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Mark 1:1-8 · John the Baptist Prepares the Way
Fifty-Fourth and Lexington
Mark 1:1-8
Sermon
by Leonard Sweet
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There is no song so broken, no monotone so horrible, no voice so tremulous, that God can't take it and compose it into a beautiful symphony.

Have you ever played the game "Gossip" or "Rumors"?

After gathering everyone into a circle, one person begins by whispering some message to a neighbor softly and quietly. The neighbor must then pass along that whispered message (or at least the version he or she heard of it). Everyone gets only one chance to hear what is said before telling it to the next one in the circle.

It's not hard to imagine how scrambled, or even unrecognizable, the original message is once it comes back, full circle, to the ear of the leader.

Despite the advent of high-tech communication e-mail, faxes, conference calls a lot of messages and stories still seem to get through our culture on the old gossip chain. And typically, these stories are altered and adjusted to fit the part of the country they emerge in, the economic status of the community, or the local prides and prejudices.

Some cultural rumor-stories have been around now for decades. Ever hear about the snake in the coat at K-mart or was it a python living on a sale table at Wal-Mart or a boa constrictor that was found under the collar of a mink coat in a Manhattan boutique? The periodic resurgence of this story must be trying to tell us something about our culture (Might it be "Buyer beware!"?).

Recently another, much more serious story has been working its way through a kind of underground rumor mill. It, too, reveals something about the desires and fears of postmodern life. When first heard, this story seemed too amazing to be true. It had all the earmarks of a "snake-in-the-Kmart"-type rumor. But the tale has persisted, and we have finally tracked it down to its source. The following truly happened and involved a definite time and place and person.

This story is about the impact the faith of one nameless, homeless street person has had on people over 25 years after his death. Tapes of this homeless person have been played in homeless shelters all across America. Thanks to the grinding of the rumor mill, this homeless person has erroneously been located in such diverse places as Miami's 7th Street and 1st Avenue, New York City's 54th and Lexington, and on the streets of other lonely, urban centers.

In various versions of this tale, the homeless person has disappeared "mysteriously" suggesting to a hopeful culture that he was actually some sort of angel-in-residence. It is both reassuring and remarkable that when the genuine story is finally heard, it is as moving and miraculous as any of the gossiped versions that have been circulating across the globe.

This story involves Gavin Bryars, England's leading musician/composer. In 1971, Bryars agreed to help his friend Alan Powers with the audio aspects of a film Powers was making about street people. The filming took place in an area around London's Waterloo Station.

Powers filmed various people living on the streets catching with the camera's eye their daily rituals, trials and joys. Some were obviously drunk, some mentally disturbed, some articulate, some apparently incomprehensible. As Bryars made his way through the audio and video footage, he became aware of a constant undercurrent, a repeating sound that always accompanied the presence of one older man. At first the sound seemed like muttered gibberish. But after removing the background street noise and cleaning up the audio tape, Bryars discovered the old man was in fact singing.

Ironically, the footage of this old man and his muttered song didn't "make the cut." But the filmmaker's loss was Bryars' gain. He took the rejected audio tape and could not escape the haunting sounds of this homeless, nameless man. So he did some research on his own into who this homeless person might be. From the film crew, Bryars learned that this street beggar did not drink. But neither did he engage others in conversation. His speech was almost impossible to understand, but his demeanor was sunny. Though old and alone and filthy and homeless, he retained a certain playfulness. For example, he took delight in teasingly swapping hats with various members of the film crew.

But what distinguished this old man from other street people was his song. The song he sung under his breath was a simple, repetitive Sunday-school tune. But for him it was a mantra. And he would sit and quietly sing it, uninterrupted for hours on end.

Jesus' blood never failed me yet Never failed me yet Jesus' blood never failed me yet There's one thing I know For he loves me so....

Like a film loop, the song's final line fed into its first line, starting the tune over and over again without ceasing.

The man's weak, old, untrained voice never wavered from pitch, never went flat, never changed key. The simple intervals of the tune were perfectly maintained for however long he sang. As a musician, Bryars was fascinated. He began thinking of ways he could arrange and orchestrate around the constant, repeated lines the old man sang.

One day, while playing the tape as background to other work, Bryars left the door to his studio open while he ran downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When he returned several minutes later, he found a normally buzzing office environment eerily stilled. The old man's quiet, quavery voice had leaked out of the recording room and transformed the office floor.

Under the spell of this stranger's voice, an office of busy professionals had grown hushed. Those who were still moving around walked slowly, almost reverently about the room. Many more had taken their seats and were sitting motionless at their desks, transfixed by the voice. More than a few were silently weeping, tears cascading undisturbed down their faces.

Bryars was stunned. Although not a believer himself, Bryars could not help but be confronted by the mysterious spiritual power of this unadorned voice. Sitting in the midst of an urban wilderness, this John-the-Baptist voice touched a lonely, aching place that lurks in the human heart, offering an unexpected message of faith and hope in the midst of the darkest, most blighted night.

Bryars himself started yearning for the confidence and faith this old man's song celebrates. He began to face what it means to feel homeless and alone even when we are sitting in the midst of our families.

Bryars vowed to respect this homeless person by creating a recording that would celebrate and accentuate his simple message that, no matter what one's condition, Jesus "loves me so...."

It took England's leading contemporary composer until 1993 to create and produce what he felt was a proper accompaniment to this homeless person's song of trust and obedience. This he did in partnership with one of America's leading composers, Philip Glass. Glass, who is probably most popularly known for his work "Koyaanisquatsi," (the title, translated from Hopi, means "Life out of Balance") brought his musical mixture of rock realism and mysticism to the project. The result is a CD entitled "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet," from Mneumonic (1993).

What convinced these leading musicians/composers to create a musical framework to preserve this old man's song? Why did an office full of busy people find themselves reduced to tears at the sound of his voice? How did this tiny scrap of audiotape from the cutting room floor ever survive to live on for thousands to hear?

Hear it for yourself. We suggest you order the tape from Public Radio Music Source 1-800-75 MUSIC, and set the story up with your people something like we have above. Then sit down with your congregation and listen to 5-7 minutes of this amazing piece. My recommendation would be to pick out the portion of the tape where you hear the street sounds, then the homeless man singing, then edit the tape to quickly move from there to the symphonic embellishment as the strings, woodwinds, brass and eventually the choir come in and then back to the homeless man singing a solo.

After this period of serious listening to the music, return to the front of the church and announce to your people that this is the Advent journey. Each one of us has a broken song, a quivery voice, a frail pitch. But 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 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 lifted forever to the skies.

By the way, the old man whose voice you hear died shortly after that film-crew left his street-home. It was almost as if, when someone finally heard his song, he could leave for another place.

Who knows? Maybe he was an angel after all.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Works, by Leonard Sweet