About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. [Acts 16:25-26]
If you've spent much time at all in church, Sunday School, or Vacation Bible School in your life, you probably know what is going to happen next--this is one of the most famous stories in Acts. I grew up with flannel board retellings of Paul and Silas singing in prison, and then the earthquake coming that opens the doors and breaks their chains. It was a perennial favorite in Sunday School classes and Vacation Bible School sessions, year after year. So it's no longer a surprise to me that God sends this earthquake to loosen their chains. So for us, contemporary readers who have been in the church for a while, we know what is about to happen as Paul and Silas start passing the time with a late-night hymn sing.
But Paul and Silas do not.
This is a vital but often overlooked twist in how we hear this story: the singing comes before the earthquake, and Paul and Silas don't have any expectation of what will happen next. But they sing anyway. They are not expecting that an earthquake will set them free--after all, they have been through plenty of hard times when there was no earthquake or angel to get them out of sticky situations. Paul has been stoned and left for dead and chased out of countless towns, and together the two of them have been stripped and beaten already. And don't forget that earlier in Acts, James, the apostle was put to death by Herod--no earthquakes to loosen his chains or third-shift angel rescues for him. Paul and Silas are not sitting in prison assuming that they will be sprung from their cell, and they certainly do not sing in order to get God's attention.
So, considering all that, I have a crazy idea to suggest--what if Paul and Silas pray and sing in prison, not in order to get freedom, but because they already have it?
So, considering all that, I have a crazy idea to suggest--what if Paul and Silas pray and sing in prison, not in order to get freedom, but because they already have it?
They are already free from the fear that would have kept them in despair, and they are not afraid of the worst that the authorities can do to them. It is much like the peace that Paul talks about when he later writes to the church in Philippi (and remember, interestingly, that this story takes place in Philippi!), the peace that "surpasses all understanding" and comes from God. Paul writes about that kind of peace right in the thick of a time of controversy and division in Philippi (you see it just 4 or 5 verses before that lovely bit about "peace"), and yet he believes there is a genuine peace that is ours already, even in the midst of that tension. Similarly, I think Paul might tell us that there is a freedom that enfolds the community of Jesus, a freedom that is real and true even when we are constrained by the powers around us. Paul and Silas look like they are imprisoned, but they are simultaneously free from the fear that the authorities would subject them to--Paul and Silas will not be made afraid. And so they have the kind of fearless and free joy that lets them sing even in the darkest places at the darkest hours--even when they do not know that an earthquake is coming to set them free from their cell.
That's important, too, for making sense of what happens after the earthquake, too. Because, as you might already know, once their chains are broken open and the door swings wide open, Paul and Silas don't run away to freedom--they stay there in their cells, preventing the jailer from killing himself (when he thinks he has lost all of his prisoners and would surely face worse punishment from the higher-ups), and eventually leading him to faith in Christ and letting him wash their wounds. Why would they "waste" a miracle by staying put when the earthquake had broken their chains? Because in all seriousness, they are already free--they are free from fear of what anybody else can do to them, so they no longer need to run away, protect themselves, or even defend their own lives. They are free already--free to sing, free to stay, free to share their faith.
It's not that Paul and Silas only sang out of a Pollyannaish delusion that things really weren't so bad, or that an angel would show up any minute to pick the lock. It wasn't just about seeing the glass as half-full, either--optimism tries to put a positive spin on whatever is in the room already, but only God's freedom has the power to create joy out of nothing. It might have looked and sounded like utter foolishness to the prison guards or the other prisoners, but that's what happens when the strangely blessed freedom of Jesus runs up against the systems of business-as-usual, the systems that are convinced you can squelch freedom by imprisoning threats, torturing opponents, and throwing away the key when it comes to troublemakers. It always looks odd when the freed people of God sing in celebration as a holy protest against the voices and powers that cannot comprehend their freedom--it was odd when civil rights marchers, convinced that their common identity in Christ made them equal sisters and brothers regardless of race, started singing spirituals as they walked down city streets, into the force of fire hoses and into the constraints of handcuffs. It surely sounded odd when soldiers on either side of the no-man's land started singing "Silent Night" across the war zone when the fighting ceased for a day on Christmas Eve in World War I. And it will surely seem odd to the watching world as we, followers of Jesus today, sing for joy together as a protest that the powers of our world do not get the last say among us--not the powers of empire, not the powers of fortunes lost or won on the market, not the powers of fear of our neighbor, either.
Sometimes the most subversive thing the people of God can do is to worship. At the very least, it will make a watching world wonder about what makes us sing, about the freedom we have already been given, even in the darkest places, even at the darkest hour...
Good Lord, strengthen our voices to sing your praises, and in the singing, to know your freedom already.
It's not that Paul and Silas only sang out of a Pollyannaish delusion that things really weren't so bad, or that an angel would show up any minute to pick the lock. It wasn't just about seeing the glass as half-full, either--optimism tries to put a positive spin on whatever is in the room already, but only God's freedom has the power to create joy out of nothing. It might have looked and sounded like utter foolishness to the prison guards or the other prisoners, but that's what happens when the strangely blessed freedom of Jesus runs up against the systems of business-as-usual, the systems that are convinced you can squelch freedom by imprisoning threats, torturing opponents, and throwing away the key when it comes to troublemakers. It always looks odd when the freed people of God sing in celebration as a holy protest against the voices and powers that cannot comprehend their freedom--it was odd when civil rights marchers, convinced that their common identity in Christ made them equal sisters and brothers regardless of race, started singing spirituals as they walked down city streets, into the force of fire hoses and into the constraints of handcuffs. It surely sounded odd when soldiers on either side of the no-man's land started singing "Silent Night" across the war zone when the fighting ceased for a day on Christmas Eve in World War I. And it will surely seem odd to the watching world as we, followers of Jesus today, sing for joy together as a protest that the powers of our world do not get the last say among us--not the powers of empire, not the powers of fortunes lost or won on the market, not the powers of fear of our neighbor, either.
Sometimes the most subversive thing the people of God can do is to worship. At the very least, it will make a watching world wonder about what makes us sing, about the freedom we have already been given, even in the darkest places, even at the darkest hour...
Good Lord, strengthen our voices to sing your praises, and in the singing, to know your freedom already.
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