Fr. J. D. Ousley

The narrator of Susan Howatch's novel, The High Flyer, believes that she has mapped out for herself a perfect life plan.

By the time she reached the age of 35, she had worked her way up to a partnership in a top law firm in the City of London.

Now, as the novel begins, the narrator has just gotten married, and she is ready to begin the next stage in her life's plan: having children.

Unfortunately, her new husband is not what he appears to be: his own success in the legal profession hides a nasty involvement with the occult.

So, the narrator is forced to make a number of changes in her high-flying life plan. The script she wrote for herself when she was teenager turns out not to be the one she follows.

On the first Easter Day, the disciples of Jesus also found their life plans permanently altered. In their case, though, they had already been surprised twice before-first when they first met Jesus and felt his call for them to leave their various occupations and join Christ's new religious movement. And second they had received the shock of Christ's death.

No wonder that when the sun comes up on Easter day, Christ's followers seem to be wandering around in a daze. Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb of Jesus and finds that the stone door of the grave has been removed.

But, then, instead of going in to see if the body of Jesus is still there in the tomb, she leaves the burial place and goes to get Peter.

Next, Peter and another disciple (possibly John, the writer of the Gospel) rush to the tomb. The disciple beats Peter there but like Mary Magdalene, he hesitates to enter the tomb. It's up to Peter finally to go in and see that the body of Jesus is no longer there.

The hesitations and plot twists continue: Jesus later appears to Mary in his Risen form, but she thinks he's the gardener! However, Mary then recognizes Jesus and confirms to the other disciples that she has "seen the Lord."

So, even though the life plans of Christ's followers change radically, in the end, they work out fine. But we who remember today the many surprises of that first Easter morning we are still living out our own life plans. And we may, right now, be wondering how the scripts of our lives will turn out.

In fact, there's only one thing we can predict about our life plans: that-like all of human existence-the course of our lives will be unpredictable!

The High Flyer could have expected that she might not always be flying high; even the best plans fail.

We, too, can be pretty sure that we'll have some surprises in life. Among our surprises may be some welcome events -- and some unwelcome ones, too.

But the surprise that the disciples had on Easter morning goes way beyond these other surprises. The New Life of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, helps us to withstand any unwelcome events in our own lives -- and this new life also gives us unexpected blessings.

In about three weeks we at Incarnation will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of our parish. As we get ready for this event, we have naturally been thinking about noted people who were associated with this place, like Admiral Farragut and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt.

Those of you who are visiting our church for the first time today will have noticed the striking statue on the wall of our church on your right. Like the statue, which is seven feet tall, the man it portrays, Phillips Brooks, was larger than life!

In addition to being Rector of a church in the center of Boston and then Bishop of Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century, Brooks was the most famous preacher in America. His views were sought on every vital issue of the day.

Yet at the same time ordinary people felt that he cared about them. One night, a workman facing a critical and dangerous operation went with his wife to Brooks' house in Boston and rang the doorbell.

The couple weren't members of Brooks' church; in fact, they had never met him! Yet Brooks put aside his work and spent the evening hearing of the man's worries and comforting him. Phillips Brooks even visited the workman in the hospital the next day to help him prepare to face the surgery.

Now, what was the secret that made Brooks so sensitive to the needs of others? Well, he himself had had his own life-plans upset.

After a brilliant career at Harvard, he was hired by the Boston Latin School, but he quickly found he was an absolute failure as a school teacher. Brooks was then engaged briefly but the relationship mysteriously failed, and he never married. (That may be one reason he was so close to his brother, who was Rector of Incarnation.) Later in his life, his church in Boston burned down and he had to build a new one.

So Phillips Brooks had his share of shocks and disappointments. Yet somehow these experiences helped him to present in his sermons and ministry an irresistibly attractive picture of the way of Christ.

Shortly before he died, Phillips Brooks put it these words. He told one of his clergy "my last years have had a peace and fullness which there did not used to be ... I am sure that [this peace comes from] a deeper knowledge and truer love of Christ ... "

Over the years, Brooks had come to see, he said, that, "All experience comes to be more and more [the] pressure of [Christ's] life on ours. [Such pressure] cannot come by one flash of light, or one great convulsive event. It comes without haste and without rest in this perpetual living of our life with Him.

Brooks concluded, "I cannot tell you how personal this [growing presence is] to me. [Christ] is here. He knows me and I know Him. It is no figure of speech. It is the [most real] thing in the world. And every day makes it [more real] ... Less and less, I think, grows the consciousness of seeking God. Greater and greater grows the certainty that He is seeking us and giving Himself to us ... That is Love -- not that we loved Him, but that He loved us."

The life-plans we set for ourselves may not be so important, then, as the progressive revelation that God will care for us whatever happens. When we feel "the pressure of Christ's life" upon our lives, then we're able to withstand that sudden onslaught of bad news that seems to undermine all the goals we have set for ourselves.

Sometimes, too, we may be happily surprised by new challenges that make us happier than those we set for ourselves.

As Phillips Brooks discovered, "Less and less, grows the consciousness of seeking God. Greater and greater grows the certainty that He is seeking us and giving Himself to us."

And now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.