Easter Wasn’t Just a Day
Each month, we send out a note from Erik reflecting on life in the church, current happenings, and more.
April 10, 2026
Dear City Church,
It was such a joy to celebrate Easter Sunday with you all. All of the extras—bagpipes, the organ, a trumpet, a string section, five baptisms, cookies on the terrace, photos by the flowering cross—helped to mark the miracle of the resurrection and to point us to what the resurrection means. But already Easter feels far away, doesn’t it?
One of the challenges for every church community is embracing Easter as more than just a single day. We’re in the season of Easter, which continues for 50 days, until Ascension Day. The Reformed tradition, of which City Church is a part, emphasizes that every Sunday celebrates the resurrection. But despite the season of Easter and despite every Sunday being a resurrection day, it can be hard to know how to translate the good news and the astonishing power of Easter into the rest of our lives.
Maybe we can learn from Peter. Peter, as you may know, was Jesus’s right-hand man, a leader of the disciples. Easter was a big deal for Peter. It changed everything about his life. Remember how, after Jesus’s arrest, Peter denied even knowing him. Over the long weekend of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial, Peter must have lived with deep guilt and shame for his failures to acknowledge his friend. Then, early Sunday morning, when some of the women disciples came with news that Jesus’s tomb was empty, Peter hopped up and ran to the tomb. The gospels record his great astonishment when he ducked into the tomb and discovered folded grave cloths but no body there.
Over the next two weeks, Peter had personal interactions with the bodily-resurrected Jesus. For him, Easter wasn’t just a day but a new reality, the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom—a kingdom where death was defeated, where sin’s sting was undone, where new life was possible. That’s how Peter’s life and the lives of other disciples can show us how to bring Easter into all of our lives.
It wasn’t long until Peter was preaching sermons in Jerusalem, explaining what the resurrection of Jesus meant and encouraging his listeners to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. It wasn’t long until Peter was planting churches and encouraging new believers to walk in the way of Christ.
And 30 years later, after that first Easter Sunday, Peter sits down in Rome to write a letter of encouragement to some of those new believers. He writes to a particular group of Christians whom he calls “elect exiles” and who lived in Asia Minor, along the shore of the Black Sea, in present-day Turkey. Peter starts his letter by saying that God’s mercy has “caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” The first thing that flows from his pen is a remembrance of Easter—Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
Peter’s encouragement to these young Christians mirrors his own experience. He wants them to remember how they were born again, just as he was born again—after his denials, after his failures—through Jesus’s resurrection. Throughout the rest of his letter, Peter offers a primer on Christian discipleship—what it means to believe the gospel and to walk in obedience to it. Peter is sanguine about the hardships of life this side of heaven. He’s quick to acknowledge the trials and suffering that Christians face. But his exhortation never wavers. He urges these Christians—and, in turn, he urges us—to stand firm in the true grace of God.
It’s at the very end of his letter that Peter explicitly reveals his purpose in writing. He says, “I have written briefly to you, exhorting and delaying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.”
Stand firm in true grace—a simple message from a complicated man. This from the disciple Peter, who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asked him to stay awake and pray. This from the disciple Peter who denied Jesus three times in the midst of his darkest hours. This from the disciple Peter who, even after the resurrection, returned to his fishing boats, feeling aimless and confused with his friend and teacher gone. Peter still understood that God’s grace for him was new and that it was the source of his strength.
The gospel is always first a message of good news from God. It’s something God has done for us through his Son, Jesus. Only after it has been received as the good news of Jesus dying as the substitute for our sin, the good news of an empty tomb on Easter morning, the good news of the Spirit of resurrection dwelling in us, only then is it good news in which we stand firm. We endure, we obey, we submit, we live how life works best, we suffer, even, trusting that the God who has called us in Christ holds us fast until the end.
Beginning this Sunday at City Church, we will start a new sermon series on 1 Peter, the letter the apostle wrote to Christians in Asia Minor. Through this series, we will learn what it means to be Easter people—living out the hope of the resurrection in our daily lives, enduring suffering and dislocation, all while holding firmly to the hope of the new kingdom into which we have been born.
I’m looking forward to learning with you over the next several months, City Church, with Peter as our tour guide, and Jesus as our hope.
Stay Well & Do Good,
Erik