The Time’s They Are-a-Changin – the Bob Dylan song iconic of a period of protest – a period when a new generation raged against old structures and attitudes – the relics of a less justice-conscious age. The period of protest for change that marked the 1960s and 70s was one of those periods of reckoning in the long arc of history.

Come gather ‘round people, wherever you roam/ and admit that the waters around you have grown/ and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone/ if your time to you is worth saving/ you better start swimmin or you’ll sink like a stone/ for the times, they are a changin.

The Time’s They Are-a-Changin has haunted me since Maundy Thursday morning -when X, my Spotify AI DJ spun me the Simon & Garfunkel cover version of the Dylan classic as part of a section X announced with: now I’m gonna take yer back to some of yer Classic Rock favorites. The voice used for the AI DJ X is that of Xavier Jernigan – one of Spotify’s in-house presenters. X is a bit of a hip dude – and I have to admit – although it took me a while to appreciate him AI Dj X has learned everything about my musical history and tastes over time. He can anticipate what I’m in the mood for in a particular moment. I think at times he gets bored with me and tries to broaden my musical tastes. AI DJ X is clever – I guess that’s why he gets to be an AI DJ.

If you’re not a Spotify Premium subscriber, you probably don’t know about AI DJ X and therefore haven’t the faintest idea what I’m on about. However, I’ve grown used to him as my regular, early-morning companion. Being in his company beats Alexa’s early morning news briefing and the endless digital catch-up on the latest dire news updates from home and abroad.

On the night following the assassination of JFK in 1963, Bob Dylan opened his concert with his new composition The Time’s They Are a-Changin. The next year Simon and Garfunkel recorded the song on their 1964 Wednesday morning: 3am album. The song evokes a powerful gut memory – now tinged with nostalgia – for a time when all lay before me in a world convulsed with hope – a world in which things could only get better. The Time’s They Are a-Changin – one of the greatest protest songs of all time – written for an age of political turmoil, societal instability, social unrest, and the intergenerational transition marked by the sometimes violent clash of hope and fear. The song belongs to a time gone by – yet its sentiments remain uncannily prescient and pertinent to the times we are living through. The world Dylan rails against is a hand and glove-fit with the world of contemporary experience – minus the hope. If the 60s and 70s were when hope won out over fear – the 2020s is when fear appears to have won the toss.

Dylan’s lyrics: Come senators and congressmen, please heed the call/ Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall – was a reference to Alabama Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama in an attempt to prevent the first two black students, Vivian Malone, and James Hood, from enrolling. Again, Dylan’s words have that timeless prescience – standing as a contemporary rebuke to so many politicians today. In words punching with contemporary poignancy, Dylan sings: for he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled/ the battle outside ragin/ will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls/ for the times they are a-changin.  

Today, The Time’s They Are a-Changin is a clarion call to protest attempts by gerrymandered legislatures and reactionary courts across the land to roll back the clock on many of the political, racial, and gender inequalities so many marched against in the era of the Civil Rights Movement.

Like a modern-day Jeremiah, Dylan warns the news pundits in today’s endless 24/7 cycle of recycled hype – giving oxygen to endless conspiracy: come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen/ and keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again/ and don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin/ and there’s no tellin who that it’s namin/ for the loser now will be later to win/ for the times, they are a changin.

Now I’m sure you have all been wondering what’s a Dylan song got to do with the Resurrection? So let me attempt to answer by coming at the question from a different direction.

The Resurrection is an event – at least for the modern secular mind that seems to be data deficient – lacking in credible evidence. That’s why it’s a mystery – we respond. Mystery is no longer mystery if it can be explained – toyed with in the mind – accepted or rejected according to the evidence. That’s not how mystery works.

Sam Wells, the vicar of our illustrious namesake church of Martin in the Fields in the heart of London’s West End has written: Resurrection is a breathtaking mystery. It’s also the epicenter of the Christian faith. It’s something to be discovered believed and lived. It’s an idle tale if it simply remains a technical event – if it’s real, it’s a cosmic transformation. He continues: It’s not something to agree with in your head – it’s not even something to believe in your heart – it’s something to know in your gut.

In the Christian Orthodox East – icons of the Resurrection show not a solitary Christ rising alone from the tomb as in the Western artistic tradition – but Christ emerging from the tomb with outstretched arms grasping the hands of Adam and Eve – pulling them out of their tombs along with his rising. The message of this depiction is that the Resurrection is not something that happens to Jesus alone – it’s something that happens through him. The Orthodox East has never lost sight of the Resurrrection of Jesus as something requiring the resurrection of the whole of creation. Resurrection’s effects unfold through the collaboration between human agency and the divine purpose.

The Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ – the longed-for one – is the fulfillment of the promised first fruits of what is still unfolding within the timeline of human history. The Resurrection remains a mystery. We can’t directly comprehend the Resurrection, yet like the 90.5% of dark matter and energy comprising the universe we know it’s there through observing its effects on the 0.5 percent of the universe we can see. The effects of the Resurrection are very discernable as the unstoppable process of change – which the Prayer Book poetically describes as the raising up of things cast down and the continual renewal of things grown old. The Resurrection’s effects are felt in the gut where the collaboration between human agency and divine purpose is furthered in the choices we make, even the decisions we fail to take, the stories we tell ourselves about the world, and how these stories influence how we are to live in it. Or in the words of Bob Dylan: your old road is rapidly agin/ please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand/ for the times, they are a-changin.

At least one thing’s certain – you’ll probably never think about the Resurrection again without hearing The Time’s They Are a-Changin. If that’s so – I rest my case.