The First Sunday of Advent

One of my favorite songs on Bob Dylan’s album, Time Out of Mind, is entitled “It’s Not Dark Yet.” Since you may not all be Dylan fans (and even if you are, he can be notoriously difficult to understand)—I’ll just remind you how it goes. Consider it a fourth reading for today. Ready?

          Shadows are fallin' and I've been here all day
          It's too hot to sleep and time is runnin' away
          Feel 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.

          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.

          Well, I've been to London and I’ve 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.

          I was born here and I'll die here against my will
          I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' still
          Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb
          I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
          Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer
          It's not dark yet but it's gettin' there.

I love that song in a haunting sort of way. And I have had moments in my life when I’ve felt that way, as perhaps you have, also. If you pray through the psalms, you will find that the same feelings and emotions being expressed in Dylan’s poem can also found in many of those psalms of disorientation where the poet feels alone, afraid, and in trouble. For example:

• Save me, O God, for the waters have risen up to my neck. I am sinking in deep mire, and there is no firm ground for my feet. (Psalm 69:1)
• My spirit shakes with terror; how long, O Lord, how long? (Psalm 6:3)
• My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? (Psalm 22:1)

It can, paradoxically, be a first act of faith to cry out to God when we are in pain: we dare to cry out to God about our awareness of God’s absence precisely because we yearn for and need God’s presence. The cry “My God why have you forsaken me?” is the cry of a faithful person who needs to be assured of God’s presence with them when they are in trouble, not the cry of an unbeliever.

So when Dylan sings that he can’t “even hear the murmur of a prayer” he is, in the true spirit of Biblical spirituality, actually beginning a prayer. When we pour our hearts out to God—even in desperation—that is prayer. When it is dark out (or dark within) crying out about the darkness is the murmur of a prayer.

Turning the calendar from November to December can be a time when many among us feel this way. Perhaps we suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder or depression. Or maybe we are grieving the loss of a marriage or a loved one or a job, and while everyone around us seems to be dreaming of a white Christmas and humming “have a holly, jolly Christmas” that frivolity can feel like someone is rubbing salt into an open wound. Sometimes it helps us in those times to know where to find those complaint psalms, so we can get it out of our systems, so we can cry out. And if the psalms aren’t handy, then perhaps we can sing along with Dylan: while everyone else is roasting chestnuts over an open fire we can sing: I don’t even see why I should care; it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting’ there.

In some congregations there is a Blue Christmas celebration to acknowledge sadness and grief. I’m not against those, and I get the pastoral instincts that lead to those gatherings. But my own preference is to make sure there is room within our Advent and Christmas services for depth and acknowledging pain. We don’t sing “have a holly jolly Christmas in this room; not ever.” We do sing and yearn for Emmanuel to come to a people who mourn in lonely exile. At our Thursday morning services we’ll offer prayers for healing in December because we can all use a little healing in body, mind, and spirit. That's simply by way of saying that we can and I think must leave enough room in our December gatherings for all the complexities of our lives. And, truth be told, it's already there if we let God meet us through the texts and the hymnody of this holy season. 

The First Sunday of Advent always catches me a little off-guard. I know how Lent begins: with that stark reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. In Lent we are invited to contemplate our own mortality as we journey for forty days toward the good news of Easter morning and abundant, resurrected life. Along the way we are meant to re-discover that nothing—not even our own dying—can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

Advent begins in a far more cosmic vein with these reminders that the whole cosmos is dust. Especially in this northern hemisphere, in late autumn, there are signs of endings all around us. This gospel reading about the end of human history hardly seems designed to put us in the Christmas spirit as we generally understand that. It seems scary. And I think it’s normal to worry that if there are two in the field and one is taken and one is left, we may not be even completely certain which we’d rather be, especially if the one we are with in that field is someone we love deeply. I dare say that none of us experience glee in imagining others being “left behind.” Whether the world ends with a bang or a whimper, such thoughts usually come into our minds when it feels like “our soul has turned into steel” and “our sense of humanity has gone down the drain,” when we feel like “every nerve in our bodies is naked and numb.”

It’s not dark yet, but it sure feels like it’s getting’ there.

Here is the thing, however, and we don’t want to miss this. Notice what St. Paul says to the Church in Rome—in Rome at a time when the best days of the Roman Empire were clearly in the past and the future looked very bleak indeed. Usually Paul goes on and on. But today’s epistle reading may be the shortest one we get all year. Yet it packs a punch, inviting us to see the world through an entirely different lens. Paul says in the thirteenth chapter of Romans: “You know what time it is.” And then he suggests not only in the middle of the first century in Rome but here and now, on this first Sunday of Advent 2025 in Bristol, not that it is nighttime but morning. Advent I is the moment to “wake up.”

