Willy, are you basically saying that all life after death concepts are metaphorical, and that there is no life after death? Just the completion of God's cycle? If so, that's off base from what the ELCA believes. While you can have your own opinion about resurrection and life eternal, the OP asked what the ELCA believes.
Here's from the ELCA website:
ELCA Lutherans confess the New Testament proclamation of "the resurrection of the dead (The Nicene Creed), or "the resurrection of the body (The Apostles Creed). To understand this proclamation, we turn not only to Jesus’ promise of new life after death, but also to St. Paul who speaks of the resurrection as our being given a spiritual body, not after the image of the first man (Adam) but after the image of the man from heaven - Jesus, the Christ (John 11:25, 14:19). Paul tells the congregation at Corinth that "Resurrection will involve a transformed body, as different as the grown plant is from the seed - a body imperishable, not perishable; powerful, not weak, spiritual (pneumatkios), not physical (psychikos), in the image of heavenly origin, not from the dust of the earth" (1 Corinthians 15:35-44). For St. Paul, and for ELCA Lutherans, death in this body is real, but so is resurrection. It is a transformation to new life, (e.g., "...we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. ... For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (I Corinthians 15:51b-52).
Most certainly, in common parlance and in our knowledge that a corpse decays, soul has come to be identified as that which lives on after death, even as in the child’s prayer "... I pray the Lord my soul to take." Yet, in faith we know that this resurrected self is the totality of the person. The whole person is given a new form or manifestation by God, who again breathes into us the breath of life - this time of a life which will never end. When that happens we will be enjoying the life lived now by the risen Jesus and by all the departed whom God has also raised.