Hymns, prayers and earthquakes

Hymns, prayers and earthquakes: "
By Charles Kiker

On Sunday part of the scripture for the Sunday School class Patricia and I lead was from the sixteenth chapter of Acts, starting with the conversion of Lydia in Philippi, then to the exorcism of the spirit that possessed a slave girl. Now that slave girl and her spirit of divination was the source of considerable profit to her owners. So they were more than a little unhappy with Paul and Silas regarding this turn of events. The girl’s owners complained to the police, who arrested Paul and Silas, beat them, and threw them in the calaboose. So how did Paul and Silas respond? They had a prayer meeting and a hymn sing.

Then there was an earthquake, maybe 7.2 on the Richter scale. However it might have registered on the Richter scale, it was powerful enough to tear down the walls that held Paul and Silas and others deemed objectionable to the Empire. The jailer, fearing for his life, ran to Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” he asked of them. Their answer was the focus from our printed lesson, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Of course the lesson was emphasizing individual eternal soul salvation. I kind of think the jailer was thinking about avoiding losing his head because he had lost his prisoners.

While we were considering these things and chasing but not catching various rabbits, my mind turned to the Swisher County jail in July, 1999. The people caught up in the infamous Tulia Drug Sting were singing hymns and praying for the jailhouse doors to open. But there was no earthquake. At least not yet. They faced a stern judge and a lying single witness:

The courtroom faded and the hammer fell

And they shipped Jesse Ritter down the road to hell,

Slapped his body in a prison cell.

It’s shameful, but it’s so.

But Jesse Ritter’s learning what it means to pray

For God to come and strip the prison bars away

And somehow Jesse’s gonna have his day

Don’t ask me how I know.

There’s just a certain inevitability about it. . . .

(“The Ballad of Jesse Ritter” by Alan Bean in “Taking Out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, p. 80)

There was a certain inevitability about it. The earthquake finally came. And it was a 7.2 on the political Richter scale. But the jailers and their bosses in the Lone Star State haven’t learned a damn thing. The New Jim Crow and mass incarceration continues unabated.

There’s still a certain inevitability about it. The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. The jailers will finally be saved from the immorality of mass incarceration. It will take more singing and praying and maybe another earthquake. How can they be saved? By listening to and learning and living the red letter words of Jesus.

Dr. Charles Kiker, retired minister and charter member of Friends of Justice

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