Thomas G. Long - "Singing in Jail" (September 30, 2001)
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| - | I was glad when they said unto me | 0:13 |
| let us go into the house of the lord. | 0:14 | |
| It is always good to be at worship with you in this place. | 0:17 | |
| In addition to the lessons that we have already heard, | 0:23 | |
| I want to read to us an absolutely fascinating | 0:27 | |
| and wonderful story from the book of Acts. | 0:30 | |
| What has happened is that Paul and Silas | 0:34 | |
| and the others who are engaged in mission to the gentiles | 0:37 | |
| have come to the old Roman colony of Philippi. | 0:40 | |
| And instead of their usual strategy | 0:45 | |
| which is to establish contact | 0:48 | |
| with the local synagogue, | 0:50 | |
| at Philippi they make a connection with | 0:52 | |
| a woman's prayer group meeting beside the river, | 0:56 | |
| headed up by a businesswoman named Lydia. | 1:00 | |
| This group is responsive to the Gospel | 1:04 | |
| and the relationship grows. | 1:06 | |
| And then this happens. | 1:09 | |
| Once when we were going to the place of prayer, | 1:14 | |
| we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit | 1:18 | |
| by which she predicted the future. | 1:22 | |
| She earned a great deal of money | 1:25 | |
| for her owners by fortune telling. | 1:27 | |
| This girl followed Paul and the rest of us shouting | 1:31 | |
| these men are servants of the most high God | 1:36 | |
| who are telling you the way to be saved! | 1:38 | |
| She kept this up for many days. | 1:42 | |
| Finally, Paul became so troubled | 1:45 | |
| that he turned around and said to the spirit, | 1:48 | |
| in the name of Jesus Christ | 1:51 | |
| I command you to come out of her. | 1:53 | |
| At that moment, the spirit left her. | 1:57 | |
| When the owners of the slave girl realized | 2:02 | |
| that their hope of making money was gone, | 2:04 | |
| they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them | 2:08 | |
| into the marketplace to face the authorities. | 2:11 | |
| They brought them before the magistrates | 2:14 | |
| and said these men are Jews. | 2:16 | |
| They are throwing our city into an uproar | 2:22 | |
| by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans | 2:24 | |
| to accept or practice. | 2:28 | |
| The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas | 2:31 | |
| and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. | 2:34 | |
| After they had been severely flogged, | 2:40 | |
| they were thrown into prison | 2:42 | |
| and the jailer was commanded guard them carefully. | 2:44 | |
| Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell | 2:49 | |
| and fastened their feet in the stocks. | 2:53 | |
| About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying | 2:59 | |
| and singing hymns to God, | 3:04 | |
| and the other prisoners were listening to them. | 3:06 | |
| Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake | 3:10 | |
| that the foundations of the prison were shaken. | 3:13 | |
| At once, all the prison doors flew open | 3:16 | |
| and everybody's chains came loose. | 3:19 | |
| The jailer woke up and when he saw the prison doors open, | 3:22 | |
| he drew his sword and was about to kill himself | 3:26 | |
| because he thought the prisoners had escaped, | 3:30 | |
| but Paul shouted | 3:33 | |
| don't harm yourself! | 3:35 | |
| We're all here. | 3:38 | |
| The jailer called for lights, | 3:41 | |
| rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. | 3:43 | |
| He then brought them out and asked them sirs, | 3:47 | |
| what must I do to be saved? | 3:50 | |
| They replied believe in the lord Jesus | 3:53 | |
| and you will be saved. | 3:55 | |
| You and your household. | 3:56 | |
