Dunbar United Church of Christ - June 6, 2010

I. There’s a theme in all the readings this Sunday: God helps the weak, the poor, and the ignorant. I didn’t include one of the lectionary readings because it was long, but it’s like the Gospel reading. A widow’s son dies of starvation and the prophet Elijah brings him back to life.

Both stories were about widows who lost their only child, a son. Neither widow was Jewish. In the Elijah story, the widow was so poor she had only enough food for one more meal, which she planned to eat with her son, and then die. Elijah asked her to share the food with him. He told her not to worry -- God would provide.

II. These are both resurrection stories, life returning from death. And the apostle Paul showed that we can also be brought back from ignorance, which is spiritual death -- a life of not knowing or doing God’s will.

By the world’s standards, Paul was smart and successful. He knew the Bible -- but he didn’t know God. He could quote the Ten Commandments while he killed Christians! How’s that for irony? Remember that Judge in the news a few years ago that wanted to put the 10 Commandments in front of his courthouse and there was a fight about it? To me the most interesting thing was that the judge thought it would make a difference. What did he think? That with the commandments in the open like that people would follow them? The apostle Paul proved to us that knowing the scriptures doesn’t mean we understand or follow them. Knowledge isn’t love.

III. Love is the difference between being dead and living. The dead don’t love, the living do. But to know God’s will -- to love -- requires resurrection -- an act of God. The deadness in us -- when we can’t laugh, can’t feel another’s pain, can’t help someone who’s down -- must be healed. We need grace to see with God’s eyes, understand with God’s mind and act with God’s heart. We must be resurrected so death loses its power over us and all that matters is doing God’s will, loving as Jeus loved.

IV. Two years before Duke Ellington died, Yale University held a gathering of black musicians to raise money for a department of African-American music. While Dizzy Gillespie performed, someone who didn’t like all these black people on campus called in a bomb threat. The police began clearing the building but one of the musicians, Charles Mingus, woudn’t go. He said: “Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain’t strong enough to kill this music. If I’m going to die, I’m ready, but I’m going out playing ‘Sophisticated Lady.’”

Outside, the other musicians continued to play. But from inside the building people heard Mingus playing “Sophisticated Lady,” which became a protest song that day. Duke Ellington was outside, just beyond the theater's open doors, smiling.

You know why he was smiling? Because he felt the power of the resurrection in that wonderful music coming from the empty building -- the power of courage over fear and love over hate. Oh yes, that’s what the power of the resurrection can do -- it will change us too.