BROKEN CHAINS: Ties that Bind

Sermon for May 16, 20010

Scripture: Acts 16:16-34

When we think of chains, two things comes in mind, at least to me: slavery and prison. In this reading from Acts, we encounter both. In The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart , Peter Gomes noted that there is way more support for slavery in the Bible than there is disapproval of homosexuality. It's true! Slavery was a fact of life and tacitly accepted throughout both the First and Second Testaments. That's no doubt because slavery was endemic to the ancient world. People of all races and nationalities were enslaved by the Romans to perform a myriad of functions in the home and in the workplace. Today's story from Acts is no exception.

As they walk through the city of Philippi, Paul and Silas encounter not a household worker but a more unusual type of enslaved person. They meet a young woman who is not only a slave to some sort of spirit, but is “owned” by men who exploit the spirit's fortune-telling capabilities. Interestingly, the woman “outs” Paul and Silas by naming them “slaves of the Most-High God.”

After days of being followed and proclaimed, Paul shatters her chains of demon possession by an exorcism. We'd like to think Paul was motivated out of concern for her exploitation, but the text makes it clear that he is seriously annoyed at being followed around constantly!

Because the fortune-teller's “owners” can no longer make money on her, Paul and Silas are labeled troublemakers and thrown into prison. No good deed goes unpunished, does it! They are chained and their legs put into stocks, which in those days were way more painful than the kind many of us have tried out at Williamsburg .

But instead of ranting over their ill luck or crying over their pains, Paul and Silas do something else—they pray and sing! Pretty amazing! I must confess, I often take the Book of Acts with a large grain of salt. It just seems too perfect sometimes! Like that story of sharing everything in common? I've always wondered about that, knowing how independent and sometimes greedy we humans can be….but that's another sermon for another day….

So this story about singing and praying while in chains and extreme pain has always made me wonder, too…until I began learning about the restorative potential of music. Bev has shared some incredible information with us on the healing properties of music, especially the human voice. We all know music can be soothing or exciting; energizing or calming; but did you know it can actually affect your body physically? We learned that it can actually strengthen healthy cells and explode cancer cells, as shown by research conducted by a musician and acupuncturist, Fabien Maman, and a biologist at the University of Jussieu in Paris. There are amazing microscopic pictures of this in his book, The Role of Music in the Twenty-First Century, part of a series called From Star to Cell: A Sound Structure for the Twenty-First Century

Not everyone may be ready to accept the notion of energy healing, but I think we can all agree that music and singing have wonderful, healing effects on the human mind and spirit. Not all healings, of course, mean that a physical cure has taken place; but it does mean that painful bonds have been broken. Some Sojourners belong to the Threshold choir, which sings at deathbeds, and once they sung for a woman who was unresponsive—yet when they began to sing, she sat up and joined the song; even reached for the song book. After the song, she died. That was a healing, I believe.

Singing heals the singer as well as the audience. In my last job, I visited a different church in the Baltimore area every Sunday. This particular day, a pair of older African American men with beautiful voices were set to sing at Heritage UCC, when one of them sat down and looked weak and pale. He was visibly sweating and nauseated, and his wife, a nurse, kept mopping his brow. 911 was called, and the service went on. Finally the rescue team arrived, and started down the aisle, when the gentleman stood up and began to sing. The paramedics waited, astonished, while he sang his song sweetly. After applause, he stepped down from the chancel and walked off with the team!

Spirituals helped enslaved people not only survive captivity, but sometimes actually escape it due to their coded messages directing the enslaved where to go or how to leave. Spirituals taught theology as well; and must have eased their suffering of the mind, spirit and body. The anthem today, There is a Balm in Gilead , is a spiritual of encouragement and probably the most healing hymn in the New Century Hymnal.

Singing was vital during the Civil Rights movement to smash the chains of segregation. Listen to part of a transcript of an National Public Radio interview with James Farmer, speaking about the Freedom Riders' songs in jail:

They tried to stop us from singing. We sang. We sang all the freedom songs we knew and we made up new ones. The jailers went wild at our singing. …The jailers were running around saying, “Stop that singing!”… and we continued singing because it was good for our morale…If there was any fear left in us, that fear was dissipated by the song. When yelling at us didn't work, the jailers threatened to take away our mattresses – because the little thin straw mattress was the only comfort we had, everything else was cold, hard stone and steel in those tiny little cells….That caused some people to stop singing for awhile until one young man who was a Bible student reminded everybody what they were doing – “They're trying to take your soul away, it's not the mattress!”

And then one freedom rider yelled,”Guards, guards, guards!” And the deputy came running out into the cell block to see what was wrong. And this freedom rider shouted – “Come get my mattress-I'll keep my soul!” and then song exploded again.

Singing and Praying—you can get through just about anything with those two gifts from God.

In November 2005, four Christian Peacemakers were captured and jailed in Iraq . One of them, Jim Loney, wrote this for Christian Century about his colleague and cell mate Tom Fox, who was a member of Langley Hill Friends Meeting in Virginia :

During those first days of relentless, terrifying, excruciating uncertainty, Tom Fox dove into prayer the way a warrior might charge into battle. He turned his captivity into a sustained, unbroken meditation.

The chain that bound his wrist became a kind of rosary, or sebha (the beads Muslims use to count the names of God). He would picture someone: a member of his family, a member of the Iraq team or the CPT office, one of the captors - whoever he felt needed a prayer. Holding a link of the chain, he would breathe in and out, slowly, so that you could hear the air gushing in and out of his lungs, praying for the person he was holding in his mind.

With the completion of each breath, he would pass a chain link through his thumb and index finger. During his first breath he would say to himself, 'with the warmth of my heart'. In the second, 'with the stillness of my mind'. In the third, 'with the fluidity of my body'. And in
the fourth, 'with the light of my soul'. At the end of each series of four breaths, he would pause and simply rest in the light with the person he was praying for.
        …

Tom's prayers were profound. They brought our suffering into dialogue with the vast suffering of the world. Again and again his prayers brought to mind other prisoners - security detainees in Iraq , illegal combatants in Guantanamo , the lost and forgotten souls in American penitentiaries. And every time we heard a bomb explode, near or far, Tom would stop to pray for those whose lives had just been destroyed. . Every time, without fail.

Whether we find ourselves actually incarcerated or not, most of us experience being chained and unable to move at some point in our lives—perhaps through an addiction; maybe a serious illness or a traumatic loss, or even domestic violence. Dominating powers of the world such as racism, sexism or homophobia may restrict us. We may even be our own jailers through excessive worry and fear; or as a result of family baggage or a sinful habit we just can't set down. God wants to break those chains for us. Maybe we'll be lucky enough to get an earthquake that shatters the chains and breaks open the jail; but maybe not.

Singing and praying, however, are always available to us. Through singing and praying we heal ourselves and each other; we create and strengthen new relationships—between ourselves and God; and with each other. Through song and prayer, we can exchange heavy chains of fear or sin for gentle ties that bind us together in God's sight.

Because in the end, that's what it's all about—being healed means being in a community of love, joined in heart, sharing each other's joys and burdens, and walking together through the shadowy valleys of life. Let's celebrate that by singing together “Blessed be the Tie that Binds.” Thanks be to God.

Rev. Patricia Barth

May 16, 2010

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