| Then they spoke the word of the lord to him | 3:59 | |
| and to all the others in the house. | 4:01 | |
| At that hour of the night, the jailer took them | 4:03 | |
| and washed their wounds and immediately | 4:06 | |
| he and all his family were baptized. | 4:09 | |
| The jailer brought them into his house | 4:12 | |
| and set a meal before them. | 4:15 | |
| He was filled with joy, because he had come to | 4:17 | |
| believe in God, he and his whole family. | 4:20 | |
| I don't know whether you've noticed it or not, | 4:30 | |
| but one of the things that has happened to us | 4:32 | |
| in the last two and a half weeks, | 4:35 | |
| two and a half weeks in which the world | 4:38 | |
| as we thought we had known it has come apart. | 4:39 | |
| One of the things that has happened to us | 4:43 | |
| has happened in our worship, | 4:45 | |
| and that is that the hymns that we sing, | 4:48 | |
| the old hymns, the hymns we have sung thousands of times | 4:51 | |
| have come to take on new comfort and depth and power. | 4:56 | |
| As some of you know, I was scheduled to preach here | 5:01 | |
| on the Sunday after a terror attack. | 5:04 | |
| Events changed that of course, | 5:08 | |
| but I have heard much about that service, | 5:09 | |
| and what I have heard is that not only | 5:12 | |
| was the spoken word powerful, | 5:14 | |
| but maybe especially the hymns. | 5:16 | |
| Is There a Balm in Gilead? | 5:19 | |
| Those of you who were here know what I'm talking about. | 5:21 | |
| In the church where my family and I worship | 5:25 | |
| on that Sunday the service began | 5:28 | |
| with a hymn that we're going to sing in a few minutes, | 5:30 | |
| A Mighty Fortress is Our God. | 5:33 | |
| It's an old hymn. | 5:36 | |
| We've sung it many many times, | 5:37 | |
| but we could hardly make it through it. | 5:40 | |
| Phrases that normally we would simply glide over | 5:43 | |
| attached to our broken hearts. | 5:46 | |
| Were we in our own strength to confide | 5:50 | |
| our striving would be losing. | 5:53 | |
| The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. | 5:55 | |
| The body they may kill, but God's truth abideth still. | 6:00 | |
| By the end of that hymn, we were singing | 6:06 | |
| at the top of our lungs and the bottom of our souls. | 6:08 | |
| It's a wonderful thing of course that we can sing | 6:13 | |
| in a time like this, but if you think about it | 6:15 | |
| it is also a very strange thing | 6:20 | |
| that we sing at a time like this. | 6:24 | |
| It is a very odd thing that the Christian faith | 6:27 | |
| has always flowered forth with hymns | 6:30 | |
| in all kinds of circumstances. | 6:35 | |
| Why is that? | 6:40 | |
| Did not Jesus sing a psalm that night? | 6:43 | |
| Asks the hymn Within Our Music God is Glorified. | 6:46 | |
| Did not Jesus sing a psalm that night? | 6:50 | |
| What night? | 6:54 | |
| When utmost darkness strove against the light, that night. | 6:56 | |
| We sing hymns, but why? | 7:00 | |
| I want to ask you that question this morning. | 7:03 | |
| Why do we sing in this place? | 7:05 | |
| Now look, I know. | 7:07 | |
| I'm a preacher. | 7:09 | |
| I'm supposed to be more worried about sermons than songs. | 7:10 | |
| In fact especially in the Protestant tradition there has | 7:15 | |
| often been a kind of competition | 7:18 | |
| between the spoken word and the arts and music, | 7:20 | |
| or to put it more practically, | 7:24 | |
| the rivalry between preachers and church musicians. | 7:27 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 7:31 | |
| Is legendary in Protestant circles. | 7:32 | |
| I heard once about a preacher | 7:36 | |
| who got up to preach the sermon and realized | 7:38 | |
