The Stones Shout Out

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

By 1968, Johnny Cash's career was in jeopardy.

His success had waned, he had become increasingly unreliable,

devolving into substance abuse,

and he was nearly dropped from his record deal with Columbia Records.

In the midst of this tumult, Johnny had a strange sense that recording a live

concert from a prison would change his life.

But because of his recent issues, his producer, of course, would not allow it.

Late in 1967, an erratic executive at Columbia Records named Bob Johnston fired

a slew of producers, including Cash's own, and inserted himself instead into the role.

Capitalizing on this change, Cass asked Johnson what he'd often asked his previous

producer, to play a live show at a prison.

Perhaps due to intuition or much more likely to his own irresponsibility, Johnston obliged.

Now Johnny Cash was friends with the chaplain at Folsom Prison in California,

the Reverend Floyd Gresset, and so it seemed a natural fit to play a show there.

He arranged to play there on January the 13th of 1968.

On the eve of the show, Reverend Gresset welcomed Cash at a motel in nearby

Sacramento. I suppose you need

to be extra hospitable when someone agrees voluntarily to come to prison.

During the visit, Gresset showed Cash a song recorded by an inmate named Glenn

Shirley called Greystone Chapel.

Written about the chapel that lays at the center of Folsom Prison.

By the song's end, Cash was left speechless.

He stayed up through the night and he listened to the song over and over and

over until he'd memorized all

of its lyrics and the tune and was ready to play it by the sun's rising.

He instructed guards at the prison to have Glenn Shirley seated front and center in the audience.

Now, the environment leading up to the show was tense.

Armed guards walked the rafters above the cafeteria where Cash played,

and perched behind Cash's stage were all of the cells of death row.

Cash took the stage and said plainly, Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.

Before opening with Folsom Prison Blues. As the show neared its end,

Cash introduced his final song, and he said this song was written by Glenn Shirley.

We hope you do your song justice, Glenn. We're sure going to try our best.

And then he sang, There's a gray stone chapel here at Folsom,

A house of worship in this den of sin,

You wouldn't think that God had a place here at Folsom But he saved the souls of many lost men,

Now there's a grey stone chapel here at Folsom Stands a hundred years old,

made of granite rock It takes a ring of keys to move here at Folsom But the

door to the house of God is never locked,

Then begins the song's refrain Inside the walls of prison my body may be But

my Lord has set my soul free.

A journey From imprisonment to freedom From the cold iron bars Of suffering

to the ever-unlocked doors Of God's grace through salvation How could it be

that God might have a place there at Folsom.

I've been to prison before myself voluntarily, and I can assure you that anyone

who has darkened the doors would be forced to ask this question.

Those doors are so heavy and the paint on the walls so dim.

And in a space so dark, somehow fluorescent lights shine with an overwhelming brightness.

The food the same color as the walls and each one's jumpsuit the same as the next.

To believe in God requires some

imagination and there's little room for something like that in prison.

And yet somehow, someway, God moves.

The set of keys it takes to move at Folsom are indeed cold and heavy and brutal.

But somehow a man on the inside sang, the doors to the house of God are never locked.

We find ourselves today on a journey not wholly unlike Glenn's own.

Though we are not within the bounds of barbed wire fences, we are at the outset

of a week-long pilgrimage that includes suffering and that requires great endurance of us.

When the altar is stripped bare before us, our belief will require some imagination.

And though Jesus' own journey towards death began long before this procession

through Jerusalem, it seems that right here in this moment, it has become crystallized before us.

Today's liturgy in mere moments previews for us the reality that will unfold throughout Holy Week.

With jubilation, in Christ's procession through the streets of Jerusalem,

cheers of praise from the multitude,

crying out, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

It's easy for us to forget that this procession ends At the foot of the cross,

We are served a jarring reminder As the Passion Gospel presents for us Cheers

now, not of praise, but instead of savage violence With the crowds instead shouting

Crucify Him! Crucify Him!

The truth is that the whole of God's revelation Is made present to us in this next week,

In body and in spirit in our ritual life and the continued monotony of everyday

life, God is revealing something exceptional to us right here and now.

God is marching forward in procession not just voluntarily, but with great dignity

and honor straight toward the foot of the cross.

Jesus is preparing a way for us to share in that journey here and now.

We are sharing in the procession of existence itself the acclamation that,

though confinement and suffering may abound, the glory of resurrection speaks

far more loudly and clearly.

And there is nothing in the world that can or will stop this procession or the

reality that it proclaims.

Many have and will try. There are those who have attempted to dampen the imagination of God.

Or as Jesus warns in the Passion, for if they do this when the wood is green,

what will happen when it is dry?

At the cross, soldiers tried to do it. They shouted mockingly, Save yourself!

As if that is what God would come for. They adorned him in an elegant robe,

not out of honor, but humiliation.

The crowd was so unified in their hatred, as the gospel tells us,

that day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other.

Before this, they had been enemies.

And yet, of course, the story there is not over. All of creation who has bent

its ear to listen knows this to be true.

For as the crowds in Jerusalem laid their robes before the ground and cheered,

Pharisees asked Jesus to just put an end to all of the commotion.

Jesus, of course, turned to them and proclaimed, I tell you,

if these were silent, the stones would shout out.

The glory of God cannot be done away with.

For even the stones are shouting out, The glory of God will always prevail.

From the darkest corners of Folsom there shall spring forth a chapel.

From the roughest edges of our own suffering there shall spring forth joy.

From the desolation of the cross there shall spring forth a Savior.

Today begins a journey of the soul that proclaims loudly that which has always been.

We take the first steps on our procession towards the cross,

with eyes fixed upwards, knowing that a great hope awaits us.

In this week, the story of our salvation is bound.

We are made a people of joy and of freedom.

Or, of course, as a man dressed in black once sang, Inside the walls of prison

my body may be, but the Lord, he has set my soul free. Amen.

Thanks for listening to 60 Church Street, a podcast of Trinity Episcopal Church

in Asheville. Nashville, North Carolina.

Now, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

The homily was offered by the Rev. Mike Reardon.

Introduction and closing reflections were shared by the Rev. Amy Peterson.

Musical contributions were performed by Dr. Kevin Seal.

Sermon audio was prepared by Nanette Popa. Production was guided by Karin Marie Fredrickson.