In her book, Learning to say Goodbye, Edna Lashon tells the story of visiting with a friend of hers whose husband had died. They went out to the graveyard where the husband had been buried and began to share together memories of their life and their relationship. After a meaningful time as they probed in memory and got in touch with all the joyful times of their life, there was silence. No one seemed to have anything else to say. All of a sudden, Liz, the little daughter of Edna Lashon’s friend, sprang from the group and suddenly burst toward her father’s grave and did a cartwheel over it.
Obviously, Edna Lashon was shocked, but the mother looked at her and smiled and said, “Liz loves to do cartwheels. She used to do them all the time for her Dad, and they would play so happily together. Liz has not done a cartwheel until now, since her father died.” Later on, reflecting upon what message this little girl was trying to send to her dad, Lashon thought that she was giving her dad the gift of taking up the last thread of her life and starting to live again. Then Lashon concluded, “there comes a time when all of us must do cartwheels again, and begin to celebrate the joy of being alive.”
That story came to me as I reflected on the Cross and Easter. Think about it. No one has ever made a bolder claim than Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believe in me will be never die.” (John 1125) That’s Easter! Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life we are not the victims either of circumstances or of death. Doesn’t it make you want to do cartwheels…at least in your mind?
I call on one witness. Huber Matos was a teacher and a journalist in Cuba. In 1959, when Castro took over, Christians and many of the people who had stood up courageously for freedom were either imprisoned or killed. Matos was among those imprisoned. In a letter to his wife and children, smuggled out from that Havana prison, Matos said, “I know that I’m going to die in prison. I’m sad that I will not see you all again, but I want you to know I have peace. They have swords, but we have Psalms.”
It’s Easter! It’s time for something like cartwheels. Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we are not the victims of circumstance. But more important than that, we’re not the victims of death.