| that his sermon notes were out of order. | 7:40 | |
| In order to buy a little time, | 7:43 | |
| he leaned over to the organist and whispered | 7:45 | |
| why don't you just noodle around a little bit? | 7:49 | |
| She looked up and said why don't you | 7:52 | |
| just mumble around a little bit? | 7:55 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 7:57 | |
| But this competition finds no place in scripture. | 8:00 | |
| As a matter of fact, in scripture | 8:03 | |
| the hymns that we sing are not competition | 8:06 | |
| to the spoken word, | 8:08 | |
| they're the consummation of the spoken word. | 8:09 | |
| As Ephesians puts it, be not drunk with wine. | 8:13 | |
| Be drunk in the Holy Spirit and in your intoxication, | 8:15 | |
| sing hymns and songs and spiritual songs to God. | 8:20 | |
| Where we are going with the spoken word | 8:26 | |
| is to the place that all of us can be lost | 8:29 | |
| in wonder, love, and praise, but why is that? | 8:31 | |
| Why do we sing? | 8:36 | |
| Well a good story to use as a lens | 8:39 | |
| to look through at that question | 8:41 | |
| is this story I just read from the book of Acts | 8:44 | |
| because it has this marvelous image in it | 8:47 | |
| of Paul and Silas singing hymns in jail | 8:49 | |
| while the other prisoners listen to them. | 8:56 | |
| What has happened is they're on their way | 8:59 | |
| to the place of prayer, and this little slave girl | 9:01 | |
| who makes money for her masters by fortunetelling, | 9:05 | |
| she's clairvoyant. | 9:08 | |
| If she were around today, she'd have her own 900 number. | 9:10 | |
| She follows Paul and Silas saying | 9:14 | |
| these men are servants of the most high God. | 9:17 | |
| They've come to proclaim a way of salvation. | 9:19 | |
| These men are servants of the most high God. | 9:21 | |
| They've come to proclaim a way of salvation. | 9:23 | |
| True, but annoying. | 9:25 | |
| Finally Paul's had all of that he can take | 9:28 | |
| and turns and says to the spirit | 9:30 | |
| I tell you in the name of Jesus come out of her. | 9:32 | |
| And it came out that very hour, | 9:35 | |
| which may be the only healing in the New Testament | 9:37 | |
| done in the name of irritation rather than compassion. | 9:40 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 9:44 | |
| But when the slave girl was whole, | 9:45 | |
| she could no longer be exploited by her masters | 9:47 | |
| and when they saw their hope of making money was gone | 9:52 | |
| they dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates. | 9:54 | |
| The charges? | 9:57 | |
| Traveling while Jewish. | 9:59 | |
| These men don't eat what we eat. | 10:02 | |
| They don't talk like we talk. | 10:04 | |
| They don't look like we look. | 10:06 | |
| They have customs that are not like our customs. | 10:08 | |
| They're throwing us into an uproar | 10:10 | |
| and they put them in maximum security. | 10:12 | |
| Chains on the hands, stocks on the feet, | 10:15 | |
| guard them with your life, they told the jailer | 10:19 | |
| and it was there | 10:21 | |
| in jail | 10:24 | |
| that they sang hymns. | 10:28 | |
| Why? | 10:32 | |
| Some people say that the reason why Christians sing | 10:34 | |
| all the time is that we have these powerful experiences | 10:39 | |
| and emotions down deep in our soul, | 10:43 | |
| and they simply need a way of coming out and when they do, | 10:46 | |
| the language of prose will not work. | 10:49 | |
| We need the language of ecstasy and poetry and music. | 10:52 | |
| Listen to the sound of my voice. | 10:57 | |
| Or better yet, listen to the sound of your own voice. | 11:01 | |
| In the rising and falling of our voices, | 11:06 | |
| it is almost as if we are searching for a melody line. | 11:09 | |
