“The Easter Makeover”
April 19, 2026
1 Peter 1:3-9
Woodland Christian Church
David A. Shirey
When she was in third grade, our daughter Betsy had a weekly homework assignment that came with the instructions: Write a story using this week's spelling words. Whereupon she had to make up a story using a list of words that didn't have much to do with each other. Not easy. Peter seems to have tackled a similar assignment. Peter, write one sentence using the vocabulary of faith, words like blessed, mercy, hope, resurrection, inheritance, heaven, faith, salvation, rejoice, suffer, trials, praise, glory, honor, love, believe, joy, soul. The result of Peter's work is our Scripture this morning. Though he didn't title it, it could be titled "What the Easter season means to me." 1 Peter 1:3-9 in the original Greek is one sentence. Here it is, including all the words:
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 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
I give Peter an A+. In his masterpiece of a sentence, he focuses on one of the great gifts of Easter, namely, “a living hope.”
It’s not a piddly little five and dime hope. It’s “a living hope,” one that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.”
It’s not a cute little hope you can fold up and carry in your wallet, purse or back pocket. It shoots off sparks. It’s flammable! It’ll burn a hole in purses, wallets, and pockets. But it will warm your heart with what Peter calls an “indescribable and glorious joy.”
It’s not a fair-weather hope that evaporates when the going gets tough. Peter promises, “Even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials,” the “living hope” we received in our Easter baskets will persevere. As the great gospel song exults,
We have come this far by faith,
Leaning on the Lord,
Trusting in His holy Word,
He's never failed us yet.
Oh, oh, oh, can't turn around,
We've come this far by faith.
And we have “a living hope” to lead us onward!
Pardon me if I’m getting carried away, but it sure seems Peter has gotten carried away. The last time we saw him before Easter he was cowering in a corner in a courtyard trying to find a dark hole to crawl into. A woman asked him, “Hey, you were with Jesus.” Another said, “That man right there was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Then yet another, “You’re from Galilee just like that Jesus, I can tell by your accent.” To which Peter said, “No, no, no.” Once, twice, three times and he was out of there. But now he’s standing up and speaking out in a voice we can hear twenty centuries later. What’s gotten into you, Peter? And he says without hesitation or equivocation, “I’ve been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Here’s a question: What's life like without the "living hope" Easter provides? Not pretty. Not good. Do you remember the lives of Jesus' followers before the resurrection? As they walked to the tomb that morning to anoint the corpse with burial ointments the women sighed, asked, “Who will roll away the stone?” Call that hands-in-pocket helplessness. It's – I can't handle this. There's nothing I can do. Woe is me. In one man’s poignant paraphrase of that predicament: "When the possibilities of life seem sealed by obstacles that are too large or too complex to be easily overcome, who will help?"[1] Speaking of obstacles too large or too complex to be easily overcome – Woodland Christian Church 5 years ago resembles that remark. Deferred maintenance to a century old building amounting to a million dollars. The ceiling dropping plaster doo doo from on high to here below. Chicken Little was right: The sky is falling! Who will help? Hands-in-the-pocket helplessness. “Who will roll away the stone?”
You may also recall, thanks to Dave Carr’s sermon last Sunday, the despairing words of the two people shuffling along the Emmaus Road. Recounting the events of Good Friday, they sighed, "We had hoped he was the one." Hear that? Had hoped. Past tense. Had hoped at one point, but no longer. Call that head-in-hands hopelessness. It’s all over.
We’re done. The End. "We had hoped he was the one."
When you add together hands-in-pocket helplessness and head-in-hands hopelessness what you end up with is the opposite of a living hope: a living hell. Dante, in his inspired classic, The Divine Comedy, has a sign posted above the entry to Hell that reads: Abandon hope all who enter here. No help. No hope. No way. Such is life lived without "a living hope."
