Would I be showing my age if I said it reminded me of a song heard much as a child:‘ Like a rubber-ball you come bouncing back( to me)’?
Now all this that got me thinking about bouncing back in more detail and about comebacks and how that might relate to the whole idea of Easter – when Jesus came back from the dead. As humans, made in the image of God, we have an amazing capacity to comeback from the worst possible circumstances – take the British soldier who lost both of his legs in Iraq and then completed the London marathon in 2009.
The story of Dr Glenn Cunningham is another amazing comeback story: horribly( almost fatally) injured in a fire as a child.
Through sheer determination he taught himself to walk again and then run and then in 1934 he run the fastest ever mile in Madison Square Garden. Talking of that great arena reminds me of my child-hood hero Muhammad Ali who came back from defeat to take the world heavyweight boxing crown three times … but whose greatest triumph in my eyes was the dignified way in which he fought the Parkinson’ s disease that blighted his later life, lighting the Olympic flame at the Atlanta Olympics.
And it’ s not just individuals that can bounce back – it’ s something that can happen to whole nations – take Germany and Japan for instance. After the second world war these two countries were on their knees. Yet in the post-war period they picked themselves up and moved from being bankrupt, both morally and in reality, to being the 4 th and 5 th largest economies in the world.
In school on a daily basis we also witness comebacks all the time.
Teachers bounce back when a lesson hasn’ t gone to plan. They go back to the drawing board and give it another shot. And our pupils are really comfortable with the idea of‘ it’ s ok to make mistakes’; generally speaking they will have a go at things in lessons without fear of failure. We are proud of our culture where it’ s safe to make mistakes. Let’ s hold on to that as we move
The serious business of the Year 9 Pancake Race
into the summer term. In order to blossom as learners we will make mistakes along the way, we need to learn from those mistakes and not give up so that every day we can do a little bit more than we could the previous day. That’ s how we get to the top.
Comebacks: like us they come in different shapes and sizes – but what they show is the resilience of the human spirit – that refusal to be beaten. Which is the message I would like us to take from the Easter story this Year.
The Easter story is of Christ beaten( literally) and humiliated before his‘ death’ on the cross. On the day of his death, at noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’ clock. At that time Jesus called out:‘ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Then he uttered another loud cry and breathed his last.
The burial of Jesus happened on Friday. Joseph bought a long sheet of linen cloth, taking Jesus’ s body down from the cross, he wrapped it in the cloth and laid it in a tomb that had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone in front of the tomb … However, the next evening when Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary, the mother of Christ, went out to anoint the body of Jesus with special burial spices they found that the stone – a very large one – had been rolled away. So they entered the tomb, and there, on the right, sat a young man clothed in a white robe. The angel said:‘ Do not be