Hymn Sing
Acts 16:16-34
May 16, 2010
When one is reading the Scriptures or hearing them being read, something unusual mentioned usually catches your attention. Often the detail blares out at you full of outrageousness and you have to say something about it. The most surprising, even startling, incident here is not the convenient earthquake that rattles down the jail house where Peter and Silas are imprisoned for exorcising the wrong demon and preaching too much. What is really surprising is that Peter and Silas sang hymns in the midnight squalor of a prison and everyone listened.
The story kind of pauses at that darkest moment with Paul and Silas, a pause when you can almost hear them singing - and then there was an earthquake and heaven broke into the prison. Is there a cause and effect going on here? Did the singing of hymns cause the earthquake, or did the earthquake happen by itself? The story insists, of course, that God caused the earth to shake and quake. What happened in the aftermath of the quake is remarkable in terms of compassion and interpersonal dynamics. The proverbial “high road” can be described no better than here in Paul’s reassurance of the jailer - the man who had been presiding over their death - and his insistence upon justice for himself and his fellow prisoners.
Yet, God causing the conveniently timed earthquake is of less value for us, precisely because it is God who controls this earthquake and there is no way you or I can do anything about it. When the ground underneath you shakes so that you no longer feel secure standing upon the earth, you know how insignificant a human being can be. What has happened in Haiti is the sobering image that not all earthquakes set people free.
When Paul and Silas began to sing hymns, their song not only praised God, but demonstrated that they were not going to surrender to despair although they had been thrown in the death cell by their persecutors. There was no human hope for two men to be placed in that kind of prison because such a place was intended to be your tomb. Instead, they sang and we all know that if you whistle while you work or raise your voice in song your brain and spirit undergo a fundamental shift. Different kinds of brain activities ensue and you soar somewhere else. Even the great singers of the Blues, who go on about how bad things are, feel elevated by what they sing. Things are so bad and I am down so low, that I can’t help but get better from here on.
Now just reading the words to a hymn or just a plain old song doesn’t cut it. Did you ever try to read a Beatles’ song without calling to mind the music? Words remain words if you just say them; sing those words with your vocal cords soaring and you will be engaging in an angelic affair, your voice a little less beautiful than God’s.
John Wesley said that we don’t bother writing heavy tomes of theology, instead we sing our theology in our hymns. The better way to say it is that the hymns we sing really sing about us.
I cannot make an earthquake come to my rescue, but I can sing when I am blue, when I am in despair and hurting deeply, and somehow God starts beating in time. Remember that when this besieged duo started singing, everyone else listened with rapt attention because they were singing for once a word of hope. No wonder they listened to Paul and didn’t flee after the quake for they had heard the angelic sounds that there was something even better than being free from jail. That’s it, but just don’t sit there and think about it. We have a couple more chances today, so sing it.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan