Who Is Liberating Whom?

Sermon

Today’s story of Paul and Silas singing in prison puts me in mind of the timeless dilemma faced by the philosopher Lucy Van Pelt (of Peanuts comic strip fame): “Why do I have to have ups and downs? Why can’t I have ups and ups?” Paul and Silas are in the midst of downs and downs today. The noisy slave woman interrupting their mission, public stripping and beating, the dank prison cell, the dehumanizing shackles. What could possibly be next!? Oh yeah, an earthquake. Which has broken into—unaccountably, miraculously—and apparently interrupts their singing and thanksgiving. Speaking of miraculous! Or maybe magical. I’m skeptical of both as any kind of explanation, so imagine my relief when a daily online meditation came to my rescue. Sojourners magazine sends me something every day called Voice and Verse, so named because it’s a short couple of verses from scripture, a sentence or two from some writer/thinker, followed by a suggested prayer. On this day, the verse was from Habakkuk, asserting that, even if every food source fails, yet the prophet will “exult in the Lord.” The voice response was from Cesar Chavez, who said, “We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.” Here was something close to home. Here was the lens by which to view the ferocious choice of Paul and Silas to sing in prison. Neither magic nor miracle. How does singing and giving thanks become an act of resistance, especially while one is shackled to the wall?

I know it’s Music Appreciation Sunday at Westminster, but I take no credit for making a thematic choice for today; this is what the Revised Common Lectionary assigned us. Welcome back, Jeff Evans; thank you Debbie, choir, Michael, Leslie, Anne, bells, the whole shebang. You all might be on to something besides a musical-magical response to these hard times. One of my pastor friends got there a little earlier than I when he said that whatever it was that filled Paul and Silas’ souls so much that “they could sing in spite of the worldly terrors they were experiencing,” well, he said, “I’ll have what they’re having.”

Is that what you do when times are tough? When times have been toughest for me, I find myself either singing or whistling as I go about my day. As if these musical sounds I make have been as healing as just about anything else I could do. And I’m not saying that because of some melodious quality to my voice or my world-class whistle. Psychologists tell us that music works on our brains for healing. Pastors and hospice workers have the empirical experience that music (especially familiar music) has the capacity to at least momentarily renew the cognitive function of persons with dementia. There’s a reason we say “whistling in the dark” to indicate a person talking themselves into courage. The difference here being that the writer of Acts seems to think this wasn’t about dredging up courage; it was bona fide thanksgiving.

This week, I viewed a webinar from Aspen Chapel entitled, “Listening in Community, What Might Contemplatives in Action Do in These Times?” We gathered as a group at the Franciscan Spiritual Center to hear eight presenters and process together what we’d heard. I was grateful for group processing, because there were troubling things shared by the presenters. One speaker, Andrew Harvey, seemed downright gleeful as he described the global dark night of the soul we are currently experiencing. We are living, he said, in “an unprecedented, apocalyptic, evolutionary crisis.” Not to put too fine a point on it. The implication of this apocalypse, he said, is that “the human race depends on what we do next. And doing everything now may not be enough.” The way he said it shocked me—like it was good news. In a theological sense apocalypse is good news, but only if you believe the crucifixion must come before resurrection. And who wants to go through crucifixion? You may as well be shackled to the wall, with your wounds still open from the beating, and, by the way, singing in gratitude. Harvey advocates “radical openness” to miracle, which apparently worked for Paul and Silas. But I’m not sure how that goes down in the 21^st century. Nor whether it even works for me.

There is a funerary practice in some cultures in which, rather than burying the dead in the ground, the bodies are carried to a remote place—a charnel place—for vultures to clean the bones. And when the bones are clean, the bereaved and others visit these charnel grounds to both experience the grief and ponder their own mortality. Buddhism has adopted that image as a meditation practice, that of sitting present to one’s deepest pain and grief without trying to fix it. For a Buddhist, it’s a recognition of the impermanence of all things. Pain is everywhere, they say, but suffering is optional. When we are able to grasp that even pain is impermanent, it is possible to be present to not just one’s own suffering but that of others as well. I see shadows of this practice in Paul’s letters, reminding the church to “bear one another’s burdens” and in Jesus’ teaching to his disciples, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.

There was talk of martyrs on that Aspen Chapel webinar. The speakers mostly spoke of martyrdom as sacrifice and suffering, even unto death. The Greek word is martyrion, literally “witness.” This is the word used by the resurrected Jesus to tell his disciples, “You are my witnesses, you are my martyrion.” Martyrs are witnesses so filled with LIFE that it does not matter to them whether they live or die. It’s Paul and Silas, sitting in prison, bleeding and singing for the sheer joy of it all. A martyr understands, “you cannot change anything you are not prepared to die for,” but a martyr lives for what they believe and doesn’t go out looking for death. These are people to whom Wilma Mankiller refers when she says, “The most fulfilled people are the ones who get up every morning and stand for something larger than themselves.” And this, perhaps, is the most subversive thing a martyrion can do. Not to go looking for trouble but to reverse the distortion of power over with the joy anyhow Paul and Silas showed us.

Tim Shriver was also on the webinar, and what he shared was both moving and hope-filled for me. Shriver (yes, that Shriver clan) is a disability advocate and has been chair of Special Olympics since 1996. Special Olympics is a global organization that supports athletes with intellectual challenges to compete in Olympic-style sports. He shared an anecdote from this winter’s international Special Olympics games in Turin, Italy. About 1,500 athletes from 100 countries participated. A security guard hired to help the athletes move safely across the street into the stadium had spent the day watching the celebratory procession of athletes. These athletes all have what we would call low IQs, and most come from countries where they are not able to go to school, where they receive substandard healthcare, are stigmatized, and bear the brunt of isolation. After the celebrations, the guard turned to the event production manager and said, “I just saw the whole world pass before my eyes, and it was beautiful.”

That’s the kind of world in which it is possible to sing and give thanks even while shackled in a prison. Like those athletes, that ability is not based on power, or beauty, or wealth. The athletes, said Shriver, were marching simply as children of God, not because of what they’d earned or society had given them. What that guard saw was the simple beauty of creation, a communal act, he said, not something by us, but beauty between us. No distortions, no fear or anger. Just the naked and radical presence of God. Drawing strength from the despair in which we are forced to live. “I just saw the whole world pass before my eyes, and it was beautiful.”