I want to say how absolutely delighted I am, to come and share God's word with you. The church I pastor, which many of you know by the name Cornell Baptist Church, has changed its name as a result of prayerful deliberations that we had about our identity and mission. We are now Ellis Avenue Church and we have a tag-line that goes: "Celebrating Diversity, Building Community in Christ." It describes who we are and announces to the world the kind of church we believe God wants us to become.

Every significant movement in history has been a singing movement. Any people on their way to some place worth going, and particularly people going towards freedom are bound to be singing. Can you imagine Luther's reformation without the German people belting out new hymns like a "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?" What kind of civil rights movement could there have been in here in this country without "We shall Overcome?" Or could the African National Congress have moved the South African people to one of the most profound and peaceful transfers of power without the song that has become its present national anthem "Nkosu Sikeleli Africa" (God bless Africa)! Or how could we have survived as a nation these past two months without the heartfelt renderings of "America, the Beautiful" or "God Bless America?" Tyrants don't know how to deal with songs, singers, poets or prophets. No, they prefer the monotone of memos, resolutions, contracts and such droning talk. That's the problem with tyranny. It's so darned dull!

I want to talk to you today about worship and praise: No, not the dull, boring monotonous kind. But I want to talk to you about revolutionary worship and pro-active praise. Brother Jim Queen told me that he wants to lead us into a solemn assembly today. I am grateful that he wants to do that. At times of national calamity, the prophets often called for solemn assemblies for national repentance and prayer. And I hope we will have confession and repentance for our individual and corporate sin. I hope we will name our idols, both individual and corporate ones and seek God's power to destroy them. I hope we will cry our hearts out and seek God's grace and mercy for our sin. But I also hope our voices will rise in protest, as did the voices of the slaves in Egypt, in our anger at the injustice that we experience and in defiance because whatever happens, however it happens, Christ is risen. "Where, O Death, is your victory, Where O death, is your sting. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

What a great song of defiance! That was from a song of the early church, quoted by Paul in 1 Cor. 15. That's what I want to talk to you about today -- a defiant praise that arises out of the depth of our grief and our lament. Now, you know, our praise is often re-active. During the prayer time at Ellis Avenue Church, someone might say, "I have a praise," wanting to praise God because some good thing has happened. Praise is pro-active when we learn to praise God, before the good thing happen -- before the prayer is answered: even in the midst of the struggle and in the midst of the deep pain and grief, and in the midst of our continuing anxiety, with the powerful hope that God will change things around. In pro-active praise we refuse to be victims of circumstances, but become co-creators with God of a new reality. But then, you ask, "How can we praise in the midst of the struggle, the grief, the pain, the anxiety, the weariness?" Let me tell you.

Someone said that praise is the "jazz factor" of faith. That a life of praise is a life of improvising passionate, creative responses to what we've been given. God plays us a tune, we take it up and give it back with a passionate response. That's the meaning of worship. And the world throws us a tune and we take it up and give it back with a passionate response. That's meaning of bearing witness. Not all the tunes we get are happy tunes. Sometimes worship must mean lament and weeping, the underside of praise.

About eight years ago at about 4 o'clock one afternoon in the city of Sarajevo, a Serbian mortar shell fell outside a bakery, killing 22 people who were standing in line for bread. The next afternoon, Vederan Smilovich, the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra improvised an answer. That afternoon at 4 p.m. and the next afternoon at 4 p.m. and for 22 afternoons at 4 p.m. this famous cellist brought his chair and set it up and took his cello, and sat down and played Albanoni's Adagio. For 22 afternoons on a ruined sidewalk with the mortar shells still falling in the city, he poured out this music of sadness and beauty. His music is a parable of the church's worship and witness. We take what the enemy gives, and we take what God gives and we give it back transposed. We give it back as prayer of pain and as prayer of praise. And we give it back as beauty. Listen this morning to two first century improvisations by two people who understood the jazz factor of the gospel. This story from Acts 16 can be told in three scenes.

Scene 1: Paul and Silas meet their own personal psychic. The two men are walking down the streets of downtown Philippi and a wide-eyed slave girl starts tailing them. She is pointing at them and she's shrieking. Luke says, she's possessed with a spirit of divination. She knows who they are and she screams to the town who they are. Paul is not amused. Vs. 18 of this story is a favorite of mine. "And Paul was very much annoyed." So he turns it to jazz. Whirls on his heels and says, "Come out of her!" And it does. The madness melts away and she is delivered from the monotone. Her voice is given to her now. She is unpossessed.

