Reformation Sunday October 26th, 2025 Worship

When I was informed that my name had been put forward as a nominee for our Synod Council this year, and I was leaning towards saying no, Emily so lovingly reminded me that I have always said that one of the main reasons I got into this profession was to help move the church forward in a way that better reflected my understanding of what faith and the church could mean. I have always wanted to help the church grow in its capacity to love and support those who have been harmed and excluded, to help us truly acknowledge our grief and our pains, to witness to God’s love in the world. She said that if I said no every time I was given the opportunity, then I needed to give a different reason for why I do what I do. Long story short, I let my name go forward as a nominee and am now serving my first term on the Synod Council.
I know the feeling of overwhelm that comes from thinking about our world and wanting to take a step back because what are we are individuals even able to do anyway. Or, we think that someone else will do the work if we don’t, but we are often all thinking that. Everything feels too daunting and overwhelming, we don’t know where to start making our voice and our presence heard. But, our world is showing us so many examples lately of what happens when communities and people show up for one another, when we recognize how interconnected our lives are, and the impact that we can actually have in our society. Perhaps that’s why I have always loved Reformation Sunday in the church.
I’ll start with the acknowledgement that we commemorate, but do not necessarily celebrate the Reformation, knowing that there was still harm that came about because of it, especially for our Jewish and Anabaptist siblings, and that it created a schism in the Church that still exists in our time. Yet, we do remember the spirit of the Reformation, in which the Reformers took a stand regarding what they understood their faith and the Gospel to mean, and the lengths they were willing to go to not budge from that understanding. It’s why it’s so famously remembered as Martin Luther’s “Here I Stand” speech. It was done, not with the intention to create division in the Church, but from a place of deep love and desire for the Church live into its true calling. It took a lot of guts on the part of the Reformers to speak aloud the things that they felt were not aligned with the Gospel, and how they wanted the world they lived in to be different, as religious leaders drifted further away from what the Reformers understood to be faithful leadership and stewardship of this gift we have been given by God. They were deeply religious men who not only expressed what they believed in, but did so by challenging their bosses, the religious authorities. They were challenging the prominent religious leaders of the day that people looked up to and trusted for guidance.
As a church that comes out of this Reformation tradition, we are engrained with an understanding about the continual nature of reforming. We trust that God is constantly creating and recreating, and that we are invited to participate into that work as co-creators with God. Coworkers in the Gospel to move the world in the direction of God’s vision of the flourishing of all creation. When we hear the signature phrase today that we are saved by grace through faith alone (Romans 3:28), I want us to remember that this isn’t a sign of stagnation, but a launching point for how we live our lives moving forward. It is said in such a way that we are to recognize the freedom we have been given in order to go out and love this world that was so beautifully created without worrying about what any of this means for us.
There is so much freedom within these words of Scripture. When we hear that the law has been written on our hearts and that we are God’s people, there is freedom to live in this world, trusting that God is the anchor point which guides us. We follow in Jesus’ teachings because they recall for us, etching deeper into our hearts, these laws about loving God and loving our neighbors. We are freed to go and love the world, trusting that God is our safety and refuge when things feel heavy and scary (Psalm 46). But just because God is our stronghold, it doesn’t mean that we are to stay locked away in fear. We are called into the world, not to hide from it, just as the disciples are sent out by the Risen Christ when they are locked away in the house in fear after the Crucifixion.
When we are freed to go out into the world, we are able to witness the ways in which different people know God and God knows them, without feeling like we need to become the religious police in order to prove our superiority. It allows God to be God, and for us to be God’s people; to be in awe of all the ways that God is active in the world, even if it wasn’t what we were taught. This freedom that comes from grace through faith is a freedom from our need to prove our worth in the eyes of God, because we are already called worthy by the very nature of our birth.
This is the way the church is still reforming today! We are still caught in this desire to be superior, to be right. We center ourselves and our desires instead of centering the Gospel. We shy away from the words of the Gospel when they become uncomfortable, preferring to pretend that Jesus didn’t say them. We want to insulate ourselves and protect us from the dangers around us instead of seeing the stranger as a beloved child of God.
In Martin Luther’s day, he was deeply opposed to the practice of indulgences, which sold this free gift of grace for money. While we may not be trying to build a Basilica today, I’d argue that we are still having similar problems 508 years later. When we worship money and sell faith for our personal or political gain. When we sell people on the idea that they are loved and blessed by God only when good things happen to them or when their wealth triples. When we act like the bouncer to the club, trying to decide who is allowed in and who must be kept out.
When we look at the world around us today, people are struggling, and they are afraid. People are unsure where their next meal is going to come from, how they are going to pay for their medical treatments, and where they are going to lay their head at night. This is why the work of reformation is continual. We are called to witness the reality of the world and call it what it is. To preach and act in such a way that shows God’s love for the world, instead of our interpretation of God’s judgment. We do enough of that as humans, we do not need to put it in the mouth of God too. The Church has come a long way since the time of Jesus, but God is not done with us yet. May we be open to the ways that God is calling the Church into the world, to be the Body of Christ, for the life of the world. Not for the few, but for all. With this free gift of grace as our centering point and the freedom that comes from it as our launching point to explore all that God is still up to in the world around us, as we come to find our own “Here I Stand” moments too.