All through winter a tray of small plants has sat outside my front door looking very sad and dead. When spring came they blossomed into the most beautiful yellow flowers and suddenly the front door looks welcoming and fresh. We often think that Easter is like spring time. What has seemed dead and hopeless springs back to beautiful vibrant life. We send Easter cards with spring flowers on them and we take hope from the new life bursting all around us.

But Easter is actually not like spring; it is much much more wonderful!

There are two reasons why Easter is not like Spring.

Firstly, the plants outside my door looked terrible but they were not really dead: their roots were alive and they were resting. It looks and feels miraculous that such growth should come back year after year, but it would be a real miracle if a completely dead plant could flower in spring. Easter is not like spring because Jesus did not just seem dead on the cross; he really was dead. The centurion pierced his side with a spear to check that he was truly dead. He was placed in a tomb for three days and the tomb was sealed and guarded by Roman soldiers. This was a real death. Things did not just seem awful and hopeless for the followers of Jesus who had dared to hope that Jesus was the Messiah: they really were awful. The two friends depressed friends walking away from the city towards Emmaus had good reason to be depressed. Once Jesus had been killed all their hope really had gone out of the window. When Jesus appeared to them on their journey he had really died and was really now alive.  He had not been sleeping or in a coma but had passed through real death to show that life in him is stronger than the power of death.

The second reason why Easter is not like Spring is that the plants are living in a cycle of death and rebirth, spring summer autumn winter repeating itself as the seasons change. We know of people around us who have died and been resuscitated by ambulance crews or on a hospital operating table. We hear Bible stories of people who have been brought back to life after having died (Jesus raised Lazarus and Jairus’ little daughter. Elijah raised the widow of Nairn’s son). These are wonderful events and they help us appreciate being alive; but they are not like the Easter event. When hospital crews revive us we know that at some point we will die again and then it will be final. When Lazarus was raised his family knew that he would one day die. When God raised Jesus from the dead he raised him to a new life that does not end in another death. The resurrected Jesus is not brought back to anything old, but forward into something completely new. When we read about Jesus appearing to many people after the resurrection he is clearly different - that is why they often do not recognise him even though they knew him really well. He can come into a locked room and can disappear from their sight. He is not bound by time or space. His new life is very different from the old life. Just like the plants, Lazarus will die again because he has been brought back into the cycle of living and dying. Unlike the plants Jesus will never die again because he has been raised to a completely new type of life – and this is what is on offer for each of us. Jesus was raised forwards into everlasting life just so that we can share it too.