Rev. Paul TellstromIrvine United Congregational ChurchAdvent 2C December 10, 2006
Malachi 3:1-4 Gospel Reading—Luke 3:1-6 word count: 1,968
CD—“Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” by Gavin Bryars with Tom Waits. Point Music, 1993. At beginning of sermon hymn, cue track one so that it is playing when the hymn is over.
What sound can a voice crying in the wilderness make—that anyone, let alone all of creation, could possibly hear? In both the closing pages of the Hebrew Testament found in Malachi, and again in Luke, we hear of such a voice. First, those beautiful words that we hear sung in Handel’s Messiah: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...” (Isaiah 40:3-5) And again in Luke, through an alarming looking man who is dressed like a cast-out and who eats honey and locusts—John the Baptist himself. He comes proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, carrying with him the implication we all hear in the gospel that Christ is coming and that hope will return with him. But who would look at a man with an appearance and a demeanor such as John’s and take him for anything but a ranting street-radical? He is a crazy person, a derelict you have to avert your eyes to, subsisting in the streets half-naked on a diet of bugs and honey. How does the sound of his voice crying in the wilderness fall anywhere, impact anyone, cause a soul to be stirred? What sound can any voice that cries in the wilderness make that all creation can hear, attend to, be stirred by? I have a story of one such voice in the wilderness. His voice is with us today, one that has been stilled for almost thirty years. No-one knows his name, where he came from, who his people were, or even were he was buried. An urban legend has sprung up about him—he has sung his simple song over and over on Skid Row in Los Angeles, he has been sighted as a homeless man who appears at 54th and Lexington in New York, he is a tramp in Miami, he sings in downtown Chicago over the coldest lake winds. He is alive in so many places still today, his simple Sunday school song playing over and over, even though the man died in England in the 1970’s. He still appears singing his song—“Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet, Jesus’ blood never failed me yet. This one thing I know, ‘For he loves me so.’” And the story goes that the homeless man simply disappears in one city after another, like an angel, a supernatural being, even a prophet crying in the wilderness.
Fade out track # one—no music
The urban myth suggests that the voice of hope can come from anywhere, even from the most humble. And yet the real story is more compelling than the fiction that has come from it. In 1971, English composer Gavin Bryars was asked to provide music for a film that was being produced by his friend. He wrote: “Alan Power was making a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. He asked me to help him with some of the audiotapes. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song—sometimes bits of opera, sometimes folksongs, sometimes sentimental ballads—and one old man, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song, ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.’”1 While they worked on the film, this man, who did not speak, or at least not in a way to be understood, was always sunny and delightful, even though it was clear that he did not have a home and lived on the streets around the train station. He played games with the crew, taking a hat from one and modeling it, before trading it with another, and taking on the characteristics of the hat and the wearer. He didn’t speak, but he sang this one song, and he sang it over and over again. Bryars owned the unused audio from the film, and he replayed what was taped for this scene near Elephant and Castle. Behind all the cacophony there was a rhythmic, recurring sound. He remembered the characters that stumbled, yelled, fell, got up, and strutted before the cameras, but there was this sound that stayed persistently in the background. He isolated the sound, and it was this voice singing, “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet…(this one thing I know, ‘For he loves me so’). He played along on his piano and discovered that the voice was perfectly in tune and on the beat, as it sang over and over.
Cue track # four—bring in music slowly
Byars decided that it could have great power if he made a recording of it, starting with the solo tramp voice, then adding orchestration, a choir, and hiring Tom Waits to join in and sing along with him, then fading back to the solo tramp voice at the end. He wrote, “When I copied the loop onto the continuous reel in Leicester, I left the door of the recording studio open (it opened onto one of the large painting studios) while I went downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving around much more slowly than usual, and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping. I was puzzled until I realized that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man’s unaccompanied singing.”2 One by one, despite whatever noises interrupted their lives in work or conversation, in the spell of one unkempt and unseemly prophet’s voice, an entire office of busy artists and workers had grown hushed. Those still moving around the room walked slowly as if in a trance. Others had fallen into seats and were sitting motionless wherever they finally heard him, moved by his voice. More than a few were silently weeping tears that fell undisturbed down their faces. Bryars was thunderstruck. He stops short of calling himself a believer, but he says that he could not help but be challenged by the mysterious spiritual power of this ascetic voice. Coming into the midst of an urban wilderness, this John-the-Baptist voice touched a lonely, aching place that nestles in the human heart, offering an unexpected message of faith and hope in the dark night. Amidst the scenes of human wretchedness that were assembled to play for the cameras near a London railway station, there was this voice—a voice that sang of Jesus’ unending love—over and over again, mostly unheard over the cacophony, but providing a steady background while the human circus moved before the cameras.
