John can discover faith as a personal experience and a life-giving commitment. We long for this to happen.

But no one is destined to believe without the exercise of freedom. They must reach their own conclusions and make their own decisions. Like Jesus, they will face many moments at which they will have the freedom and the opportunity to turn away from what we desire to be their destiny. Like God the Father, we run the enormous risks of allowing our love and dreams and purposes to be poured into the fragile vessel of a tiny child.

From such small and vulnerable beginnings, even a world can be saved. And it is destined to be saved. Human freedom can never overcome the intention of God. It might subvert it for a time or frustrate and delay it but God’s purpose is to save the world: To turn it upside down with all the associated fallings and risings, to shake it up and rework it until people must choose where they stand in the remaking of it all and how their freedom will be used, and what their ultimate destiny will be.

Easter and Christmas present us all with the challenge to believe. At Easter it is full blown and grand – all the completed teaching of the Christ, the drama of the last week and the power of that last confrontation on the Cross, the deep mystery and transforming sign of the Resurrection – here faith stands as a completed edifice, the great structure of human sin and divine grace enacted before us. Before it we can only be humbled, and blasted and wondering and penitent.

In Christmas faith is presented as weak and humble, a destiny announced and a promise made – but so much can go wrong and it may come to nought. It is fragile and welcoming and invites us to make a small beginning too, to invest our own freedom and faith in such a small beginning. And it asks us too what our own small beginnings are destined to be, what dreams we shall dream, and what price we are willing to pay to make those dreams come true.

Destiny and freedom – the structure of Christmas, and the structure of faith. As we have dedicated Andrew and John today we have acknowledged that this is the very structure of our lives. While we are grateful for the gift and promise of these two little ones, as we commit ourselves as parents, family and community to help shape their destiny, we acknowledge too their freedom and the mystery of God at work in us and in them. Many things are possible, but nothing is certain.

As we enter another Christmas may it not be the old, old story, something destined to be since the beginning of time, but something that we engages, in freedom and faith, so that we come become part of the story and promise of Christmas, and the destiny of Jesus is fulfilled in and through us as his Spirit transforms our world. Amen.