Isn't that a great hymn? And what a wonderful tribute by grateful children to their parents! You might think I was ordered to say that -- no, it comes from my heart! And what a tribute it is that this church is full today with those of you whose lives have been in someway touched by this couple whose 50 years of married life we celebrate today!

As you know, just a few years ago, each of them celebrated 50 years of teaching. All of us thought that would be the time for them to retire. In fact, he did, but then came back as principal of Wesley, and she continues to teach! Its like an addiction, we can't get them to stop! But there are people that they meet regularly -- that even I meet from time to time -- who give eloquent testimony to how their lives were touched and changed by their teaching, by a challenging or encouraging word. The values that they incorporated in their lives as teachers are the same ones that they brought to their marriage -- values such as integrity, justice, love and service. But today is not so much for celebrating what each of them has done individually as to celebrate their life together.

It was about 1948 when a 26 year old teacher from Richmond cast his eyes on a 16 year old girl from Rippon. Imagine that! Today, you might think of them as a staid old couple upholding the cherished traditions of our society. But you know, there is wild side to them. This was not one of those nicely and neatly arranged marriages -- which of course is the tradition, particularly 50 years ago. No, this was a right royal flirtation, a passionate romance. Keeping the right traditions was the farthest thing in their minds. If someone had written their story, it might easily have been a best-seller! It was music that brought them together, they told me. He loved her piano playing, and she loved his deep bass voice.

Almost 30 years ago, I came to know this family through my own romantic involvement with their eldest daughter. And when I made those first hesitating forays in to their home -- I was the first prospective son in law, you see, and there was no one ahead of me that I could learn from -- the first thing I noticed was the music. It was nice to be invited to dinner, but then there were the compulsory after dinner gatherings around the piano with several copies of the Methodist Hymn Book. For a fellow like me, for whom sight-reading a bass line was not too different from reading Braille, this was a rather intimidating experience. But the message was clear. Music was the life of this family - and I knew I had to shape up.

So, what's the secret to being happily married for 50 years, I asked them last week. This is not question about how to live this long -- its not about the quantity of time, but about how to live with joy and contentment -- its about the quality of the marriage. Everybody wants to know. In these post modern times when marriages face enormous stresses and break down far too often, and when a good part of my ministry as a pastor of a Baptist Church in Chicago is to counsel couples whose marriages are in deep trouble, I too want to know. And I have no doubt that some of you here today are facing serious stresses and struggles and having great difficulty keeping your marriages from falling apart -- and you are wondering what's the secret to a marriage that lasts this long. So, on your behalf, I asked them -- what's the secret?

And they showed me a book -- quite tattered and torn with pages flying all over -- here I brought it to show you. And what do you think this is? That's right, it’s the Methodist Hymn book. The secret is their life of praise. It shouldn't surprise anyone that today's service has four congregational hymns and two specials. They probably wouldn't dare to do this when they have a son-in-law preacher -- but I know they might have preferred to cut out this sermon and inserted three more hymns!

A life of praise! 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 and 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 the meaning of bearing witness. Not all the tunes we get are happy tunes, though. Sometimes worship must mean lament and weeping, the underside of praise.

Amma and Thatha are very clear that I do not communicate to you that 50 years was all sweetness and light. They've perhaps had more than their share of struggle. I don't have time to tell you all the stories -- you can ask them sometime. From their caring for siblings and extended family, in addition to raising four highly gifted children and the financial concerns that inevitably go along with these -- to dealing with challenging people and situations both at their schools and church and the stresses that these issues brought to their marriage, not to mention challenges to their physical health -- life was often tough. But then as they look back on those challenging times they see God's hand in everything, leading and guiding every step of the way. And of course, there were times of great joy and rejoicing in God's graciousness and providence.

I particularly remember the time they visited Dhilanthi and me in Chicago in 1994. We worried, because being over 70 years old at the time, Thatha was uninsurable. "O ye of little faith!" Jesus might have scolded us. Every year, our church takes a weekend off in April for a retreat. We go to a campground in a remote area in Wisconsin. And, of course, they went with us. That Saturday night Thatha had a heart attack. When we discovered that the closest hospital was about 15 miles away, our hearts sank. Somehow we managed to get him to Waukesha Memorial Hospital. Amazingly, this hospital turned out to be the premier teaching hospital for the University of Wisconsin. That night he got immediate attention and a few days later he underwent quintuple by pass surgery under the hands of some of the best surgeons in the United States. Needless to say, he got a brand new lease on life that day.

