Today we welcomed to the pulpit church member Rev. Scott L. Harris.
Scott is a retired Lutheran minister and last served as Senior Pastor
at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Stamford.
Scott is the Co-Chair of the Refugee Resettlement Committee
and his wife, Karen, is a member of the Board of Deacons.
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ACTS 16:16-34, JOHN 17:20-26 FCCOL August 4, 2019
UNCHAIN MY HEART, Oh PLEASE, SET ME FREE
The late Ray Charles, was not only a singer-songwriter he was also an entertainer whose energy and spirit were infectious. As a pop-singer of rhythm and blues, mixed with a bit of jazz, his music was not composed for Sunday morning worship, like now. After all, if given the choice, where in the order of today’s worship would you put the Ray Charles song titled, “Crying Time”? Just before the sermon? Or where would you put another Ray Charles song titled, “If I Could”? During the offering? Or the song, “Hit the Road Jack”? That’s easy: the sending hymn.
Yet Ray Charles’ music is loaded with spirit and full of soul so much so in some cases the music has a gospel feel to it—like the song, “Unchain My Heart.” Here are the opening lyrics:
Unchain my heart, baby let me be
Unchain my heart cause you don’t care about me
You’ve get me sewed up like a pillow case
But you let my love go to waste so
Unchain my heart, oh please, please set me free
Of Richard Wagner’s heavy, Teutonic music, it was Mark Twain who said, “It’s not as bad as it sounds.” The same can be said of Ray Charles’ music: it’s not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it’s quite good, even biblical. Granted, Mr. Charles is singing of his broken heart, broken by love gone sour. But Ray Charles knows our human heart and soul when we are chained, shackled, imprisoned by a life that is loveless. We are not free. So he sings, “Unchain my heart, oh please, please set me free.”
You may not care much about Ray Charles’ music or these lyrics about being chained and shackled. But Paul and Silas in today’s first lesson would no doubt sway to the rhythm, clap their hands in joy knowing what Ray Charles is singing about. For Paul and Silas chained and in prison are singing their hearts out. “About midnight,” the lesson reads, “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and [their] fellow prisoners were listening to them.”
You have to just love a story like this about Paul and Silas.
There they are, around midnight, their feet in stocks, chained like criminals, praying and singing like a two-man Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the rest of their fellow prisoners listening like a music groupie. What got Paul and Silas in their dilemma? And more importantly, you have to ask, why in the name of God are they singing joyous hymns to God? Wouldn’t it make more sense that if they insisted on singing it would be lyrics close to Ray Charles’ “Unchain us, oh please, please set us free.” But they don’t.
Paul and Silas in jail are not unlike the anecdote about Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, two towering Americans who lived in Massachusetts in the 1800’s. Both men were social misfits, critics of this country making them the conscience of the nation. One day, in 1845, Thoreau was thrown into jail for an act of civil disobedience. While in jail his friend, Emerson, came to see Thoreau. Standing outside the jail Emerson called out to Thoreau, “Henry, why are you in there?” From inside the jail Thoreau called back, “Waldo, why are YOU not in here”?
This little exchange between Thoreau and Emerson leads one to wonder, who’s really in jail? Who’s free? Who’s chained and shackled? Who’s really living a life of freedom? And who’s deluded thinking that they are free?
As for Paul and Silas they may appear to be in jail, but four walls don’t make a prison. The human heart, as long as it’s chained to hate and shackled to greed, lies, and racism—that heart is not free but in prison. The Bible calls it, “hardness of heart.” Is this story a commentary about the current heart of our nation?
Before Paul and Silas are thrown in jail they are just two itinerant preachers who are all-but ignored. Ignored, that is, until Paul heals a possessed little slave-girl, thus setting her free. It’s then that the two men who own the little slave girl go ballistic. With her healed and set free there goes their source of income and wealth thus upsetting the status quo of economic exploitation.
Here is a story of child abuse and slave labor, which leads you to ask: Who, in the for-profit prison industry, is making money from putting immigrant children in cages and prison? Somebody is getting rich—just like the two men in the biblical account who make money off the slave girl.
Consider their behavior: more important to them than the welfare of this innocent child, more important to the two men than the value of this small girl–who in all likelihood will be socially undervalued and economically underpaid as an adult woman—more important to the MEN is their greed and comfort because of their lost income. When Paul heals and sets free the little girl, they go ballistic. Men like these, then and now, measure their lives not by morals and mercy, but by money.