Like you, when I think about the events that occurred on September 11^th, and notice how fundamentalism can drive its extremists to do devalue human life and destroy so many, to get their point across, I get very annoyed. When I think that governments, including ours believe that military might can solve our problems and dismiss the killing of innocent human beings as collateral damage, I get very annoyed. When I think about the way in which poor people in this city continue to be exploited, by oppressive public policies, I get very annoyed. Sometimes I get so annoyed that I want to whirl on my heels and say to the evil spirit in that hold our people in its iron grips, "In the name Jesus, Come Out!"

As I talk to people in my community, on the south side of Chicago, where much of Chicago's poor people are concentrated, opportunities for jobs are low, transportation to jobs is scarce, schools are not adequately funded, violence stalks the streets and racism still abounds -- I see in people a certain cynicism. Nothing's going to change, they say. Cynicism is caused by a lack of imagination. One must have imagination to see a different world. And imagination is necessary for hope. When Paul looked at the slave girl, he did not just see a hopeless victim. He was able to see this girl for all the potential she had – all of what God could make her become. When Paul whirled on his heels and said "In the name of Jesus, Come out!" everything changed. Yes, change is possible. And I would love to whirl on my heels and say to people who spirits are caught in the grips of hopelessness and cynicism: "in the name of Jesus, come out!" Because Jesus has given me a way to imagine a new world. And the power to be engaged in co-creating a new world.

Scene 2: Paul and Silas meet the management. It turns out that certain men are under the impression that they've been owning her. They've been turning a profit on her sickness. The gospel has done to her what it means to do to all of us, it has made her unusable by the powers. So it has made the powers a just little poorer. Notice this now: what they try to do for their sense of personal loss is to turn it into a surge of Philippian patriotism. So as it happens even in our own country, personal losses turn into racism and xenophobia (fear of the stranger). You've seen that happen, haven't you? They push Paul and Silas into the crowd. "These men are Jews," they say, "troublemakers. Here to change the way we Romans live." That's all the crowd needs to hear. That's all the members of the city council need to hear, who know how to make political points. They order Paul and Silas stripped and beaten with clubs. And the officers keep clubbing and beating them, until their bones are broken and they lie bleeding in the street. There's no jazz factor here. Paul and Silas can't say a word. They wake up in the local dungeon. What Luke calls the innermost cell, which is to say that there was an outer ring of cells, but at the center of the dungeon was a walled-in space, never receiving any air or light. Into that pitch black, suffocating place Paul and Silas are thrown, to bleed in the dark. To add a bit of torture, their feet are wrenched painfully apart and fastened in wooden stocks. So with swelling bruises and cracked bones, unable to move, locked in a painful posture and inside a darkness so thick that they can't even see each other's faces they wait for tomorrow, which just might be worse.

I want you to know that we Christians, are strangers in our own society. The church is called to be an alternative community. As Jesus put it, we are "In the world but not of the world." That is to say we don't live by the values of the dominant culture, but by the values of the God’s Kingdom. But this is much easier said than done. The fact of the matter is that we are so much a part of the cynical, hate-filled, greed-filled dominant culture that we've not had the guts to whirl on our heels and say "Come out!" Because that would mean that the evil spirit would need to come out of us too! And we would have to change the way we live, the way we think, our values, attitudes and priorities.

But if and when the church begins to take action, and begins to live out its conviction that God is sovereign, and insist that it live out the values of God's kingdom – and take community action against unjust public policies and institutions everyone gets upset. When our church joined up with other congregations in the south side to do just that, our local newspaper decided to write distorted articles and editorials about how churches should stay out of politics. One day our Alderman stormed into my office one day to tell me how frustrated she is with members of our congregation calling her office. And I told her we'll keep doing that, until she shows us that she is acting on the issues that are of concern to the congregations in our community. People in power do not want the church rising up from the dust and live out the truth that God reigns. And until we are able to challenge the spirit of the dominant culture and challenge the principalities and powers, we will be sidelined. "These men are trouble makers here to change the way we Romans live," they said and beat Paul and Silas up and put them in the dungeon.

Scene 3: Paul and Silas in the midnight hour. "It was," says Luke, "about the midnight hour." In the midnight hour Paul and Silas find the jazz factor. Everyone in the prison strains to hear it, rising out of that dark, middle place, the sound of worship, praise, singing to God. This was one of the great duets of history. They sounded nothing like Pavarotti and Pacido Domingo -- but all the prisoners listened, says Luke. I'll bet they did. And word he used is the most attentive, reflective, enraptured kind of listening, the kind of listening you do at a great concert, leaning forward, head cocked, eyes closed, listening! I guess some kind of singing goes on in every jail. But the inmates never heard anything like this. It rose out of the dark with a haunting sweetness in it and something fierce and free in it. There was pain in it. There had to be, with Paul singing through a big busted lip and Silas with his right eye swollen shut. There was a depth of something underneath it that lifted up pain to a defiant expression of praise. A song as rich as love, wild as joy, it rang off the walls like freedom.

