May 11, 2025 – The Fourth Sunday of Easter [C]

Fr. Michael Brungardt
Acts 13:14,43-52  +  Revelation 7:9,14-17  +  John 10:27-30

A basic human experience is having days that don’t go as planned. Maybe it’s a small hiccup—a computer crash, a flat tire. But you easily recover from these. Maybe it’s a cascade of disasters: friends cancel, dinner’s awful, the movie’s worse, and then you’re called home early. And we shrug and say, “That’s life!” Fair enough.

But what happens when the stakes are higher, when it’s not just a day but the trajectory of your life? You don’t get into your dream school. Your business fails. You’re diagnosed with cancer. You lose someone you love. What do we do when life’s plans unravel?

I had a plan: become a pediatric oncologist, get married, have a big family. Solid, right? But God had another idea: “How about priest, no wife, no kids?” My first response? “No way!” I had my plan, and no one could force me to change it. Yet it was an invitation—a choice to surrender my life to God’s hands, to embrace a new, scary, unknown path or to stick to my own script. And naturally, fear, anxiety, even a sense of loss crept in. My dreams seemed shattered, my life ruined. But that’s just life, right?

The New Testament tells a different story. It describes a new experience, one rooted in an empty tomb, a risen Christ, a new kingdom breaking into the world. Everything is turned upside-down.

In today’s first reading, Paul and Barnabas preach about Jesus in a synagogue. They’re met with rejection, “violent abuse,” and expulsion. Disaster, right? Yet the reading ends, “They were filled with joy.” Joy? After failure?

In our reading from the book of Revelation, we hear of a “great multitude” in white robes—martyrs who faced unimaginable distress: imprisonment, torture, death. John says they “survived the time of great distress.” Survived? They died! But in this vision, they stand before God’s throne, their suffering transformed.

The New Testament continues Easter’s promise: a newness is at work, and not just a future hope but a present reality. So why don’t we always feel it? The catch is that this newness requires openness to the unexpected, to God’s unforeseen ways of working. God promises fulfillment, joy, peace, eternal life—here and now—but not according to our plans. Will we surrender to let Him act?

I once knew a couple struggling for years to conceive. Their plan was a family, but it seemed impossible. Finally, they welcomed a beautiful baby girl. Three weeks later, they buried her. Yet their serenity was striking—not stoicism, but a faith beyond this world. The mother wrote, “I have a gladness not of myself that enables me to entrust myself to Another’s design. The difficulty remains, but I can look at it serenely. I can’t erase the desire for a child, but I can let go of demanding it my way. I’m waiting expectantly for an Other to fulfill me.” In the wreck of her plans, she found peace by surrendering to Christ.

Contrast this with the opposite: no surrender, fighting to seize control. Amid debates like Roe v. Wade, we hear a lie—that we can force our plans, even through violence. Consider a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy: a high schooler, a victim of abuse, someone unable to support a child. Her life’s plan is threatened, and in that fear, the world offers a false promise: “You can end this.” Abortion claims to restore “normal,” to reclaim her plans. But it doesn’t deliver. It leaves deeper wounds. The world calls it freedom to choose, but isn’t it greater to love that child, to surrender to a harder but truer path?

No matter the circumstance—big or small—Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives” (John 14:27). The world’s peace is a lie; Christ’s peace overcomes the world (John 16:33).

Revelation shows those who faced distress: “The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore…For the Lamb will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe away every tear” (Revelation 7:14-17). Does that sound like abandonment? In the Gospel, Jesus says of those who surrender to Him, “No one can take them out of my hand” (John 10:27-30).

God’s promise isn’t our version of fulfillment, but it is fulfillment. Will we cling to our plans, rejecting the newness? Or will we embrace the scary, unknown path of surrender?