| Some people think that before human beings | 11:16 | |
| spoke to each other, we sang. | 11:18 | |
| It was our first communication, | 11:22 | |
| and it may be that beneath the din of everyday chatter, | 11:25 | |
| underneath all the cellphone talk and the table talk | 11:29 | |
| and the chatter, we can hear our voices | 11:33 | |
| rising and falling, searching for a song we used to know. | 11:37 | |
| ♪ Joyful joyful ♪ | 11:42 | |
| ♪ We adore thee ♪ | 11:45 | |
| Maybe that's why we sing. | 11:48 | |
| We have down deep inside of us that which... | 11:50 | |
| That may be part of it, but that can't be all of it. | 11:56 | |
| Paul and Silas sang in jail. | 12:00 | |
| And if there ever was anywhere | 12:04 | |
| that is the antithesis of self-expression it is a jail. | 12:06 | |
| A jail is a denial of self-expression. | 12:10 | |
| If their singing had been | 12:13 | |
| only a matter of expressing themselves | 12:14 | |
| when the chains fell off and the stocks | 12:17 | |
| were broken after the earthquake, | 12:19 | |
| they would have self-expressed themselves | 12:21 | |
| right on out of there. | 12:24 | |
| But they said to the panicked jailer, do not harm yourself. | 12:27 | |
| We are all here. | 12:31 | |
| As W.H. Auden once put it, if art is only self-expression, | 12:34 | |
| keep it to yourself. | 12:39 | |
| Other people say that the reason why we Christians sing | 12:43 | |
| in this place is not simply because we have | 12:47 | |
| something inside of us, it's that in the power of the spirit | 12:49 | |
| we are able to discern something outside of us. | 12:53 | |
| In the spirit sight, we are able to see | 12:57 | |
| in ordinary and mundane life | 13:00 | |
| and even in times of trauma and terror, | 13:03 | |
| a God at work accomplishing mercy and redemption and peace. | 13:07 | |
| Raveling up the sleeves of our care. | 13:12 | |
| Several years ago I went to a conference in Boston, | 13:17 | |
| and the conference hotel was right down the street | 13:20 | |
| from Trinity Episcopal Church. | 13:23 | |
| This is the church where one of the giants | 13:26 | |
| of the American pulpit, Phillips Brooks | 13:28 | |
| was pastor for many years, | 13:31 | |
| and one morning I couldn't resist the temptation. | 13:32 | |
| I broke away from the conference | 13:35 | |
| and I went down to Trinity Church | 13:37 | |
| just to breathe in the atmosphere | 13:39 | |
| of where that great preacher had preached. | 13:41 | |
| When I went into the sanctuary, I was the only one in there | 13:45 | |
| or at least so I thought. | 13:49 | |
| It's a mystery filled place, and I was looking around. | 13:52 | |
| I was even looking at the pulpit | 13:56 | |
| and imagining Phillips Brooks there | 13:58 | |
| as I stood there all alone in Trinity Church, | 14:01 | |
| when suddenly I heard something. | 14:05 | |
| ♪ Fair is lord Jesus ♪ | 14:09 | |
| There's no one there, kind of spooky. | 14:16 | |
| I looked in the choir loft, no one there. | 14:20 | |
| I looked in the shadows to see if I had missed | 14:22 | |
| a soloist rehearsing, no one there. | 14:25 | |
| ♪ All hail the power of Jesus' name ♪ | 14:28 | |
| I followed the sound until finally I found it. | 14:33 | |
| There on the floor under one of the pews | 14:38 | |
| was the sexton with a rag polishing the bottom of the pew. | 14:43 | |
| And in the middle of that mundane job, | 14:48 | |
| but with an awareness of the holiness of his vocation, | 14:51 | |
| and the sanctity of that place, | 14:54 | |
| he was provoked to sing. | 14:57 | |
| Maybe that's why we sing. | 15:00 | |
| We see around us the mystery of holiness. | 15:02 | |
| One of my friends is a United Church of Christ minister | 15:06 | |
