We’re sure jolted out of Ordinary Time today. The words of scripture are violent —confusion, distress, humans caught in a trap and faint with fear and foreboding, all of creation shaken. And this is the happy beginning to our season celebrating peace on earth and joy to the world. Why in the world does the sermon title “anticipate” this? If this chaos is “promise,” do we really want God keeping the promise?

It’s Advent, ever a time of preparation, always a time of tension. And I’m not speaking about the American pre-occupation with the pre-Christmas rush. Try going to Freddie’s or Costco this time of year! Speaking of preparation! The nation’s retailers have been in preparation and anticipation since Halloween. Parents are preparing for the list of “must-haves” from their children, and children are anticipating them! None of this takes into account the baking and decorating, the rushing from recitals to parties to shopping. The tension and promise of Advent is entirely different from what’s happening in the name of “happy holidays.” The tension and promise of Advent is summed up in the message of today’s scripture readings: “Judgment is coming; pray to be ready for it.” Or, as the bumper sticker says, “Jesus is coming. Look busy”

If it’s true that Jesus is coming (as Luke would have us believe), aren’t we about as busy as we can get? Springwater has always been a busy community. Folks here are always on the go—to Grange, serving on committees, going to classes, driving kids to lessons, coaching, volunteering in town for one thing or another. What more could we possibly be doing? Surely she doesn’t mean more good-deeding, more volunteering, more acts of compassion! Does she? How “busy” does Jesus expect us to look?

In the interests of hedging our bets, we should check the signs. If we knew how soon Jesus is coming we might know how busy to look. Both scripture and the news these days sound like the same warning. There seems little difference between what the prophets condemned in Israel just prior to exile to Babylon, and what is happening in modern Babylon. Wars everywhere—big and little, high tech, suicide bombings, neighborhood gangs. We ought to be fainting from fear and foreboding! Jesus does this apocalypse thing in Luke today, and it’s hard to tell what’s news and what’s scripture.

Please understand. Apocalypse—Bible stories about the end of the world—are not scripts. Apocalypse was never intended to plot the literal events that will take place on the final judgment day. Apocalypse is supposed to be comforting during terrible times. This is because apocalypse tells what is really going on. And what is “really going on” is God ever and always redeeming creation. God is so redeeming that the scope is too big for individuals to handle.God’s redeeming is too big even for the whole faith community to grasp. God’s redeeming is so big that all of creation has to be involved. That’s the message of apocalypse, and it’s the message we need to hear at the beginning of this season in which we remember the fulfillment of God’s promises. Apocalypse is the certainty that “things are not as they appear.” Events are moving toward God’s promised redemption.

Turn around! The call of apocalypse is to repent, to get ready. Not “Get busier, do more things, give more away, buy more toys, throw more parties.” Simply “Turn around. Be like Jesus.” That’s the promise we make at our baptism. God’s promise of redemption precedes our baptism. God’s promise is to make us holy, to make out of us a kingdom of God’s people. Our only promise is our baptismal promise, to try to be like Jesus.

That’s such a big promise. It is also so vague. Doesn’t it just drive you crazy that the most important promises can be so ambiguous? Couldn’t God be more specific? Look at the promises people make when they “tie the knot.” How specific is it to say, “I promise to love you (and you only) through good times and bad.” What about who makes the coffee in the morning, who gets up with the babies in the night, and who apologizes first? These are the sort of things that can only be worked out in the context of love and mutual trust. How much more so when we make those knot-tying promises with God! God promises, “I’ll save you and make you holy” and we promise, “We’ll try to be like Jesus.” Who apologizes first?

God does. God sends Jesus. God becomes human. We can only respond by turning around. In shock, in awe, in wonder, in humility, in trust, in gratitude, in love. Turn around. Repent.

Jesus has some advice for his disciples as they anticipate the fulfillment of God’s promises. This “in the meantime,” Jesus says, is a time of witness—a time to let other people know the meaning of apocalypse—that God is already redeeming. Jesus’ specific instructions are to “stand up and raise your heads.” Well duh. Does that mean “stand up and be counted” or does that mean “stand up and get back to work”? Maybe both. More than anything else, it means “stop being distracted by worries, by whether you’ve got enough stuff, and stop letting things interfere with your relationship with God.”

If this is a time of witnessing, maybe ought to take Francis’ advice seriously. Uh-oh. She’s back to “WWFD.” You know Francis’ advice: “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” Essentially, this means our job is to make fair what is unfair. This is proclaiming the gospel. I wouldn’t recommend my dad’s method. “Hey! Don got more dessert than I did!” so Dad takes a spoonful out of my bowl and puts it in Don’s. “There. Now he does.” No. I mean making things fair like, sticking up for the kids who are picked on. Choosing first the ones who are usually chosen last. Not taking more than your share—in anything. Even in consumer goods that you can well afford to pay for—when most of the world has none. Even buying groceries that you can pay for—when others can’t. Even not eating foods that don’t make sense—because their processing uses too many of the earth’s resources or require transporting things like peaches from Chile during Oregon’s winters. Even the way you use your personal power—not to get your way, even when you think you deserve the credit or your ideas are better than everyone else’s.

This time—right now, the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection and the time when God’s ultimate kingdom is really established for sure on earth, this apocalypse time—this time is one in which we live out our faith in relationships. What we do with and to each other is more important than whether our theology is right or whether we know the right things and can convince others of the rightness of our position. Our faith is about how we treat each other, who we are with God.

God’s redemption is bigger than “who gets into heaven.” And who doesn’t. We need Jeremiah today to temper our fears as we hear Luke’s apocalypse. It is Jeremiah who reminds us that God’s Righteous One will come. We believe Jesus is that Messiah. But we also believe Jesus is more than the Messiah who lived in Palestine 2,000 years ago and whose career was cut tragically short. Jesus is more than the Messiah who was raised from the dead and calls us to an Eternal Home he has gone ahead to prepare. Jesus is the Messiah promised by Jeremiah, the coming Righteous One. That’s God’s promise. Imagine a Righteous One promised to bring justice to land inhabited by humans in history. It is a promise for a concrete time and place. Our time. Our place. As we anticipate this promise, let us live as if we believe God does and will make good on the promise of the Righteous One.