I love Easter: springtime, flowers, Easter egg hunts, Easter eggs! When I was little, one of my grandmothers would make my sister and me a new dress each year. They were always beautiful and my mother would buy us new shoes, socks and little straw hats, with ribbons or a bunch of flowers on them. My brother got new shoes and clothes too!

If you could have any superpower you wanted, what would you choose? To be able to fly, like Superman? Or spin webs and swing from building to building, like Spiderman? Maybe X-ray vision? Super strength? Super speed? Super intelligence? The ability to transport yourself back in time? Or to other locations? Or to be able to shapeshift? Or read people’s minds, to know what they are thinking? Be able to breathe under water? So many different superpowers..!

Celebrating Easter is celebrating one of the most amazing events in history – but it’s not from a Marvel film, but something Christians believe to be true, with a meaning and purpose that spans the centuries. It was true for Jesus then: it can be true for us now.

So what super power did God use to raise Jesus from the dead?

Let me give you a few hints:

This super power can heal, anything and everything from broken hearts, confused minds, can take away fear, despair, it can restore hope, can make people want to keep living, instead of giving up on themselves or life, can transform people, and whole groups of people, can give people other super powers, like, true patience, deep wisdom and understanding, the ability to forgive and move on, and to let people see and feel about other people the way God sees them and feels about them.

Can you guess what this superpower is?

LOVE is the ultimate superpower – so powerful that it can even bring people back from the dead. In fact, love is stronger than death, it goes on after death. Love is indestructible.

It was God’s love that exploded Jesus back to life – to a new and different kind of life: he could walk through walls and vanish in a split second and teleport himself to different locations. The message of Easter is that God’s Holy Spirit is with us now and can give us this superpower. Love is God’s nature, God’s supreme power and the energy of life, the force field in which we live. That’s what it means to live in Christ. This is the gift and ongoing offering of the resurrection: it was real for Jesus and it can be real for us as we open ourselves to the love of God and place our trust in the Risen Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to bring us to new life. 

Rev’d Christina Rees