Music to Set You Free

July 19, 2026

Acts 16:25-34

            Today I am doing the opposite of what I would normally do as a lectionary preacher… I am starting with an idea… a sermon about music… and then finding the scripture passages that will help me preach that sermon about music.  The choice of our first passage was pretty obvious with its musical encouragement.  Our second passage, maybe not so much.  Listen as God speaks to you from a story about Paul in prison from the Book of Acts.

            READ

            You know how I love to talk about different languages.  Not languages like English or French or German… but languages in the sense of how we communicate the human experience… languages that we employ to help us make meaning.  Religion to me is a language that helps us to express our experience of the transcendent… or those ideas that go beyond ourselves.  That’s probably why I won’t ever fall into the “my religion is the only true religion” camp… where all other religions are false and dangerous and must be destroyed.  I’m not the one you go to do the work of indoctrination because I see too much value in the act of sharing and discovery when the languages of religion come together and dance.  Theology, to me, is a form of art that is meant to bring us together.  I mean, isn’t it a violation of the spirit of communication whenever it is used to divide and harm?  I can see and hear and experience our shared humanity as it is expressed through other faiths… through their stories and interpretations of experiences.  I can see the value and the limits.  One form of language alone is never enough to capture the full mystery and wonder of the world around us… or our place in that world.

            Like last Sunday… I need to go back to when I taught World Religions and something I would show my students when we did our quick study of Hinduism.  There was a group of people in India… kinda cut off from the rest of the culture… a people who were descended from the Brahmin… the class of priests that pre-existed what later became Hinduism.  And there was a group of researchers who were visiting this village to learn about and record the ancient songs the Brahmin would do as part of their priestly responsibilities to maintain the order of the universe.  Now I don’t want to rush by that idea.  The purpose of these songs was not for entertainment or even to evoke a certain emotion in the listeners.  These songs were part of the fabric of creation.  Not to sing these songs would… I wouldn’t say unravel… but without the singing of these songs the whole universe would be degraded in some way.  The light of creation dimmed somewhat.  The power of this language of music… to sing the creation into the fullness of being.  These long and complex songs were not written down… but had been handed down from generation to generation from a time before recorded history.  Each generation would listen and learn and memorize the complex vocalizations.  If I remember correctly there was no known human language connected to these songs.  They weren’t singing words.  That’s one of the intriguing pieces that drew the researchers to this village.  In the end, it was thought that this wasn’t just the recitation of sacred stories or epic poems, what the researchers hypothesized from their study was that the songs originated and grew from birdsong.  Some from birds that no longer existed.  These Brahmin priests were singing the music of nature back into creation.  They were a part of a greater work of the divine song all around them.

            That idea that music is a part of creation… that it is naturally within us as a part of creation.  The recognition of its deep meaning to what it is to be a human being… not separate… not apart… but that music joins us to the connective tissue that brings us all together.

            I like that idea.  I think it is an idea we can all relate to in one way or another.  When I was a small boy and I would go outside in the morning during the summers to find some friends and play. I would step into the music of the day.  The sound of cicadas… birds… the hum of insects filling the air.  It would be a natural symphony that at the time I just naturally took in and didn’t think much about it… but now when I step outside on warm summer mornings, the music of the morning ignites my emotions and I’m transported back in time and space.  But more than that… I’m connected.  I’m connected to that something that is greater than myself.  Through the language of nature’s song, I’m a part of the universe in those moments.

            Music… the music we create… has that same power over us.  A song has the ability to take us somewhere.  It may be to something in our past.  It may be emotional.  A song plays and the tears start to flow.  Our memories are stirred and we are with others in our life… sharing in a meaning that gets recreated again and again.  Music can open us to that greater shared transcendence of our being human.  When I asked you all to share your favorite hymns… I would bet that for the vast majority of you that favorite hymn has nothing to do with the quality of the music itself… the tune… or maybe even the words.  That’s hard for me to admit because I am such a word person.  But, I would daresay that what makes a hymn a favorite of yours has to do with the meaning that is attached to that hymn.  The place or the time you heard that hymn sung again and again… maybe even a gift passed down from one generation to the next.

            Music is a language that has the ability to stir our very souls… it goes deep to our core.  Our emotions.  Space and time.  Our thoughts and our ideas are taken to new levels of meaning through music.  So, it’s no surprise that music has always been a part of our faith roots.  The Psalms are lyric sheets without the notation.  Music… because it does go so deep to our core… is the perfect vehicle to connect us to the divine that surrounds us.  The Psalms give us open hearts… hearts that sing out of pain… hearts that sing in wonder… hearts that yearn to share in the love that is felt coming into them.  Music can take us to that place of honest vulnerability where God meets us with such grace and truth.

            And, unfortunately, music… like everything else… can be used to manipulate… or to deflect us into separation and sin.  Consumerism can cheapen music into a commodity.  I joked with Carson last week or so that I was going to choose a scripture passage from one of the Old Testament prophets for this Sunday… like these words from the prophet Amos speaking for God… “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos from so long ago experienced and knew how music could be used to manipulate.  Music with all of its fantastic attributes easily can become an idol where we mistake the means to the divine for the divine itself.  The image of God becomes lost with how the music makes me feel.  The performance and performer become the destination instead of the vehicle to bring us into God.  We get turned into shallow consumers where our likes or dislikes determine the scope of what the language of music can do.

            I think that may be why I chose for this morning this story from Acts with Paul and Silas in prison… praying and singing hymns to God.  There’s something in that image of the two of them… sitting in the dark… having been accused by the mob and beaten severely by rods at the orders of the magistrates and authorities.  Sitting there now with their feet in the stocks… imprisoned… and yet free.  Cast in darkness and cruelty, a hymn simply sung reveals the continued presence of God that surrounds them… their hearts staying focused on the reality of the divine… not being broken.  Music is the language that communicates this to us.  When the earthquake comes and the doors are opened and the chains are unfastened… God is not in the earthquake.  It’s a play on our expectations.  To escape from the prisons that surround us.  That is what we ask God for isn’t it?  But God comes to us… joins us in prison.  Frees our hearts through grace so that our prisons no longer have the meaning needed to have power over us.  The hymn they sung was a song of God’s freedom.  And it is that freedom that the jailor responds to… that connection to God that he desires… to be a part of the divine… to be saved from the tyranny of separation and sin that surrounds him… that imprisons the jailor.  He leaves the limited, reactionary language of fear and enters into the freedom of possibilities being sung into all creation by God.

            It may be that what Paul and Silas experienced in the dark is what creation has been trying to teach us all along… that God is always singing. Singing in the birdsong that shaped the Brahmin chants. Singing in the cicadas of summer mornings. Singing in the hymns that carry our memories and in the Psalms that bare our hearts. Singing in the justice Amos longed for. Singing in the freedom that shook the jailhouse but did not demand escape.

            Maybe we don’t need to worry so much about singing louder… or better… or with more polish.  Maybe first we need to listen. To listen for that song of freedom that God keeps threading through creation. To listen until our own lives begin to hum along with it. To listen until the prisons we carry lose their power. To listen until the language of fear gives way to the language of grace.

            Because God is still singing. And somewhere in that song is a place for us… a place where the voices of our lives can join in the melody… a place where the world might hear, even for a moment, the music of freedom being sung into creation again.  Amen.