Even the dead can hear the life-giving word of God.

This is what several Florida residents, high-ranking elected officials, Gulf shore businessmen, college professors and environmental scientists have to say about the crude oil beginning to come ashore on the beaches of Pensacola: “It’s like we’re on a death watch here.” ”It could be the beginning of a major catastrophe for this state. Florida survives on the back of the hospitality industry. For us it’s do or die.” “Picking up tar balls is going to be a way of life on at least some Florida beaches for months and maybe years.” “People here have faced extraordinary natural disasters. We’ve rebuilt. We’ve come back and I think we’ll come back from this as well.” “How could anyone prepare for a catastrophe of this magnitude? This is like a year-long hurricane. The consequences could be much more far-reaching than anything I’ve thought about so far.” “It feels like one of your best friends is dying. It’s just a nightmare that you can’t wake up from. The full impact of the spill may be felt for years.”

A spokesperson from BP tried to reassure the public by explaining “We’re doing everything possible. We have enough resources.” The CEO of BP angered many when he had the gall to remark to the press, “I’d like to have my life back.” He was also quoted as saying, “I’m so far unscathed. No one has actually physically harmed me. They’ve thrown some words at me. But I’m a Brit, so sticks and stones can hurt your bones but words never break them, or whatever the expression is.”

Each of our lessons this morning from the Bible helps put these various comments into perspective and gives us some reasons to be hopeful about getting through this catastrophe.

Let’s consider the CEO’s statement about sticks and stones first. His insensitive and callous remark obviously angered enough people that he may indeed need to fear for his physical life. He disproved his own comment by demonstrating just how powerful and hurtful words can be. How many of us continue to be haunted and our spirits crippled by the words of others? Words can also be incredibly healing and life-giving, as we see in the example of Elijah restoring one widow’s son to life and Jesus restoring another widow’s son to life. In Elijah’s case, because he was a prophet and not God, he had to plead with God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come back into him,” because God didn’t owe him anything, but Elijah believed nonetheless that God could and would be merciful, even to the extent of raising this child from the dead, because he was pleading for the child’s life for the sake of his widowed mother, who would have been left without any hope, and means of supporting herself in the future. In Jesus’ case, we see a person who does not plead with God, but acts like the very Son of God he is when he commands, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

If these stories teach us anything, they remind us that words can and do have incredible power, much more than sticks and stones, whether for evil and death, or for mercy and life.

Let’s take the quote of Lee Mullikan, a retired contractor who has been coming to Pensacola beaches for years, and remembers the tar balls back in the ‘70’s. He’s the one who was quoted as saying, “It’s like we’re on a death watch here.” While it is indeed true that in the midst of life we are in death, and that even our own prayer book has a gracious and comforting prayer vigil for those who are dying, the Bible reminds us that God can cleanse us and restore us and bring us back to life. Even the dead are not deaf to the life-giving word of the Lord. Even the dead can hear God when he speaks. Even those like Lazarus who have been dead for three days and whose bodies are beginning to stink can be ordered by Jesus to come out of his tomb.

The investigation of this catastrophe may demonstrate that BP was arrogant and reckless in drilling such a deep well without adequate safeguards. I guess if I had billions and billions of dollars readily available in the bank, enough to pay for my own arrogant and reckless behavior, enough to rectify a worst-case scenario, I might be tempted to act in such a cavalier manner. But as the CEO of BP implied in wanting to have his life back, he’s admitting that if he had to do it all over again, he would have been a lot more careful, even with billions and billions in the bank fostering a growing and increasingly unmanageable corporate pride.

As bad as that is, we have an even more arrogant and dangerous example in the life of Saul, the self-righteous Pharisee and zealous defender of Judaism, who did everything in his power to destroy the power of the risen Lord to bring forgiveness and life out of sin and death. Paul knew, as no other Jew fully appreciated, the lethal threat that Christianity posed to Judaism. For Saul, his mission, a mission he honestly believed he was commissioned by God to execute, was to eradicate the growing band of Jesus’ disciples, like a determined hunter going into the Everglades to trap and kill every last python as an exotic and mortal threat to his Jewish ecosystem. He viewed Christianity as a death threat, and not the promise of new life for all people wherever they lived, whatever their religious upbringing and beliefs, both for Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves or free. Paul intended to poison Christianity with the toxins of his self-righteous zeal as quickly as possible. For that reason, Jesus’ encounter with Paul on the road to Damascus was even more dramatic than calling the widow’s son back to life in today’s gospel because Paul’s death was an aggressive death, a hellish death, a living death that knew no bounds.

That is why Paul witnesses to the Galatians and to us of the power of Christ to transform even him into an apostle of the gospel. He calls the Galatians and us to be on a “life watch” for Jesus and to join in that “life watch” like the crowds who followed Jesus and witnessed the raising of the widow’s son back to life. For every death watch, for every funeral procession, for every loss of a dear son or a friend or God-forbid, an entire ecosystem, there is also another procession, a life procession, a resurrection procession with the power to disperse and scatter the darkness and poison and death we encounter in the midst of life.

There has been much speculation and concern expressed over BP’s use of chemical dispersants, both at the site of the ruptured wellhead, as well as on the surface of the Gulf. No one has ever used such a vast amount of chemical dispersants before. Scientists don’t know what the long-term impact and unintended consequences to life in the Gulf in all its many shapes and forms may be. As one scientist put it, the consensus among experts is that it is the lesser of two evils.

Christians know that there is one dispersant that is safe and effective. We believe that the blood of Christ is so precious that it can cleanse the whole world by dispersing its sin and strengthening our relationship with him who is the author and preserver and restorer of life. That is why Jesus instituted the sacrament of his Body and Blood, that we might receive it to cleanse our hearts and minds and disperse the arrogance and recklessness that can wound and cripple us, those around us, and even the world God has made and the world we share and depend upon to live, strengthening us and enlightening us to say and to do those things which will serve to cooperate with the grace of God in calling us from death back into life.

Paul puts it theologically in his letter to the Romans, when he explains that whenever and wherever there is sin and death, grace abounds all the more to overcome them. He then asks the rhetorical question, “Should we go on sinning, then, in order that grace may continue to abound?” “By no means,” Paul exclaims. Of course not! When pride or laziness or some other sin infects our hearts, we may try to justify our willful disobedience of God by assuming that it either won’t make any difference, or that God will take care of it, and that may well be true, but for those of us who have known the power of God’s love in Jesus Christ, we are bound to cooperate with God’s grace, and not exacerbate the need for the dispersing power of that grace.

We’re living in a time when we know that’s not true, that sinful behavior has its consequences, when, like Elijah and Paul, all we can do is seek to be faithful to God’s calling on our lives and to plead for God’s grace and mercy in our lives and in the lives of others, even those who have sinned against us, just has he has had mercy on us while we were yet sinners.

And so, Lord, we beg for the life of our state, and we beg for the wisdom to use your resources rightly in the service of others, and to your honor and glory. AMEN.