A hymns power in a prison cell
Acts 16:16-34
16 One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17 While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you[a]the way of salvation.” 18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
19 But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20 When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men, these Jews, are disturbing our city 21 and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us, being Romans, to adopt or observe.” 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.23 After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. 24 Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 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. 27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 The jailer[b] called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They answered, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 They spoke the word of the Lord[c] to him and to all who were in his house. 33 At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34 He brought them up into the house and set food before them, and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
The continuing theme in our exploration of Acts is that God's Spirit shows up in surprising people, places, and moments. Grace breaks out where we least expect it. A Roman centurion joins the movement. Women are empowered to lead. A chief persecutor becomes Paul, the lead apostle. Gentiles and outsiders are welcomed. But like every great epic story, the Empire strikes back. Even if you destroy the death star in episode one, even if resurrection breaks the powers of death, the Empire persists. Our series continues to explore Paul’s resilience through setbacks, threats, and now jail—to live a great truth: love is the force we need.
Paul and Silas weren't looking for trouble, but it found them. They were trying to deal with a challenging situation with a troubled woman. There was no diagnostic manual to explain her condition. If someone was off, the only diagnosis was demon possession. We might think this will be another miracle story, but helping this woman means she can no longer function as a soothsayer, and her owner is losing money. Setting her free from exploitation also meant dismantling a profitable system built on her suffering.
Paul and Silas are arrested, beaten with rods, and thrown in jail. A sidebar here is that Paul and Silas are Roman citizens. Roman law says you cannot beat a citizen or imprison them without a trial. Something is very wrong when mob threats and violence replace the rule of law. An Empire that does this is not strong but is cracking. The once-great ideals have failed, and holding on to wealth and power become the hidden agenda. The success of the Jesus movement is partly because it reveals the contradictions and brutality of the Empire. One face claimed strength and honor. The other revealed crucifixion, violence, and imprisonment—tools used to dehumanize in the name of control. Jesus' followers offered the world a better way based on human dignity and grounded in agape love. (You will be happy to know that the chapter ends with a higher court stepping in and forcing an apology to Paul and Silas.)
Jail is not a place where people experience love and affirmation. I visited jail many times to screen people for transitional housing. Every hour of the day minimizes your existence as a free human being. A BBC article notes,
Day after day, year after year, imagine having no space to call your own, no choice over who to be with, what to eat, or where to go. There is threat and suspicion everywhere. Love or even a gentle human touch can be difficult to find. You are separated from family and friends.1
One former inmate said,
"It does harden you. It makes you a bit more distant; you become even harder, even colder, and more detached."
I once encountered a man in the church parking lot in Poughkeepsie, NY. He was powerfully built, had a shaved head, and covered with tattoos-and he was in tears. A parole officer dropped him at the church parking lot and told him to meet the pastor and go to the homeless shelter, or else he would be sent back to prison. He was terrified of everything. Sleep was impossible in an open bunk room, with no bars locking him in at night. He didn't know who to trust, had no compadres for mutual protection, and had even lost the ability to buy something in a store. Prison had hammered free choice out of him. He had learned to survive by hardening himself, but he was more afraid in freedom than ever.
The prison in Philippi was likely airless, crowded, and unsanitary, and the text tells us they are in stocks, chained together. We might expect to hear Paul and Silas' bitterness and despair. We would not be surprised to read about their dark night of the soul as they wonder where God is in the dank cell. But instead, the story highlights that they are spending the midnight hour singing hymns. I wonder what they sang? Perhaps, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."
At least 100 hymns in our hymnal quote Paul's letters. Paul later wrote a letter to the Philippians, and at least three songs from our hymnal may have been formed in that prison cell.
"Be thou my vision" mirrors Philippians 3:13–14 – "...forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on..."
Philippians 4:7 says, "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts.: The hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" is based on these words written by a pastor whose entire family drowned in a shipwreck.
Philippians 1:18 speaks of rejoicing in all things, even hardship, a theme of our closing hymn, "How Can I Keep from Singing?" Listen below or read verse 3 (You can also listen to the Enya version, but I found this Mennonite choir to be the most clear and passionate version.)
What though my joys and comforts die,
I know my Savior liveth.
What though the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Love is lord of heav’n and earth,
how can I keep from singing?
Prison could not keep Paul and Silas from singing. Music has an energy of its own. Through poetry and vibration, it transports us to a higher consciousness. Singing has empowered the most important religious movements. Benedictines chanted together daily to sustain monastic life. Martin Luther put Christian words to beer hall songs to teach Reformation doctrine. Charles Wesley wrote hundreds of hymns to propel the Methodist movement across the American frontier. The Civil Rights movement surged with the spirituals of the black church.
Singing produces solidarity. Paul and Silas are together, participating in the reality of God present even in the darkest hour. Singing together, we join voices across centuries, prison bars, and boundaries. We remember that we are not alone. How many times have the words of a hymn reached you when you needed uplift?
The singing is interrupted by an earthquake. The seismic moment, shakes open the prison doors and shackles from the prisoner's legs. These effects are highly precise. Random earthquakes don't break chains. The text implies divine action. Earthquake is an apt metaphor for what is happening through Paul's journeys. The old foundations tremble. These tremors don't just crack stone—they fracture the certainties of the Empire. The old foundations—domination through fear, obedience through violence—fail. In their place, something new rises. Not the power of coercion but the strength of song. Not fear, but fellowship. The earthquake doesn't just free prisoners—it frees the story from the grip of the Empire.
The jailer, once the very agent of state control, is undone—not by force, but by faith. He had been entrusted with a simple task: keep the prisoners silent, shackled, and contained. But instead of silence, he hears singing. Instead of despair, he witnesses defiant joy. When the earthquake hits, and the doors swing open, his first instinct is fear. Not just fear of punishment from above but of a world where the rules no longer hold. In a moment of despair, he nearly takes his own life—until Paul's voice stops him: "Do not harm yourself. We are all here." It's not the tremor of the earth that shakes the jailer—it's the tremor of grace. He realizes that the men he guarded had already been free in Spirit. He, the one outside the chains, was the one truly imprisoned. And now, something in him breaks open. He takes them home, washes their wounds, and is baptized with his household. He moves from enforcer to disciple, from warden to worshipper. The song he once heard through stone walls now sings in his soul. Grace doesn't just shake the walls—it rewrites the roles. The man was never meant to be a jailer. He was meant to be part of the song.
We often fear the shaking ground beneath us. But sometimes, it's the way to freedom. Earthquakes—whether literal or spiritual—disrupt what no longer serves us. They shake open the prisons we didn't even know we were in: the prison of cynicism, the cell of false comfort in a suffering world, the solitary confinement of self-interest. These tremors invite us to live differently.
In Paul and Silas, we see resilience born of song. In the jailer, we know the vulnerability that leads to rebirth. And in the collapse of the prison walls, we glimpse a truth that still breaks through today: that love will find a way, even in the most locked-down places.
So, what prison are we sitting in? What song still waits to be sung? The Spirit has not stopped shaking the foundations. The hymns of freedom still echo through jail cells, refugee camps, protest marches, and churches. The invitation is the same now as it was: moving from guarding the old world to joining the new one.
The Spirit still moves in surprising places. In midnight hymns. In broken systems. In the most unlikely people—even us. Don't be afraid of the earthquake. Sing through it.