But the second most amazing part of the miracle is this. Health care costs in the United States are extremely prohibitive. And this hospital bill came to -- now listen to this, $67,000. An amount Dhilanthi and I couldn't have paid in our wildest dreams. This hospital was in that particular county in Wisconsin, which had very liberal policies about paying for health care and enough money to support those policies. I remember the day when Thatha had returned home and Amma and I drove back to Wisconsin to meet an Administrator in that county to settle our bill. After making some calculations, she told Amma that her cost will be $330 - that they will take care of the rest of the bill. I almost fell out of my chair. Later a doctor friend who works in Chicago told us, if he had had the heart attack in Chicago, being a large city, it wouldn't have absorbed that cost. It was one of those times when God's providence was so clearly evident. But the best part was this -- through that entire ordeal, they were praising God -- a powerful witness to the hospital staff and to everyone from my church who visited.

In the good times and the hard times, the challenging times and the times when life was smooth, they took what God was giving and gave it back transposed as their worship. And they took what the world was giving and gave it back transposed as their witness. One could say, they lived by the words of the hymn, "Through all the changing scenes of life in trouble and joy, the praises of my God and king - my heart and tongue employ."

In trouble and in joy -- you know, the songs you sing in the midst of challenge and trouble need not be songs of gloom and doom. Songs of praise sung in the midst of struggle are a defiant expression of faith in a God who, despite our circumstances, deserves our praise. So in the midst of the struggle, whatever their story, their song might recall: "This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior all the day long." Whatever the circumstance they might sing, "I'll praise my maker while I've breath, and when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers, my days of praise shall ne'er be past." Or their all time family favorite, which we will sing later, is a powerful confession of this courageous faith: "This, this is the God we adore. Our faithful and unchangeable friend, Whose love is as great as His power, And neither knows measure nor end."

You might ask, how is it possible to sing a great hymn of praise when you are still in the midst of struggle? Let me share with you a very important theological principle, which I know Amma and Thatha have powerfully grasped and used in their 50 years of married life. I call it Pro-active praise. We are not used to this. What we normally do is Re-active praise. At Cornell Baptist Church, where I pastor, when we come to our prayer time at worship, someone will say, "I have a praise," wanting to praise God because some good thing, something they hoped for and prayed for, has happened. That's re-active praise. Praise is pro-active when we begin to praise God, even before the good thing happens, in the midst of the struggle and in the midst of pain, with the powerful hope that God will change things around and that God will use us to make that change happen. In pro-active praise we refuse to be victims of circumstances, but become co-creators with God of a new reality. You ask how is this possible? The Bible is full of great examples. Let me briefly tell you one of the most poignant of these.

Paul and Silas are in the city of Philippi. (This story is in Acts 16) They had just freed a young girl oppressed by an evil spirit. Some people had been under the impression that they owned her. They've been turning a profit on her sickness. They are angry because they can't use her anymore. 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. They beat Paul and Silas with clubs, 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, bleeding in the dark. So with swelling bruises and cracked bones, unable to move, their feet wrenched apart and locked in a painful stocks and inside a darkness so thick that they can't even see each others faces, they wait for tomorrow, which just might be worse.

Then comes an interesting word. "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 wasn't one of the great duets in the history of music, but all the prisoners listened, says Luke. 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! 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. 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 violated, when we just been diagnosed with a dreadful disease, or when bombs go off in buses, sometimes it's too soon to sing. 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.

What do you think Paul and Silas were singing? I bet it wasn't "Hai Hooi Babi archige bicycle eka!" 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 will 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. Around the singing of hymns, around pro-active praise, 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. "My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee," wrote Charles Wesley. How do you suppose God shook that prison open if not with the rumble of Silas' baritone, and Paul's brassy tenor?

Several years ago some people who belonged to the JVP were under the impression that they owned the students at Carey College. They came to the school and demanded that the school be closed and the students brought out to their rally. But Thatha was not about to give in to their intimidation -- and even got into a loud argument with them much to the chagrin of the other teachers. They reminded him about how a school principal Matara who dared to defy them was mercilessly killed. If ever there was a time when they truly worried about their lives ending prematurely this was the time. But perhaps the hardest thing about this was that they came to the house and said to them, "We know where your children live!" That night the situation was so tense, that they really thought that the following day would bring disaster. It was the pro-active praise that sustained them that night. Rising up from the struggle about the midnight hour, before the good things happened, before their lives were spared. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, new every morning, great is thy faithfulness O Lord, Great is thy faithfulness." The following day, the government imposed curfew and Carey College had to be closed.

So, what's the secret of a happy 50 years of marriage? Its pro-active praise. Praising God before the good thing happens, because whatever happens God deserves our praise. So praise God at all times. When you are with the driving around, when you are doing your daily chores, when you sit with the family to dinner, when you put the kids to sleep -- praise God always and in all circumstances, because God deserves our praise.