Just Sing

A sermon based on Acts 16:16-34

In the name of Jesus; amen.

Last week our sending hymn was “When Peace Like a River.” Now I don’t know about the rest of you who were here, but that hymn for me was the highlight of my Sunday last week. Y’all sang that song like you meant it.

When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and has shed his own blood for my soul.

He lives--oh, the bliss of this glorious thought; my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to his cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Lord, hasten the day when our faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall descend; even so it is well with my soul.

Now this was a hymn that was written in the 1800’s, but I imagine that the hymn that Paul and Silas sang in that first century prison that night after their arrest would have sounded just like “When Peace Like a River” especially the way we sang last week.

It’s one of my favorites by the way, as is the last hymn we will sing today, “Thine the Amen”. If you are at all like me then the words of many hymns are as sacred to you as scripture. In fact what Paul and Silas sang may very well have been scripture because the Psalms were used as hymns and were written with the intention of being sung.

Whatever it was that they were singing; those prisoners with them, in that jail, listened as they sang and prayed. They were so captivated by the words and music that even when there was a great earthquake so violent that it shook the foundations of the prison, they did not move. They were so captivated by the singing and praying that when the doors flew open and their chains were unfastened all of them remained.

And because of it the jailer and his whole family believed on the Lord Jesus and were baptized. The jailer, their captor, took them into his own home, cared for their wounds and fed them and he with his whole family was baptized without delay.

It’s a remarkable story. Paul and Silas are arrested, beaten with rods, thrown into the innermost cell in jail, their feet are fastened into stocks, and yet… they sing and pray and because of this a whole family comes to know Jesus.

Well, really it was God who did it, God who gave Paul and Silas the peace that let them sing so sweetly that this thing happened. It was God who caused the earthquake to happen, God who opened their prison doors and unlatched their chains. It was also God who worked in the hearts of the other prisoners, keeping them there to continue listening. And it was God who worked in the heart of the jailer as he washed the wounds Paul and Silas had received from their punishment, the horrible flogging they endured before being shackled; it was God who worked in the water of baptism.

God did it all.

God turned Paul and Silas’ captivity into something else. God recreated that moment in time so that the jailer might become captive to Christ’s love and Paul and Silas might become free of their prison.

It might seem as though the miracle would be that God caused an earthquake that shook open the prison, but the miracle was that God worked in the hearts of the characters in our story. God worked miracles in prayer and in singing.

God worked miracles in prayer and singing.

We aren’t told what Paul and Silas prayed and we aren’t told what hymns they sang, we are only told that they were praying and singing when God made the earthquake happen.

We don’t know if they were giving thanks or singing lament. We don’t know if they were asking to be rescued or singing about peaceful rivers. And I don’t much think it matters what prayers they were praying or what hymns they were singing. What matters is that in their captivity they prayed and they sang hymns and that God was listening.

God listens when we pray. The earth might not always shake after we say “amen”, but God listens. And God listens when we sing, even when we sing off key.

But God doesn’t just listen when we pray and when we sing. God frees us when we pray and God loosens the chains that bind us when we sing. And God connects us to others in our prayers and in our singing.

Paul and Silas did not pray secret prayers or sing silent hymns. Their words and music drew others in and caused them to listen and become a part of their experience of God.

God frees us only to connect us to others… to bind us in a new way to one another. It’s why we gather together to pray and to sing hymns out loud, because in doing so we become one with another.

So pray out loud and sing, even if it’s off key. God is listening to our voices and drawing them together.

Amen.