Publications Article Copenhaver

Martin Copenhaver is the senior pastor of Wellesley Congregational Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is the author of three books, including "To Begin at the Beginning: An Introduction to the Christian Faith." He delivered this sermon at the closing worship service of Conference 2002 held in July at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

Choir Practice in Prison
By Martin B. Copenhaver

Acts 16:16-25

Microsoft founder Bill Gates grew up in a congregation of the United Church of Christ, and so I was particularly interested to read his remarks about religion in an interview not long ago. Gates said, "Just in terms of allocations of time resources, religion isn’t very efficient. There is a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning."

And he’s right. Worship is not efficient. There are many more productive ways to spend a Sunday morning - like, say, cleaning out your closets, or balancing your checkbook, or sharpening your predatory business practices. Compared with any of these activities, worship is not efficient or productive.

And worship doesn’t exactly measure up on other bases, either. Worship is not particularly edifying. A lecture would be more so, as would be some Sunday morning television programs. Reading the Sunday paper might be more enjoyable. So why worship when there are more efficient, productive, edifying and enjoyable things to do on a Sunday morning?

Paul and Silas are in Philippi, preaching the gospel, and things seem to be going quite well. But there are some merchants in that town who were used to making a profit off a slave woman who had some kind of malady that her owners claimed was a spirit of divination. So, when Paul heals the woman of her affliction, the slave owners are not too pleased. Most people can be quite decent and hospitable until you begin to mess with their economic interests. Paul and Silas crossed that line, so their clothes are torn off, they are badly beaten and thrown in jail.

How do they react to this experience, the damp stone, the chains, the bruised limbs, the rejection, the defeat of their plans? They hold choir practice. They sing. Their voices echo off the stone walls, fill the jail and runneth over into the street outside.

Would you do that? Would you sing under those circumstances? Why would anyone do that? It is a remarkable scene. That doesn’t just happen. For one, you have to know a story that can be set to music. In those most trying circumstances they are able to sing because they know a story that can be set to joyous music, whatever the setting. They are able to sing in prison because they live by the story of one who entered the dark corners and prisons of our lives so that we might join him in his freedom and victory.

That seems to me a good test of the stories we choose to live by: Can I take this story to prison with me? Would it sustain me even there? (I remember someone giving the advice: preach as if you are a dying person preaching to other dying people. And I thought... well, actually, that is an accurate description of what we are doing, isn’t it?) Many other stories may be sufficient when life is gentle and bright. But what story will hold up to reality when life is hard and rough? It is a question that a lot of people are asking these days.

If we have the right story, the songs will come. After all, only some stories can be set to music. I doubt, for instance, that the line, "the one who dies with the most toys wins" will ever become a song lyric. We will not soon hear hymns to self-interest and rising net worth. Don’t look for a new hymn, "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Ourselves" any time soon.

No, there are many stories that simply will not fly as songs. It is as if the music refuses to carry stories that are unworthy. I once saw an interview with a songwriter who had written hundreds of songs. He was asked to name one in which he did not use the word "love." He was stumped! He could not think of one. So many of our songs, in whatever genre, are about love. Love is a story that can be set to music.

But not all stories and songs - even about love - are sufficient in every circumstance. A couple of years ago my wife, Karen, and I celebrated our anniversary by spending the evening in the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Even if you have never visited the Rainbow Room, I am sure you have seen it in movies from the 30’s and 40’s. It is everyone’s image of an art deco nightclub. The tables are set in tiers around a revolving circular dance floor. Big-band music and the lights of Manhattan provided the backdrop for the scene. The music that night was strictly Gershwin, Cole Porter and the like - all about love, of course. Everything seemed to fit: the setting, the music and the words about love filling the air.

Then the band played a song that transported me to a very different time and place: a funeral service I attended the year before. The person who died loved the old standards and requested that a few of her favorites be sung at her funeral. One of them was Gershwin’s "Love is Here to Stay." A beautiful, romantic ballad. You may remember it: "The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they’re only made of clay, but our love is here to stay..."

I love that song. I loved listening to it in the Rainbow Room. But I found it painful at the memorial service. Now, don’t think I’m being a grump here. It’s not that I think such music disrupts the decorum of a memorial service. It just didn’t hold up to the occasion. In the Rainbow Room, where life is sparkling and bright, such romantic sentiments are sufficient. By contrast, at a memorial service, in the midst of harsher realities, we need something more. In the face of the grim and powerful reality of death, a ballad about romantic love just seems to blow away like a frail flower in a stiff, cold wind. I like the love songs that were sung in the Rainbow Room. But we also need a different kind of love song, the kind that can be sung in the dark corners of our lives, at the memorial services and in prison cells.

It really is a remarkable scene: Here are Paul and Silas, in prison, in death’s waiting room, singing hymns. That doesn’t just happen. And it takes more than a story that can be set to music. In order to be able to sing hymns in prison, you have to have already sung them over and over again, in every circumstance, until they can be sung - in a telling phrase - "by heart." That is, in order to bring such songs into prison, they have to nestle somewhere deep in the heart and take up residence there. In order to hold choir practice in prison, first you have to go to a lot of other choir practices in places like church basements and sanctuaries. That is, in order to be sustained by the Christian story you have to be steeped in it. It has to seep into the deeper recesses of your being, which usually takes time and much repetition. It takes time to write something on a human heart.

But when that happens, it is a remarkable thing to witness. As a pastor, I have been with those who have lost everything but the last scattered fragments of their memory. Such a person may have lost her ability to recognize close family members or remember her own name. But she’ll sing Amazing Grace along with you, or repeat the familiar phrases of the Twenty- third Psalm. And you have to wonder how many times that song was sung before it seemed to be able to sing itself. How many times were the words of the psalm repeated before they were etched so deeply on the heart that they are visible even in such a dark time?

So, why do we worship when there are many other more productive things one can do with a Sunday morning, when worship is so obviously inefficient? In part at least, we teach and learn the story of Jesus, we sing our songs of praise over and over again, so that eventually, over time, they might lodge somewhere deep, so deep that they can be smuggled into prison, or the other dark places that we are sure to visit at some time or another.

You may remember hearing the story about the Greek cruise ship that sank off the coast of South Africa a year or two ago. Soon after the ship ran aground in a severe storm the crew deserted with a few passengers in lifeboats. The remaining passengers were brought into the main dining room to await the rescue helicopters. There the ship’s entertainers tried to keep panic and gloom at bay with magic tricks, jokes and sing-alongs. One passenger later recalled, “There we were, sitting in the dark, singing songs to keep our minds off the cold and fright. We began with ‘We are Sailing,’ but decided it wasn’t true. We got into ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’ and ‘Good-bye Love, Good-bye Happiness,’ but this did nothing for morale.” In other words, they had no other songs to sing. No other song, more powerful and more enduring, had been traced on their hearts.

Eventually all the passengers were saved before the ocean consumed the ship. But I wonder if, since that experience, any of the passengers have searched for other stories to live by, other songs to sing amid the threatening storms that are sure to return.

Gratefully, the story by which Paul and Silas lived was big enough to take to prison with them. And, gratefully, it is our story also. It is a story that could be set to music, because it is a love story. But it is a special kind of love story, a story of God’s fierce and tireless love for God’s children. It is the story of a God who, through the hell of internal anguish and the high water of external disaster, is with us still.

Now that is a story and a song that you can take to prison with you!

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