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day…

He may as well have simply said: It’s not light yet, but it’s gettin’ there.

Paul invites us to live and to walk as children of the light. We are called to be light shining in the darkness by allowing that light of Christ to shine through us. The world needs that from us now more than ever. In noticing the darkness, we are called as our collect for today puts it, “put on the armor of light.”

Eschatological literature takes on a whole new meaning once we begin to realize that it is really a wake up call to get busy living. “Everybody wake up, if you're living with your eyes closed!” (That’s Dave Matthews Band, which is a very Adventy thing to sing.)

This is not the time to turn off the lights and go to bed, but a time for sleepers to awake. Advent marks the dawn of a new day; and it begins not with despair but hope. As followers of Jesus we are called to light our lamps and let them shine for all the world to see. “It’s not light yet, but it’s getting’ there.”

On this first Sunday of Advent, we gather together still sleepy from too much tryptophan. It is time, however, to wake up. We gather in a world that is worried about many things, a world that can feel very dark. We come apart to light our candles of hope, and love, and joy and peace. As we do that, we begin by contemplating cosmic endings, knowing that all created things are born and die—not just people but buildings, institutions, economies, nations, and even stars. And yet, with signs of endings all around us we remember the core of the gospel, answers the question: “can it be that from our endings, new beginnings you create?” with a resounding, Yes. Alleluia! As Christians we acknowledge endings not to instill fear but to rekindle hope.

And so we begin a new liturgical year together by remembering that only God is God. We begin where we do because rather than curse the darkness, we light one solitary candle and then another and another and another until the birth itself lights up the world. We will not be afraid of the dark, because we do know what time it is. It’s time to wake up! It’s not light yet, but it’s getting’ there! 

Let's end this sermon where the readings today began, with the prophet Isaiah. 

In days to come the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths."

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

Let us also walk in the light of the Lord as we move through this holy season, St. Michael's. It's not light yet. But it's getting there.

The kirkin' of the tartans

According to tradition, the Kirkin' o' the Tartans originated in Scotland. After defeating Jacobite forces in 1746 at the Battle of Culloden, the British government outlawed Highland dress. Legend has it that during this period, Scots would hide small pieces of tartan fabric on their person while attending church services. When it came time for the blessing, they would touch the bit of cloth.

However, there is no credible source for this tale. Sorry to be the bearer of this news if it is news to anyone here. It's true the English did not treat the Scots well and the story is credible, for sure. But it most likely didn't happen exactly that way.

Even so, Scottish Americans have been gathering as we are today to celebrate their heritage. What began among Presbyterians in New York City has spread and I’m grateful to be celebrating this the second time around here at St. Michael’s.

We tell stories so that we know who we are. Sometimes those stories literally happened. But whether or not they happened that way, they convey meaning and a sense of purpose. The story we tell today doesn’t have to be literal to be true. It speaks to the resilience and hope of a people even in the face of persecution. It speaks of resistance and clarifies identity. 

When I read The Little Engine That Could to my grandson, the point is not to insist that there was a little engine that did. It is to encourage him as his life unfolds to trust that you don’t know what you can do if you don’t try, and that often we discover that we can do lots more than we initially thought. 

In the reading we heard from the 65th chapter of the prophet Isaiah, the hope is that one day there will be peace in Jerusalem and its people a delight. No more weeping. No more distress. No more children dying. Old people dying after full lives. 100 years! They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.

There’s no credible source in all of human history for this tale either. Jerusalem is often a mess, and sometimes a hot mess. Yet we stake our hopes and dreams on the possibility and the yearning for peace on earth and good will to all, We stake our hope on the idea that God’s plan is for the lion and the lamb to feed together and “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” 

Next year, in Jerusalem.

Things do not have to have literally happened for them to be true. We share a dream and when we speak of that dream we are empowered to live toward it. To be instruments of God’s peace here on earth as it is in heaven. As we respond, with God’s help, we make the story true.

This is how holy scripture works. Today we prayed one of my very favorite collects in the Prayerbook. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists. We are not fundamentalists. We believe, as we prayed, that holy scripture needs to be chewed on. We need to inwardly digest it. We need to sit with it, argue with it, pray with it, to find meaning. And the stories don't need to have happened to be true. 

I would suggest to you that this is the primary reason we come here week after week. To remember that dream in a world where it is so easy to feel discouraged and despairing about the future. We gather to strengthen one another and encourage one another to do the work God has given us to do. We gather in hope.

Those small pieces of tartan cloth were like sacraments in the story remembered today: outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. Touching that cloth was a defiant act of insisting that the government doesn’t own us; we belong to a higher power, that in this place we call God; the creator of heaven and earth, the “abba” of Jesus.

We come here to taste and see with bread and wine that God is good, and that God’s plan for us and this planet is peace on earth and good will to all.

