A sermon based on Matthew 24:36-44, with the help of Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" as performed by Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne
In those days before the flood
When Noah heard the voice of God,
The voice that told him of new beginnings
That would follow cataclysmic endings,
He took hammer in hand
And started to build the cradle
That would bring his family to safety.
Hammer in hand, with sweat-soaked brow,
He worked, while his neighbours mocked and chided,
Heading off to the latest gathering
Despite the imminent dangers
No one wanted to recognize.
Eating and drinking.
Marrying, and giving in marriage.
Feasting to their heart's content,
Dancing to the end of the world
And I can imagine Noah, in the falling dark,
Singing himself to sleep, having just put out
His lamp
Shadows are fallin' and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep and time is runnin' away
Feels like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
Do you ever feel that way?
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
Even in this time of year, with the sun going down
3.30 or 4. It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
Shadows are falling, and fall they do,
Shrouding the world, shrouding our lives,
At times casting shadows over our faith.
And yet here we find Noah, hammer in hand,
Wood, rope, nails, building that ark, piece by piece
Section by section, not a cloud in the sky.
With faith, hope, love on his mind.
Moved by incredible faith, an incredible sense that
God has called him to build something that will
Bring hope. That will bring salvation,
Noah lives his life, breathes every breath,
in a way that makes sense to no one around,
Because he knows—deep in his soul he knows—
How he is called to live.
Because he knows—and feels in his soul—
The weight of that decision.
Without the weight. Without the scars. Without the shroud.
How would he know?
All the while his friends and neighbours
Have given themselves to the moment.
Have given themselves to the celebration.
Have given themselves to the party.
Have given themselves to Michael Buble’s Christmas album
When it’s still Advent, not Christmas, for God’s sake.
The time for Buble has not yet arrived. The time for Buble will come.
But what we need right now is Bob Dylan.
And you’ll have to forgive me for transporting Bob
Back in time to the days of Noah, the days
Of waiting for the Son of Man,
But these days, it’s the prophets, the poets, the folk musicians,
Who have my heart, and not the pop stars,
Even though I may have been caught making a
Taylor Swift reference to another dad on the playground last week.
But these poets and prophets have a way of accessing the
Stark reality of the moment into which God is being born,
The muck and filth of real life,
Division and polarization, the sickness and pain,
The loneliness and sorrow that creeps up, sometimes overtakes us,
In the midst of it all. It’s not the sparkle of the season that
I rail against every year. It’s that in our consumerist world,
the sparkle doesn’t have enough darkness to shine.
Last week we talked about how all too often we miss the mystery
Of the great feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost,
Because we aren’t able to wait. We aren’t able to dwell in the mystery,
We aren’t able to pay attention, to live in the tension of a
World that’s been promised, that’s not yet arrived.
And that’s what Advent does.
And this week, listening to
A rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet,” a song written
For 1997’s album Time out of Mind, an album that comes
After he’s moved through his born-again-Christian phase…
Bob Dylan’s the prophet that could take me there.
Bob sings:
Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writin' what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
We can imagine how for Noah,
as for the Son of man in Matthew’s apocalyptic gospel,
This sense of humanity going down the drain.
We can imagine, but it often feels like we don’t need to.
We don’t need to imagine what we can see before us,
What we can sense in our hearts:
humanity’s decaying ability to care for one another,
To make space for one another,
to make space for difference,
to make space rather
Than to shunt people to the margins.
To make space, but also go
out of our way to extend God’s loving
embrace.
And this advent, we’re asking the question.
Over and over we’re asking the question:
What are we waiting for?
What are we waiting to happen, perhaps.
But also, Noah’s question. The question that gets
Him up every day in the face of opposition
The question that gets him up every day in the
Face of indifference and mockery
What are we waiting for?
Let’s get moving.
The people around him can’t see it. Can’t hear it.
Don’t have any sense of what’s coming.
They’re so stuck in the here and now, in the parties yes
But also the imminent realities of daily life
That they seem to have no imagination,
No sense that there is one who speaks from
Beyond the moment, calling us to turn our attention
To turn our minds, to turn our efforts to something else.
As Noah works day by day, he stays awake to
The mystery of the world. To the mysterious reality of God’s
Presence. To the way in which the God who is God
And not some mere figment of his imagination,
Calls him—calls us—into this faithful work.
He puts his hand to the hammer, his hands to the plane,
And he fashions a structure that will preserve him
And so many more.
This is work to which we are called in this season too.
In Advent, the temptation, I think, is to sit back,
To wait for God to do something, for God to show up,
But like Noah, like parents waiting for a baby to be born,
There is work to be done. To prepare the home,
To prepare the room, even though we can never fully
Prepare our soon-to-be bursting hearts for the arrival of a child.
Even though we can never fully prepare for the
Sleepless nights, the dirty floors, the endless diapers,
The sheer frustration as we figure out how to welcome
This boundless life into our midst.
All of which is to say that waiting on the Lord is not so
Clean and clear and under control as the carols say.
The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. Hardly.
Lest you think me a pessimist, let me say this.
Hope, my friends, is not naive optimism. Hope is
Hard fought. Hope has travelled through the darkness,
And still looks for the light. Hope knows that the beauty
Of God’s Promised future, while it is coming, often emerges
from some kind of pain.
The birth of a baby.
The nail of the cross.
The transformation of the world that we have known
Into a world that is becoming, a world that will be.
To enter fully into the mystery of this season,
We have to consider the darkness, so that we can appreciate
The brightness of the light. Which is somewhat different,
I think, than the consumptive promise of black Friday.
Bob Dylan sings
Well, I've been to London and I been to gay Paris
I've followed the river and I got to the sea
I've been down on the bottom of the world full of lies
I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes
Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear
It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there
The poets and the prophets know about all of our facades
The facades of our cities, the ones we put up to tell folks
That everything is fine. And what the prophets and poets
Remind us — rather inconveniently I might add —
Is that it’s in the alleys, and in love we find the truth.
They remind us of the danger of going alone.
That these burdens are more than any one of us can bear.
And so we turn to one another. In letters. In commiseration.
In words on the phone. In shared cups of tea. In shared work.
In hugs. In tears.
So that even when we walk in the darkness, we can lean on
One another to stay awake. To keep awake to the work that
God is doing, yes. But also, to keep awake that we might participate
In that work too.
I wonder what it might look like to be ready this season.
I wonder what we might do as a community to bear witness
To embody, to live our hope out loud.
I wonder what we might do to keep the light shining
In the darkness. To invite others to gather around
The warmth. To invite others to gather around
The light. And to prepare ourselves.
And to prepare our community.
And to prepare our world for the light
That while it seems dim in this moment
Will one day soon shine all the more bright
And light our way home.
It’s not dark yet, my friends. But it’s getting there.
May we journey this darkened advent road together.
*Note: This sermon also contains references to songwriters Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, and Jon Brooks
