2 Easter Year A 4/12/2026
Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Last Sunday we celebrated Easter Sunday…
That glorious day when we commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In fact, this is why the traditional day for Christian worship is on Sundays…
Because Sunday is the day that Christ Jesus rose from the dead…
And ever since that Sunday morning when Christ rose from the dead there has never been a Sunday where Christians have not gathered together for worship.
That’s a streak of roughly over 103,650 consecutive Sundays.
That’s pretty good.
Today is the second Sunday in Easter…
A season often called Eastertide…
A celebrative time…
where we say Alleluia! in the dismissals…
A period of 50 days from Easter Sunday to the day of Pentecost…
During this season, many of the Gospel readings reflect the stories of the appearances of our resurrected Lord Jesus to his followers.
We also put aside the Old Testament readings for the book on the early church known as the Acts of the Apostles.
In this lectionary year (Year A), for the second readings, we get to hear excerpts from the book of 1 Peter.
Six Sundays of readings from the first epistle of Peter…
Leading up to Pentecost Sunday.
So, over these Sundays we will be focusing the sermons on the readings from St. Peter’s first letter.
Additionally, if you would like to go deeper into the epistle…
Looking at its historical and cultural context…
As well as some of the grammar and word usage…
Beginning on Wednesday, April 22, we will begin a chapter-by-chapter… verse-by-verse…
study on 1 Peter at our ABC Wednesday studies…
Our Adult Bible Conversation.
Do join us, not this Wednesday, but the next, if you are able to at 6:30 in the Hall.
Now… one of the things about the book of 1 Peter is that St. Peter is writing a letter to the churches in a difficult moment…
Persecutions are beginning to rise…
Suffering is increasing…
And St. Peter writes in this moment to encourage the church.
As one scholar put it:
Peter writes a letter of hope. [1]
After Peter greets the people with the opening lines…
He gives an exultation of praise to God saying:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Even though there is suffering…
Peter sees it fit to praise God and give him thanks.
It reminds me of the liturgy we have during our sacrament…
Where our Prayer Book proclaims, the celebrant saying:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
(BCP, 361)
And then following this exclamation of praise in Peter’s epistle…
The author writes:
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
This verse is the everyday morning reading in our Prayer Book for devotions for families and individuals…
Found on page 137.
It works as a summary of the Gospel message…
I would say it also is a summary of the season we are in…
This Easter Resurrection season…
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
Let’s look at this verse more carefully…
First, there is emphasis on the great mercy of God.
By his great mercy…
You see salvation is God’s work.
It is God and God alone who does the work of salvation through Jesus Christ.
By his grace through faith, we come to salvation in him.
It is not something we work to get.
It is not something we earn or achieve…
It is by the great mercy of God.
And the more we understand that our relationship with Christ is based on his love and mercy…
Not our shortcomings and failures…
As St. John wrote: We love because he first loved us… (1 John 4.19)
The more we understand this…
The more we stand in awe and wonder at the love and mercy of God.
He chose me…
He chose you…
Before the foundation of time…
To be transformed by his love and mercy…
To be made new…
To be made whole…
Not because of what I have done, or what you have achieved, or because of what we can do for him…
But because of his great mercy!
And by his great mercy he has given us a new birth…
We are born or adopted into the family of God…
In his mercy we are given new life…
We become children of God.
We are part of his household.
We are given the forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation.
This is why a butterfly is such a natural symbol for this new birth we receive by the mercy of God.
A caterpillar transforms into a butterfly through a 3–5-week process called metamorphosis…
The word metamorphosis originates from the Greek,
meaning “a transformation” or “change of form” …
It is used a few times in the New Testament…
Usually being translated as transformed…
We are to be transformed in Jesus Christ.
A new life…
A new birth.
And then St. Peter continues saying:
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope…
Because of his mercy and this new life…
He gives us a hope…
But not just any hope…
Not just a fleeting hope…
Such as a wish…
But a real hope…
As St. Peter writes it:
…a living hope…
This is the hope that changes the way we live…
The way we think…
The way we behave…
It’s not a fleeting hope…
You know every year around this time, I get hopeful…
of the New York Mets winning the World Series…
and yet 2026 marks the 40th year since the last time the Mets won the World Series…
back when I was 11 years old.
What St. Peter is writing about is not this kind of hope.
Nor is it the hope that people place in money or status.
Nor the hope that politicians try to muster up for votes…
It was 20 years ago in 2006 that former President Barak Obama wrote the book: The Audacity of Hope.
Published just months before he announced his run for the presidency…
Almost all of the politicians run on a platform of hope…
Vote for me for change.
But this is not the hope we have in Christ Jesus.
Ours is a living hope…
Transforming hope…
A hope that lives… because Jesus is alive today.
Which is why all of this is made possible by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Peter said:
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
And Peter opens his letter with these words of hope knowing that the church that he was writing to faced persecution…
Faced suffering…
Because they stood in faith with the teachings of Christ…
Because they would not denounce the Lordship of Jesus…
Because they would not bow to the cultural or political pressures of the day…
Because they stood firm when faced with intimidation.
1 Peter is one of the later books of the New Testament…
Another is the book of Revelation, which was written when the persecution of Christians became more intense…
St. John in that book wrote (Revelation 12.11):
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
They died for their beliefs…
They died for standing firm in the convictions and faith in Jesus Christ.
This is what hope does.
A living hope…
Found in the living God…
The resurrected Jesus Christ.
The Museum of the Desert in the Cevennes mountains of southern France commemorates the sufferings of the Huguenot martyrs.
When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685,
Protestant public worship was made a crime.
Believers caught at secret services in the fields were sent to the galleys. Chained to a rowing bench, they slaved at oars until they died.
A replica of one of the great galley oars hangs in the museum today. Underneath the oar is a model of a galley.
Beside it are inscribed the words of a Reformed Christian galley slave: ‘My chains are the chains of Christ’s love.’ [2]
The promise for us today is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13.8)
He is always with us…
He is our living hope.
So, as we move through this week and through Eastertide…
May we confess with St. Peter:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
Amen.
[1] Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter (Downers Grove: IVP, 1988, 2021), 27.
[2] From Clowney, 36.