Fade track # four—no music
Bryars admitted to wishing that he could have the confidence and faith that you hear in this mantra of the tramp at Waterloo Station, the coming event that the old man’s song celebrates. Who could not face what it means to feel homeless and alone in the presence of this song? And so Bryars vowed to respect this homeless person by creating a recording that would not only celebrate but accentuate this simple message that, no matter what one’s condition, we are loved, and perhaps loved in ways that we never fully understand. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. A tramp in camel’s hair and a leather belt, singing in the urban wilderness, telling of the one who is coming who sandals he is not fit to tie—“Jesus blood never failed me yet, never failed me, yet never failed me yet. This one thing I know, ‘For he loves me so’....” What sound can a voice crying in the wilderness make that anyone, let alone us, let alone all of creation, could possibly hear? Today, in the words of the prophets Isaiah and Malachi, and yet again in the Gospel of Luke, we hear such a voice.
Cue track # five—bring in music slowly
“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming?” (Malachi 3-5 KJV) “A voice cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low.” (Isaiah 40:3-4a KJV) And again in Luke, through an alarming looking man who could appear as a homeless man singing softly at the Waterloo Station—John the Baptist himself, coming to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and the implication we all hear in the gospel that hope would return again in modest beginnings and be revealed to those who needed it most.
Listen—……………… This is the Advent journey. Each one of us here has a broken song that we sing in a broken world, perhaps one that we have sung over and over again that sustains us somehow, even if we cannot always hear it over the noise of the sorrows that encircle us. Behind all of the actions taking place in the world’s foreground, or in those personal pains circling our own hearts that affects each of us, confuses us, hurts us—there is still a quivery voice, a frail pitch, a voice crying in our inner wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” But the story we gather to hear every year in the Christmas message is that one homeless night long ago, in a place called Bethlehem, God wrapped humanity’s broken songs and shattered chords with the music of the spheres. In the birth story of Jesus of Nazareth, God gave each of our feeble attempts at singing a cosmic orchestra of surround-sound spirituality. That Christmas night, our scratchy, scruffy voices were forever lifted to the skies.3 Can you sing his song? Perhaps it’s too simple, too black and white for us complex Christians who live amidst a myriad of grays. We are rational, scientific, reasoning people. And yet we come on Christmas Eve to churches like this one and something happens to us when we take in the sight of children, some of them dressed in tin-foil wings and pipe-cleaner halos; or perhaps it is when we join those around us with our inadequate voices in the singing of an old carol, and suddenly we want so much to believe the story is true—exactly as it has been told to us, and in the King James Version. And I see it happen every year—eyes glistening in candlelight, and if we’re lucky, some of us lean forward in our chairs and cry just a little. Because, that’s when our own imperfect song that we sing our whole lives long, childlike, sing-songy, and full of repeats; rises up in our hearts and reminds us of how deeply human we are. So then—what is it that never failed you yet? Hear the voice that proclaims to you in your inner wilderness to prepare the way in your own life. Where are the points where your humanity (that functions in the noise of all of the voices inner and outer) can isolate one quavering voice? This is the voice that (although you cannot say exactly why) resonates and brings you in tune with the truth of the spheres. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low; you will never sing the song alone, you will always be accompanied—so says the voice of Advent, which waits even now and once again to reveal its light to every one of us. AMEN & ALLELUIA
Cue track #6 for Benediction by Tom Waits & Tramp Sermon Resources1) Gavin Bryars, liner notes from “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” with Tom Waits. CD/Point Music, 1993. Listen to excerpts of the music at: 2) Ibid. 3) “Fifty Fourth and Lexington,” author unknown, Homiletics Magazine © 2002 Communication Resources, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Scripture for Sunday, December 10, 2006 Advent 2C “The Song of Advent”
Malachi 3:1-4 (KJV)
Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-6 (NRSV)
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’
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