| and several years ago he went to a minister's conference, | 15:09 | |
| and at the opening worship service, | 15:12 | |
| he found himself seated right next to | 15:15 | |
| his old theology professor Richard H. Nieber. | 15:18 | |
| The preacher that night was trying an experimental sermon. | 15:23 | |
| He would preach a little bit, a paragraph or two, | 15:27 | |
| and then the congregation would sing the stanza of a hymn. | 15:30 | |
| Then he'd preach a little bit more, | 15:34 | |
| and they'd sing the second stanza of the hymn and so on | 15:35 | |
| and evidently it was not going very well. | 15:38 | |
| My friend turned to his old theology prof and said, | 15:43 | |
| this is awful. | 15:46 | |
| In fact, this reminds me of something | 15:49 | |
| you said in class one day. | 15:51 | |
| What? | 15:53 | |
| We were studying J.S. Whale's book Christian Doctrine | 15:55 | |
| and you said Whale is a weak-minded theologian | 15:59 | |
| because every time he gets to a theological problem | 16:04 | |
| he cannot solve, he quotes a hymn. | 16:07 | |
| I was wrong, said Nieber. | 16:12 | |
| I was young and brash and I was wrong. | 16:15 | |
| The older I get, the more I know | 16:18 | |
| there are some things theologians can only say in hymns. | 16:22 | |
| Maybe that's it. | 16:30 | |
| Maybe we perceive the holy... | 16:33 | |
| That's part of it. | 16:40 | |
| But even that doesn't go all the way down. | 16:42 | |
| Paul and Silas sang in jail. | 16:45 | |
| And if there is ever a place | 16:51 | |
| that obscures the presence of God, it is jail. | 16:53 | |
| It's the Roman government in charge, not God. | 16:57 | |
| It's not about freedom in Christ, | 17:01 | |
| it's about captivity. | 17:02 | |
| Right there, where holiness was invisible, they sang. | 17:04 | |
| Because when all is said and done, | 17:10 | |
| we sing in this place not because of what is already present | 17:12 | |
| but what is promised. | 17:20 | |
| We sing in this place because we are people of hope. | 17:21 | |
| We sing in the future present tense, | 17:27 | |
| anticipating a time when justice | 17:31 | |
| will roll down like the waters, | 17:33 | |
| and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. | 17:35 | |
| Sometime ago I heard James Farmer interviewed on the radio. | 17:41 | |
| Do you remember James Farmer? | 17:44 | |
| He was the head of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. | 17:46 | |
| He helped plan the freedom rides into the South, | 17:50 | |
| and he was telling in that interview | 17:54 | |
| about one of those freedom rides. | 17:56 | |
| Busload came into Alabama. | 17:58 | |
| They were arrested and thrown into jail. | 18:00 | |
| The jailers wanted to demoralize these outside agitators | 18:04 | |
| but the world was watching, | 18:07 | |
| and they had to be very careful. | 18:09 | |
| The first thing they did was to crowd | 18:12 | |
| six, seven, eight, 10, 12 of them into a jail cell | 18:14 | |
| designed to hold two, but it did not break their spirits. | 18:18 | |
| Then they began to heavily salt their food. | 18:23 | |
| But it did not break their spirits. | 18:28 | |
| But then they found something | 18:31 | |
| that did break their spirits. | 18:33 | |
| One by one they began to take mattresses | 18:35 | |
| out of the jail cells until there were | 18:39 | |
| not enough to go around. | 18:40 | |
| The prisoners began to argue over the available mattresses, | 18:42 | |
| fight over them, morale sunk low. | 18:46 | |
| Right at the lowest point, said Farmer, | 18:49 | |
| somebody in the cell block began to sing. | 18:52 | |
| Amazing grace how sweet the sound. | 18:55 | |
| Lift every voice and sing. | 19:00 | |
| We shall overcome. | 19:02 | |