We live in the meantime, of course. We live in a world that too often feels like a scary place, a world where division and polarization and fear seem normal. But those are not normal. Those keep us from becoming who God means for us to become. We come and eat our little pieces of bread and sip the wine to remember that we are called to love God and to love neighbor; all of them. No exceptions. We come here to reclaim our identity as living members of Christ’s Body.

Today, we are all Scots. It’s worth remembering that although the word “Anglican” easily slips from our tongues, there would be no Episcopal Church without the Scottish Episcopal Church, because after the Revolutionary War it wasn’t England who was prepared to consecrate an American bishop-elect. Yes, we are part of something called the Anglican Communion. But our debt to the Scots is great and their influence on our Prayerbook is also noteworthy. 

When Samuel Seabury sailed to England to be consecrated, he could no longer promise allegiance to the king. So off he went to Scotland, specifically Aberdeen. And there on November 14, 1784, he was in fact consecrated as the first bishop of Connecticut and the first Bishop in the Episcopal Church. Two hundred and forty one years and two days ago.

Bonnie Scotland. May we give thanks today for all things Scottish: Bobby Burns, bagpipes, kilts, haggis, a wee dram of peety single-malt whisky, and shortbread all top the list of reasons I'm grateful to celebrate this day with you all. 

Witnesses, not Victims: A Sermon on the Book of Daniel for All Saints Sunday

Unfortunately, the Book of Daniel gets very little “air time” in the Episcopal Church. It’s a bit like the Book of Revelation in this way and for similar reasons. But it is our privilege to get this bizarre little text today, as we celebrate All Saints Sunday, welcome a new “saint” into the Body of Christ through Holy Baptism, and gather in and bless our financial pledges to support this parish in 2026. All of this and I’ll try to do it in the usual amount of time. Ready?

The Book of Daniel is almost certainly addressed to a Jewish community in the second century before Christ. The unknown author is a pious Jew living in a time of severe persecution. The goal is to encourage fellow believers by telling six stories and sharing four visions about what it means to be a person of faith living through very troubling times.

The interesting (and at first somewhat confusing) thing is that those stories and visions are set in a much earlier time in history. More than 400 years earlier, in fact; during the days of the Babylonian exile. The writer, in other words, is making an analogy. So it’s “once upon a time” there was this guy Daniel, a guy who lived during through difficult times, without compromising his faith. You, too, can do the same, the narrator argues; you too can live through these troubling times with the same kind of courage, perseverance and trust that Daniel showed.

Sound relevant?

For those of you who may not be familiar with the stories, I’ll remind you very briefly of my three favorites. First, there’s the story of Daniel and his friends, who get a scholarship to attend the King’s College. They are the brightest and best in their generation. But scholarships like the one they are offered by a foreign king come with a price. The danger of nice Jewish boys studying in the halls of Babylonian imperial power is that they will be co-opted by “the system.” The danger is that they may well forget where they came from and in the process forget to love God and neighbor. Their scholarships are a full-ride that includes a wonderful meal plan: the king’s best wines and richest foods. But Daniel and his friends opt out of that meal plan and instead choose a vegan diet. It’s a small act of resistance. But it’s a way for them to remember who they are, and whose they are. And they thrive. In fact they are stronger, healthier and more vibrant than the Babylonians. God takes care of them, in other words, and rewards their fidelity.

Then there is the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; three Jewish boys who refuse to worship a golden image that Nebuchadnezzar wants everyone to pay homage to. For their disobedience they are cast into a fiery furnace. But guess what? They do not burn up. They are unscathed, protected by a God who rewards fidelity.

And then a law is passed that prohibits the practicing of Jewish faith. Daniel is set up: his room is bugged and he is caught praying. His punishment is to be fed to hungry lions. But guess what? When Daniel is tossed into the den, the lions somehow lose their appetite. Like Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego he is kept safe and no harm comes to him.

So we have these children’s stories, perhaps stories some of you remember from Sunday School, especially if you grew up in a more evangelical tradition. The message, however, is very “grown up.” Do not give up the fight! Do not be co-opted by imperial power. Do not be frightened away from keeping the faith in difficult circumstances. Resist!

Along with the stories there are also four visions, visions that sound much like the language and visions of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They are somewhat difficult to understand, but we keep on the right interpretative track when we remember that the message is the same. The text we heard today marks a shift in the narrative, away from the tales and into the first of the visions.

Daniel has a nightmare. It’s about these “beasts,” which is just Biblical code language for abusive political power. Initially the dream causes “Daniel” no small amount of anxiety: it “troubles” his spirit and “terrifies” him. Yet the interpretation of the dream is this: don’t let your nightmares get the best of you, because God is faithful—and God is strong—and God is bigger than any beast.

