04/07/2026
Jesus Keeps On Ruining Funerals!
I didn’t have anything this last week that didn’t end up in the sermon. No catchy illustrations that didn’t make the cut. No theological insights that slowed down the main point. No one can ruin a funeral like Jesus. Told as I saw it and that was it. So I did some quick research and I thought I’d share just a reminder of what Easter is all about.
In 2023, Bella Montoya in Ecuador had already been declared dead, placed in a coffin, and taken to her wake. During the service, her family heard knocking. They opened the coffin—and she was alive, gasping for air. She was rushed back to the hospital.
In 2014, Walter Williams, a man from Mississippi, was pronounced dead by a coroner and placed in a body bag at a funeral home. Later, workers noticed the bag moving. He was still alive.
Williams had a pacemaker, and some speculated it may have restarted his heart.
These stories (and others like them) are accidents or mistakes.
- Doctors were wrong
- Circumstances were unclear
- Death was misdiagnosed
But Easter is different. Jesus doesn’t “wake up early.”He doesn’t “almost die.” He doesn’t “slip through the cracks.” He goes all the way into death—and then walks back out on purpose.
So you might say: “Every now and then, a funeral gets interrupted because someone wasn’t really dead. But on Easter…the funeral is interrupted because death itself has been defeated.”
That’s the good news. That’s the culmination of a longer sermon series on the various ways we have understood how we were reconciled with God through Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus wasn’t resuscitated—he was resurrected and because he was we can and will be as well.
Thanks be to God!
Archived Posts
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Not Just for Parents
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If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.
What just missed the cut for Sunday’s Sermon
Naaman’s servants may actually become one of the hidden gems of the sermon. They say, essentially: “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it.”
One of the Longest Benedictions I Ran Out of Time to Share
Maybe you know the story of how Joseph and Mary accidentally left Jesus at the gas station on their way home from Jerusalem. Well, not the gas station bathroom in Jesus’ case. Joe and Mary are far down the road before they realize Jesus isn’t with them...