A Song Still Rising
Exodus 15:20-21, Acts 16:25-24
Singing still opens prison doors.
In 1995 choral conductor Elvera Voth started the East Hills Singers in the Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas. Sponsored by the nonprofit organization Arts in Prison, the program brought together incarcerated men and professional singers to rehearse and perform together. Many of the inmates had never sung before, but in the group they found a new passion, a new belonging, and a new joy. Participants described the choir as a way to feel human in an environment with little humanity. Members noted the strong bond formed while singing and highlighted the love, compassion, and forgiveness they had received from audiences during performances.
The recidivism rate in Kansas is over 50 percent. For the East Hills Singers, it is less than 10 percent. The East Hills Singers became the first men’s prison choir in the country to perform outside of prison walls. They continue to perform regularly in churches across the Kansas City area. In fact, next month on May 2, they will be performing at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village.
There is a power in singing. Something happens when people sing together. Breathing together. Feeling together. Becoming something more than we were alone. Science can measure some of the effects. Singing together reduces stress hormones, boosts mood, strengthens the immune system, improves lung capacity, and even synchronizes heartbeats. Anyone who has sung in a choir already knows this truth in their bones. Singing changes us.
And sometimes singing does not just change the singers. It changes the world around them, as exemplified by the Singing Revolution in Estonia.
Singing can be prophetic.
In scripture, prophecy is not mainly about predicting the future. Prophecy is telling the truth about God. It is proclaiming what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will continue to do. Prophecy names the world as it is, and the world as God intends it to be. Prophecy gives voice to hope when hope feels impossible. Prophecy announces what God’s kingdom looks like on earth as it is in heaven.
Prophecy is not something that ended long ago. It is something the church is invited to participate in today. Because as Easter people we live into the resurrection life of transformation, not only of our own lives but of the life of the world.
Throughout Israel’s story, God speaks through unexpected voices, calling people away from fear and toward justice, mercy, and new life. Over the next six weeks we will listen and learn from prophetic women in the Hebrew Scriptures, some familiar and some less well known.
The first prophet named in scripture is not a king, priest, or warrior. It is a woman holding a tambourine and leading the people in song. Miriam.
Miriam is the older sister of Moses. She is present at pivotal moments in the story of the liberation of God’s people. She is introduced simply as Moses’ sister, who stood at a distance to see what would happen as he was placed in a basket among the reeds of the Nile. She speaks boldly to Pharaoh’s daughter, offering to find a Hebrew nurse for the child, and then brings their mother to care for him. She helps save Moses from the waters of the Nile, and later she celebrates God’s salvation of her people as they pass through the waters of the Red Sea.
In Exodus chapter 15 she is named. Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, takes a tambourine in her hand, and all the women go out after her with tambourines and dancing, singing, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”
The song they sing is one of the oldest texts in scripture, dating back more than ten centuries before Paul and Silas sang in their cells. While Miriam’s song appears as a brief response to Moses’ longer Song of the Sea, many biblical scholars believe this song may have originally belonged to Miriam before being attributed to Moses. The first lines of Moses’ song are the words of Miriam’s song.
Miriam gathers the women. She takes her tambourine and sings, not privately, but communally.
Before Israel has a king, before Israel has a temple, Israel has a song.
The people are not yet organized. They are not yet secure. They are not yet powerful. But they are free. And the first thing free people do is sing.
Songs form people. They provide a framework of shared memory and meaning, much like our national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner. Miriam’s song was passed down through generations, sharing the story of God’s liberating work in song long before it became scripture. The song celebrates God’s power and gives witness to that work continues, even now.
This is how singing becomes prophetic. Voices joined together in song show us what God’s kingdom looks like. When we sing together, we experience, even if only for a moment, God’s kingdom in our midst.
Miriam knew what the East Hills Singers discovered centuries later. When people who have known confinement begin to sing together, something inside them opens. A different future becomes imaginable. A new identity begins to take shape. Not prisoners.
Not slaves. Not enemies. But a people.
One member of the East Hills Singers described the unity found in singing this way, “We all play different parts and we all sound different individually, but together we become this great melody. In many communities we are taught to see difference as threat, but when we learn to listen to one another, we begin to discover how much more becomes possible when we work together.”
The song of Miriam did not end at the Red Sea. It echoes wherever people gather to sing hope into difficult places. And this afternoon we have an opportunity to do just that.
This week I received an email from Pastor Catherine extending an invitation to our congregation to participate in some prophetic singing. This afternoon at 5:45, College Hill United Methodist Church will host a gathering of Singing Resistance. Singing Resistance is a grassroots movement that began amidst violence and injustice in Minneapolis and has spread across the country. People gather to sing songs of hope and solidarity, expressing collective grief and anger while fostering courage and community strength through nonviolent, joyful resistance.
Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a member of the resistance against the Third Reich, once wrote, “It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song.”
This is the invitation of prophetic song.
To sing when hope feels fragile. To sing when justice feels distant. To sing when fear tells us to be quiet. To sing when the world tells us nothing can change. To sing when love feels risky. To sing when courage feels costly.
Because when we sing together, we begin to hear the world differently. We begin to hear the possibility that God is still at work. We begin to hear the possibility that love is stronger than fear. We begin to hear the possibility that resurrection is not only something that happened once, but something that continues to happen.
The song of Miriam is not finished. The song of liberation is not finished. The song of justice is not finished. The song of hope is not finished. It is still rising.
It rises whenever people refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. It rises whenever voices join together in courage and compassion. It rises whenever the church remembers who we are and whose we are. It rises when we sing in worship. It rises when we sing in protest. It rises when we sing in grief. It rises when we sing in hope.
Because the good news of Easter is not only that Christ is risen. It is that the risen Christ is still at work. Still rising in communities of compassion. Still rising in acts of justice. Still rising wherever love refuses to be silenced.
And maybe that is why the first prophet named in scripture is not holding a scroll, but a tambourine. Because sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is join our voices together and sing.
So may we have the courage to become people whose song still rises. A song that remembers God’s faithfulness. A song that proclaims God’s justice. A song that trusts God’s future. A song that helps the world hear the good news that resurrection is still unfolding even now.
May it be so in your life, in the life of your family, in the life of our congregation, and in the life of Christ’s church.