Said Martin Luther, “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.” Luther says, “your heart.” Ray Charles sings, “Unchain my heart, oh please, please set me free.” When it comes to greed, who’s free? When it comes to the heartless exploitation of children and women, who’s chained? The episode continues.
Not content with making a scene over their lost income the two men then accuse Paul and Silas of being socially disruptive: “These men are disturbing the city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are unlawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”
There you have it: the early playbook of how to demonize those whom you dislike or hate. We know what they are doing for we see it over and over again in the news.
For a start, they accuse Paul and Silas of being social misfits—“They are disturbing the city….” Then they label them: “They are Jews.” Does anti-Semitism ever go away? Then again, for Jews substitute, “They are Blacks,” or, Moslems, Hispanics, Mexicans, who are all rapists, drug dealers, criminals.
Next the two men make sure everyone knows that Paul and Silas are foreigners, that is, not Roman citizens making Paul and Silas illegal immigrants. Then the same two men stir up the crowd of people to a frenzy of fear, drag Paul and Silas to court, strip them of their clothes, beat them with rods, and throw them in prison.
There you have it in one episode: exploitative child labor, lies, racism, fear of the outsider, injustice, brutality, a lynch mob, and a rigged legal system. Now who is free? Who is chained? This lesson comes too close to home.
In his 1952 novel, East of Eden, John Steinbeck said this of us: “Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—[humans are caught] in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vise were [the fabric] of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last. . … A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? (A woman, after she has brushed off the dust and chips of her life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil. Have I done well—or ill?”)
The two men responsible for the exploitation of the little girl and the persecution of Paul and Silas will certainly not be counted on the side of the good. But of the jailer, responsible for keeping Paul and Silas locked up? What of him?
“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.”
When the jailer sees the open prison doors he thinks that the prisoners have escaped. Having failed at his duty the jailer proceeds to draw his sword to kill himself. For he knows that if he doesn’t, his superiors will have him executed for dereliction. If Paul and Silas flee to save their own lives, the jailer would certainly lose his. Then at that moment Paul shouts out, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” Instead of running for their lives Paul and Silas stay and save the jailer’s.
In an episode that begins pock marked with exploitation, greed, lies, racial profiling, violence, a corrupt legal system, and a lynch mob, ends on a note of kindness and self-less love. But not just Paul and Silas, but the jailer himself—the one-time bit player in a rigged system of abuse and injustice. So moved by Paul and Silas’s compassion for him the jailer becomes someone entirely new.
“At the same hour of the night the jailer took (Paul and Silas) and washed their hands and feet….He brought them up into the house and set food before them, and he and his entire household rejoiced and he had become a believer in God.” There you have it and Ray Charles sings: “unchain my heart and set me free….”
From being a heartless jailor whose job was to inflict harm he becomes a caring nurse who washes their wounds. From a jailer who locks criminals behind four walls and a locked door, he becomes a host who invites them into his home and feeds them. Who now is in prison? Who now is set free?
Steinbeck is right: “Women and men, after they have brushed off the dust and chips of their lives, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have we done well—or ill?”
WE don’t celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion every Sunday. But whenever we receive the Bread and Wine of Christ’s life, it is Christ, the host, who serves us. Like the jailer it is Christ who welcomes us into his home, washes us, heals us of our wounds, and then feeds us. Jesus Christ, an accused criminal himself, who breaks the bonds of injustice and hate, who breaks the shackles of death and the grave to give us life–without a question of whether we deserve it or not—Jesus Christ a freed criminal frees us with Him.
Ironic, isn’t it? Look around you. This is no prison but a church. All the same, hemmed in by four walls we are here to be set free from whatever shackles and chains us, be that fear, anger, suspicion, bigotry, hate, racism, greed—take your pick. But unchained and set free by Christ. Set free in Christ—even from the finality of death.
Ray Charles sings of what he knows: “Unchain my heart, oh please, please set me free.” In Christ we are, set free: Free to forgive, Free to show mercy, Free to love. In the name of the resurrected Christ,……. anyone in the mood to sing?
The Rev. Scott Harris August 4, 2019