Ah, but this is Eastertide and we’re living in the wake of the resurrection. When the women sighed helplessly, "An angel came and rolled back the stone." Call that God’s hands-on-helpfulness. When Woodland, powdered with fallen plaster, relegated to worship in the basement catacombs, wondered What will we do? – "An angel came and rolled back the stone." Here’s Easter for you: When God’s people or Christ’s Church is mired in hands-in-pocket helplessness, God intervenes with hands-on helpfulness.
And this: in contrast to head-in-hands hopelessness – “We had hoped he was the one” – these words: "Do not be afraid...for he has risen…and goes before you!" Call that head-held-high hopefulness! Though crucified, he is risen! Writes Peter, “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials” Though all manner of hurtful things will have their say in this world—tragedies, diagnoses, terminations, break-ups, injustices – they will not have the final say. God will. God will have the last word:
God will have the last word and that word will be new life.
God will have the last word and that word will be inexpressible joy.
God will have the last word and that word will be justice for all.
God will have the last word and that word will be Woodland returned from exile to a restored – shall I say resurrected sanctuary – a renewed mission and revived spirits.
God will have the last word, so we have “a living hope!”
As Cornell West put it, "The significance of the resurrection claim is that, despite how hopeless present situations appear, we have a God who sits high and looks low." Amen to that! God sits high, looks low, reaches out, and raises up. So it is that Paul wrote, "Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Cor 15:58, RSV) Don't ever accept a bad word as the final word because God will have the last word!
Listen: if God has indeed raised Jesus from the dead, that changes everything. You've heard of Spring cleaning? Well, introducing the Easter makeover. Peter says, we've been “born anew to a living hope.” Something brand new is taking place in these days post-Easter. Call it the Easter makeover. Makeovers, don’t you know, are a big deal and big business these days. I made a reservation two weeks ago for a hotel Jennie and I are going to be staying at in a few weeks on a trip to visit friends in northern Minnesota. I had no sooner made my reservation than I received an email from the hotel’s spa inviting me to sign up for a makeover. They sent me a whole menu of makeover options including, get this – hot stone massages, deep tissue massages, (ahem) couple massages, revitalizing scalp treatments, something called organic fruit sugar scrubs (?), oxygen infusion facial therapy, a gentleman’s facial (There’s no hope for this mug of mine). They even offer a chocolate truffle body wrap (Say what?). And they showed before and after pictures of how the person in this picture got a makeover and became the person in this picture.
But you and I know the changes in that kind of makeover are only skin deep! The Easter makeover, however – what God offers you and me as a result of the resurrection – isn’t a matter of changing hairstyle, waistline, or makeup, but of soul and spirit transformed: a new you by the power of God! William Sloan Coffin describes the Easter makeover this way: “Christ is risen to convert us, not from life to something more than life, but from something less than life to the possibility of full life itself: to put love in our hearts, decent thoughts in our heads, and a little iron in our spines.” The Easter makeover! Barbara Brown Taylor points out how all the disciples got one. It was the rage that first Easter. She wrote, "Every time Jesus came to his friends they became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him.” “Not only Peter, but all the apostles after Jesus' death were 10 times the people they were before Easter” (Wm. Sloan Coffin). There's the end result of the Easter makeover – all of us 10 times the people we are today! Woodland’s ministry and mission 10 times what it was when the sky was fallin’! In St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “all of us…are being transformed…from one degree of glory to another” (1 Corinthians 3:18).
And not just us and our congregation, but the whole world is being restored to God's intentions through the Easter makeover. The Scriptures culminate in John’s vision of the Easter makeover of heaven and earth. Before and after. I quote:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
Lord, give us the Easter makeover!
We don’t want an organic fruit sugar scrub. We want the Holy Spirit to melt us, mold us, fill us, use us.
We don’t want to be wrapped in a chocolate truffle. We want to be grounded in the truth.
Save the massage and give us a message that will uphold and uplift, encourage and empower.
We’re cancelling our reservation in the spa and renewing our reservation in the sanctuary.
Says St. Peter to Woodland: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given you a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Let all God’s people of resurrected Woodland say, Amen.
[1] Keith Russell, former Editor-in-Chief, The Living Pulpit