The message to Daniel (and through Daniel to those Jews suffering persecution in the second century before Christ) is that they must not let their fear get the best of them. They must not give in to terror and anxiety, to their worst nightmares. Rather, God’s people are called to trust: called to a non-anxious presence. To remain resolute, determined, and steadfast, even in the face of persecution. The holy ones, the saints of God, will receive and possess the kingdom forever and ever, Amen.

Over the centuries, and especially in anxious times, some people have spent a great deal of energy trying to “figure out” who the beasts are, here in Daniel as well as in Revelation. But it isn’t really the point. As I said, the beast is all corrupt political power that destroys the creatures of God. It does that by instilling fear and exerting control rather than governing in a way that brings about real community. 

One of the most powerful liturgical books I’ve ever read was written by a scholar named William Cavenaugh. It’s about Chile in the 1980s, under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, entitled Torture and Eucharist. The human rights violations under Pinochet were brutal. Cavanaugh’s thesis is that torture, especially state-sanctioned torture that becomes a matter of policy is bigger than the pain inflicted on individuals. It creates a society that uses fear and terror to control people, because you never know who is working for whom. You don’t know who to trust. And so community is destroyed. People are isolated one from another and scared, all the time.

Cavenaugh’s thesis is that the antidote to Torture is the Holy Eucharist. That Eucharist isn’t just a spiritual matter, something we do for our souls for an hour a week. That the celebration of Holy Communion is never a private matter, but a matter of coming together in community. Literally about forming Christ’s Body, with many members. The Table of our Lord is the place where fear is overcome by trust; where the suffering of a torture victim named Jesus brings healing to all people and unleashes hope and the courage to resist all other forms of torture and violence. Perhaps the most provocative line in Cavanaugh’s book is this one: “torture creates victims; Eucharist creates witnesses.”

Now if we can hold the Book of Daniel alongside Cavanaugh’s book, then I think we can begin to hear a “Word of the Lord” for us on this All Saints Sunday. It also opens for us a much more powerful way of understanding Sin, and the ways that it truly does “destroy the creatures of God.”  We will promise today, along with Cameron’s parents and godparents, to stand against Sin and with the One who calls us to new life.

“The beasts” keep changing. The issue isn’t that there are “four”—I bet we could come up with four hundred if we brainstormed a few minutes. It might be the Roman Empire that puts to death a rabbi from Galilee because he refuses to live his life in fear. But that isn’t the end of the story. Or Nazi Germany where people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted even when it cost them their lives. “The beast” might be the South African apartheid government; where people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu and Steven Biko did not give up hope or buckle under to fear and intimidation. “The beast” might be the Soviet government—imprisoning its artists and poets and visionaries in the gulags under the mistaken belief that if you send the poets away you will shut them up. Yet people like Alexander Solzeneitzen continued to write their stories and find a way to get them out. You can come up with way more than four examples, right up to the present day, of regimes that give us nightmares, of visions that keep us living in fear.

But that’s not the narrative around which we are called to organize our lives. We have another story to tell: the story of Daniel in the lion’s den and Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego in the fiery furnace. It’s the same story we tell each week in the Eucharistic Prayer and through the Sacramental life of the Church, where we are being called to organize our lives around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that we are creating not victims, but witnesses.

There is no room in the church for denial. This is not a little “escape” from the “real” world. Rather, we gather in resistance—and even perhaps in defiance—across political differences and ideological divides, because we know that beneath and beyond all those other stories there is a deeper truth still. Not a “spiritual” reality but an incarnate reality; an embodied reality. For we have been claimed and marked and sealed by a God who is faithful. And we therefore need not live in fear. We have been marked as Christ’s own--forever. Forever.

That means that Holy Baptism is about so much more than finding an occasion to throw a nice party. It suggests that the baptized community that shares the  Eucharist together is bound together and knit together as an alternative reality in the midst of a violent world. So that at the Table we can be made into witnesses, not victims. We have been placed among a great cloud of witnesses, bound together across generational, political, ideological, nationalistic lines. By God’s Holy Word we are empowered to trust that God is with us, even in trying times, and especially in trying times. We need not be afraid…

Today as we celebrate Cameron’s baptism we renew our own commitments to live by those promises, to resist the Evil One and to love God and neighbor one day at a time. Before we share the bread and the cup we will gather up our pledge cards and bless them. They don’t represent joining a club or paying a tax. They represent our generous offerings used to build up the Body of Christ here at St. Michael’s, so that we might share this work to which we have been called in this time and place, blessed by the example of the witnesses who have gone before us.

We recommit ourselves on this All Saints Sunday to live by trust and not fear, to create witnesses, not victims. We get a foretaste of what is to come, by God’s grace. May our life together inspire hope and unleash courage and wisdom for the living of these days.