We cannot always sing. There are times when it is wrong to sing. When our lives or the lives of our sisters and brothers have just been terrorized and violated, when we’ve been diagnosed with a dreadful disease or when the billy clubs are falling on us, its too soon to sing. Sometimes the only way to say the truth is through silence or weeping. But hear this carefully now. We need not ever wait till the break of the full new day. And we better not wait until our keepers come to turn us loose. We just don't have time to wait until we are fully free. There is a time somewhere between the first hurt and the final healing, sometime after the lights go out and before the break of the full new day; about the midnight hour, when the children of God must lift up their heads and sing.

There are alternatives to singing. We can always beat our fists against the wall and sit in a pile of self pity for a long bitter lifetime, which is the way of a victim. Or we can try to forget it all, repress the pain and get drunk on private amusements. Or if we are the people of God, we might wake up to the option of revolutionary worship to pro-active praise. Then we can pour out the passion we have, the pain we have, and the praise we have to God who meets us where we are, and as we do that we will notice as Paul did, that there's a brother beside us in the dark, a sister, or a whole company of saints who'll join with us.

Why would we do that? Because worship is how we jazz up a system that is doomed. The most subversive thing in the world is the joy of the gospel. This is why Martin Luther said, "the devil can't stand the sound of Christians singing." When Christ calls us to praise he calls us to a revolution. Worship is the witness we make to ourselves and to the other prisoners listening in the dark that God is already at work here. The powers may bind us, but they cannot possess us. Because the Spirit is upon us to preach liberty to the captive and sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the Kingdom of this world will become the dominion of our God and of his Christ, for ever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah! Can you believe it? Paul and Silas were actually singing in that hell-hole.

What do you think Paul and Silas were singing? I bet it wasn't Zippity Doo Dah. And I bet it wasn't "Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before." But if they were singing a psalm, which I bet they were, I nominate Psalm 139. "Even the darkness is not dark with you. The night with you is brighter than day." Had they known it they would have sung, The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him, his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, one little word shall fell him." Or, they may have sung, "Through many dangers toils and snares, I have already come. 'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

And with that there begins a rumble. Something shaking all around. There's a whole lot of shaking going on. Around the music of worship, the foundations of a prison begin to shake. The floor is heaved and stones tremble and the chains fall off and when the dust has cleared, a door is standing open. You worship and you look and a door has opened. God has promised to shake the foundation of every prison house, including the prison house of our souls and our bodies; including every business house, and every house of government that is not a freedom house and every religious house including this one. How do you suppose God shook that prison open if not with the rumble of Silas' baritone, and Paul's brassy tenor? How else will God shake the foundations of our present prison houses if not by the defiant gladness of a faithful people's revolutionary worship and pro-active praise.

At the end of the story, an amazing thing happens. The jailer tried to kill himself thinking that all the prisoners would have escaped. But Paul stopped him. And then he says to Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what can I do to be saved?" "Sirs?" This dreaded prison official who put Paul and Silas in stocks in the innermost chamber says "Sirs!" The power dynamic of the relationship had completely changed. This is what happens when the people of faith stand firm on their commitment to the gospel. Paul says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." That night they were all baptized.

St. Nicholai Church, is a large old Cathedral in the heart of Leipzig, in former East Germany. A group of people there began a Monday night prayer service to pray for their nation, for freedom and peace. Week after week, they gathered to share, pray, sing and draw spiritual strength for their struggle. By May of 1989, the police began to take notice the growing numbers at the prayer services and one day attacked the pastor and a group of people coming out of the prayer meeting. Despite the threats the group got organized and called themselves "The New Forum." On Sept. 25, 6000 people packed the cathedral and on Oct. 2, 20,000 were waiting outside to join in a protest march. And on the night of October 8, 1989, 70,000 people filled the streets with candles in their hands, songs praise and prayers on their lips. That day, they made the wall come tumbling down. And as they climbed over the rubble, they carried a huge banner that said, "Wir danken dir Kirche" - (We thank you, Church). In a recent German movie about that, the former East German security chief testified about his desire to use force, but his inability to do anything other than stare out at the crowd in frozen amazement: "We were prepared for everything... everything," he said, "except for candles and songs and prayers." That folks, is revolutionary worship and pro-active praise.

So lets turn it up, sisters, brothers, fellow inmates, turn up the wildness of worship. The music of longing, and love and lament and praise. The walls we are living within and keep us oppressed are doomed. So let's play it. Let's sing it. And give beauty back to God and to the world. The powers need to hear it. Our fellow prisoners need to hear it. And God will hear it. And use it for the shaking of foundations, the blowing open of doors, and the liberation of captives to sing, "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last!"