Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the hopeful presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. It is a simple and almost trite phrase, especially in the season of Advent. Yet I wonder if people pay attention to the meaning when they hear it.

Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. There is no other hope. Anything else that claims to be hope is mistaken, mis-directed, and untrue. Hope lies alone in Jesus, the Christ.

The season of Advent gives us the opportunity to take a look at hope. It is the season of hope, marked in our banner and paraments in blue, the color of hope. Hope for the coming of this Jesus in Bethlehem. And hope for the second coming of Jesus and the kingdom of God in all its fullness.

The second lesson this morning uses the language of hope: "in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." We wait in Advent for the fulfillment of God's promise. In Advent, we long with all our hearts for concrete evidence and for the unambiguous experience of God's kingdom. Such a longing resounds in the words of the prophet Isaiah, spoken in cries:

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together,

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

Advent encompasses a mode of living. It is a summary of living, providing the theme of hope. Any life worth living is a life lived in hope. I really like the small picture in my office. It depicts a fishing pole. Along the pole and the line are penned these words: "The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable; a perpetual series of occasions for hope." Hope is a gift of the Spirit that I thoroughly enjoy practicing, especially in this form.

Even the prayer of the day focuses for us this aspect of Christian living. "Stir up our hearts...give us strength in our conflicts and shed light on our path through the darkness of this world." Hope stirs us to act, it gives us strength, it lights new paths.

The Advent of our Lord dispels our darkness and lights a new path for us, a light that is greatly needed. Emil Brunner once said: "What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of human life."

Jim Wallis speaks and writes much about hope. In a "Sojourners" article, he writes: "Hope means more than just hanging on. It is the conscious decision to see the world in a different way than most others see it. To hope is to look through the eyes of faith to a future not determined by the oppressive circumstances of the present...To dig our heels in and say no to the present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing."

To walk a new path and say "Yes." In today's gospel reading, John the Baptist announces that Jesus is coming to give new and solid reason for hope. A new path is to be prepared, a new type of deliverance is coming. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that God is not about to scrap it all, to say, "Well, that's it; I'm not taking any more." The good news is that God is willing to pay the price to keep... human history going, even if the price is the gift...of his Son, Jesus Christ...There is reason for courage; there is reason for commitment; there is reason for hope; it is possible for our lives to be laced with joy." (Augsburg, p. 23) And the new paths of the possible present themselves to us often as surprise.

Take for example a story that arises from an urban legend, but one that happens to be true. It has to do with the impact one nameless, homeless man had on people over 25 years after his death. Tapes of him have been played in homeless shelters all across America. Thanks to the grinding of the rumor mill, this homeless man 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 the 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 versions that have been circulating.

This story involves Gavin Bryars, one of England's leading composers. In 1971, he 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 he 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, he 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 Bryar's gain. He took the rejected audio tape and could not escape the haunting sounds of this man. So he did some research on his own into who this homeless person might be. From the film crew, he learned that he didn't 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 repeated lines of his song.

One day, while playing the tape as background to other work, he 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. Many more had taken their seats and were motionless at their desks, transfixed by the voice. More than a few were silently weeping.

Bryars was stunned. Although not a Christian, he couldn't help but be drawn to the spiritual power of the unadorned voice. His John-the-Baptist voice touched a lonely place in his heart.

He began to yearn for the simple confidence and faith this old man's song celebrates. He began to face what it means to feel homeless and alone even when in the midst of other people.

He vowed to honor this homeless man by creating a recording that preserved his simple message that, no matter what one's circumstance; Jesus "loves me so..."

It took him until 1993 to create and produce what he felt was a proper tribute, which he did in partnership with one of America's top composers, Philip Glass. The result is a compact disk entitled "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet."

Bryar's journey is an Advent journey. In this season, the powerful story of a single man lights paths for us that we would not otherwise have imagined. Every one of us has a broken song, an imperfect voice, a fading pitch. But the Advent message is that through one homeless couple long ago, in a place called Bethlehem, God wrapped humanity's broken songs and shattered chords with the music of the spheres. In that birth we now anticipate, God supported each of our feeble attempts at singing with a cosmic orchestra. (adapted from Homiletics, Vol. 8, No. 4)

John the Baptist has announced a new path; Jesus has lived that new path, and now his light shows us the way to preparing that path anew. We live in deeply troubled times. But Christ too was born in a troubled time. He was a poor, small, insignificant baby among powerful kings and fierce enemies. Nevertheless, his message changed the world, and continues to change it through the lives of those who light new paths by following in his footsteps.

The new path in the wilderness of our lives, the new way of the Lord, gets revealed in the least likely of places and through the most surprising people-a homeless man in the street or a tiny baby born to a refugee couple unable to find decent shelter. These are the paths from which our faith flows and to which it constantly calls us.  —  Amen.