| Voices joined in until everybody was singing loudly. | 19:04 | |
| So loudly the jailers came in | 19:08 | |
| to see what the disturbance was | 19:10 | |
| and when they did, the prisoners | 19:11 | |
| took the rest of those mattresses | 19:13 | |
| and pushed them through the cell bars | 19:15 | |
| as if to say you can take our mattresses, | 19:17 | |
| you can take our comforts, you can even take our lives | 19:20 | |
| but you cannot take our hope. | 19:23 | |
| We sing in here of a freedom no jailer can take. | 19:29 | |
| Of a love no hate can destroy. | 19:35 | |
| Of a hope no terrorist can steal. | 19:39 | |
| There's a woman named Diane Komp. | 19:44 | |
| She teaches on the faculty of Yale Medical School. | 19:47 | |
| She's a pediatric oncologist | 19:49 | |
| and she is a confessing Christian, | 19:51 | |
| but she was not always that way. | 19:54 | |
| She spent many years struggling | 19:56 | |
| in agnostic wrestling and doubt. | 19:59 | |
| She said the turning point for her | 20:02 | |
| came when she was standing at the bedside | 20:04 | |
| of a seven year old girl drawing her last breaths, | 20:06 | |
| dying of leukemia. | 20:11 | |
| The hospital chaplain was there, her parents were there, | 20:14 | |
| the little girl breathing her last | 20:17 | |
| suddenly sat up in the bed and said | 20:19 | |
| "mother listen, oh mother do you hear them? | 20:25 | |
| "Do you hear the angels singing? | 20:31 | |
| "I have never heard such beautiful singing." | 20:35 | |
| The hospital chaplain fled the room in terror. | 20:40 | |
| The parents acted as if they had been given | 20:45 | |
| the greatest gift they could possibly receive, | 20:48 | |
| and as for the agnostic attending physician, | 20:52 | |
| "I wondered" said Diane Komp | 20:55 | |
| "if I had at last heard a reliable witness." | 20:58 | |
| In this world imprisoned in fear and hate, | 21:06 | |
| let us sing | 21:12 | |
| psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. | 21:14 | |
| The other prisoners | 21:18 | |
| are listening. | 21:21 | |
| (organ music) | 21:30 | |
| ♪ A mighty Fortress is our God ♪ | 22:29 | |
| ♪ A bulwark never failing ♪ | 22:36 | |
| ♪ Our helper He amid the flood ♪ | 22:44 | |
| ♪ Of mortal ills prevailing ♪ | 22:50 | |
| ♪ For still our ancient foe ♪ | 22:58 | |
| ♪ Doth seek to work us woe ♪ | 23:04 | |
| ♪ His craft and power are great ♪ | 23:10 | |
| ♪ And, armed with cruel hate ♪ | 23:17 | |
| ♪ On Earth is not his equal ♪ | 23:23 | |
| ♪ Did we in our own strength confide ♪ | 23:32 | |
| ♪ Our striving would be losing ♪ | 23:39 | |
| ♪ Were not the right Man on our side ♪ | 23:47 | |
| ♪ The Man of God's own choosing ♪ | 23:54 | |
| ♪ Dost ask who that may be ♪ | 24:02 | |
| ♪ Christ Jesus, it is He ♪ | 24:09 | |
| ♪ Lord Sabaoth His name ♪ | 24:15 | |
| ♪ From age to age the same ♪ | 24:22 | |
| ♪ And He must win the battle ♪ | 24:29 | |
| ♪ And though this world, with devils filled ♪ | 24:39 | |
| ♪ Should threaten to undo us ♪ | 24:46 | |
| ♪ We will not fear, for God hath willed ♪ | 24:53 | |
| ♪ His truth to triumph through us ♪ | 25:00 | |
| ♪ The Prince of Darkness grim ♪ | 25:08 | |
| ♪ We tremble not for him ♪ | 25:15 | |
| ♪ His rage we can endure ♪ | 25:21 | |
| ♪ For lo his doom is sure ♪ | 25:28 | |
| ♪ One little word shall fell him ♪ | 25:35 | |
| ♪ That word above all earthly powers ♪ | 25:44 | |
| ♪ No thanks to them, abideth ♪ | 25:51 | |
| ♪ The Spirit and the gifts are ours ♪ | 26:00 | |
| ♪ Through Him who with us sideth ♪ | 26:06 | |
| ♪ Let goods and kindred go ♪ | 26:15 | |
| ♪ This mortal life also ♪ | 26:21 | |
| ♪ The body they may kill ♪ | 26:28 | |
| ♪ God's truth abideth still ♪ | 26:35 | |
| ♪ His Kingdom is forever ♪ | 26:42 |