The Bungee Cord
4-24-17

Hello,

     If you would have walked into church on Easter morning, would have you been surprised to see a casket in the front of the church.  Well, that is what was sitting in the front of First Lutheran when folks arrived, and many found themselves at various stages of surprise.

    The casket was closed, just like the early Easter tomb, and as Mary and Mary who went to that stone closed casket, many of those who took their seats in our church wondered what was to happen.

     The prelude ended, and the silence.

     Not that I am an angel, but I am decked in robes of white on Sunday mornings.  I walked over to the casket and with much less power than that which unrolled the stone away from the Easter tomb, I opened it….to find it empty!  “Christ is risen!”, I shouted.

     “He is risen indeed!”, came the shout from the congregation.

     The organ sprang into action, and the choir processed into the church singing along with the congregation the Good News of Easter joy.  In their hands were large letter balloons, 3 feet in height, which as they placed in the casket as they passed it on their way to the choir loft in the front of the front of the church.  Each letter a little higher than the one it followed, so that when all placed in the casket “ALLELUIA” rose out of what had previously been silent and empty.

     Caskets …. all kinds of caskets …. caskets of guilt, caskets of shame, caskets of failure, caskets of fear, caskets of death… all kinds of caskets seem to have the last word in our lives.  They close with an unshattered silence.

     But not in the church!  In the church there rumbles a sound from the Easter tomb of the past and from the future from the tombs of those whom God will break open with the same divine power….ALLELUIA!  God has the last word in the church!  A word that opens caskets with new life, life that no guilt…no shame…no failure…no fear…not even death can ever hold back.  Life that doesn’t crawl out of the grave….but soars with divine power.  ALLELUIA!

     That first Easter morning was full of surprises.  Maybe you who have read this Bungee Cord, as the people of First Lutheran, got a taste of that Easter surprise…a surprise that comes with the power to give you new life!

Have a great week!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger