True story.

It was Easter Sunday and the church was full.

This was back in the old days when folks used to go out and buy new clothes for Easter – dresses and hats for the women and girls, suits and ties for the men and boys. The sanctuary was gloriously filled to overflowing with beautiful families, colorful clothing, and fully-blossomed Easter lilies.

It was Easter Sunday. The choir sang magnificently. The hymns expressed pure joy. When Rev. Seale mounted the pulpit, everyone was ready for a powerful resurrection message delivered with his deep and booming voice.

I’m not entirely sure how the problem started in that fourth pew from the front on the pulpit side. Probably it was just a microscopic crack in one of the wooden dovetails joining the pew to the end support. And I suppose that with all the up and down movements of Easter worship along with the fact that a pew that normally held five or six people now held fifteen or twenty, great stress was placed on that microscopic crack so that it began to lengthen – and spread – like a spider’s web.

The pews, I think, were made of oak, and probably from trees that were quite ancient. And now – in the space of just a few milliseconds – solid wood that took nature hundreds of years to form began splintering. The weight on the joint caused subatomic particles to spin out of their orbits, and the molecular structure of the wood began to disintegrate. Once the process was underway, there was no holding it back until it reached the very brink of collapse…

…but somehow…oh, so very precariously… that pew tentatively dangled there…miraculously held together by just a thread…

…until Harold B. leaned over to whisper something to his wife.

The sudden shifting of Mr. B’s weight set in motion a series of fractures in the wood, one rapidly following the other. Accelerating faster and faster, the splintering was silent until it approached the critical speed of 767.269 miles per hour. And then, as the wood’s subatomic particles breached the sound barrier, a deafening CRACK! rang like a shot through the church!

The end support let go, dropping one end of the pew to the floor along with all its occupants. And as the load on the pew suddenly shifted with its sinking human cargo, a domino-type effect occurred. Other wooden supports and various kinds of hardware snapped in rapid succession all the way over to the other side support of the pew which also  CRACKED!

And all the people in that pew – in their Easter finery and with a great CRASH! – plunged ingloriously to the floor.

Rev. Seale looked up from his Easter sermon manuscript. Choir members awakened from their sleep. The head usher, checking the head count done by a newer usher wondered why he came up with twenty fewer people.

And everyone gazed at the collapsed pew, and the people sitting on the floor, to see what they would do.

And what they did was quite remarkable.

What they did – was nothing.

They just sat there – afraid to do anything!

Several long moments passed and everyone’s eyes shifted from the people in the collapsed pew to the preacher in the pulpit and back again…several times. Finally, Rev. Seale’s lips cracked a little smile – and then a broad grin.

He laughed.

Everyone laughed.

Even the people sitting on the floor!

Then Rev. Seale spoke.

“Well, don’t just sit there! Get up!”

There’s an Easter parable in there if you think about it!