Hi everyone,
Welcome to worship for this Reformation Sunday, which lands on October 26, 2025!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. In it, you’ll find the order and words of worship as well as the full sermon. You can use it to follow along with the service, or simply with the words that will appear on your screen. The sermon is also included on this page below the video.
If you’d like to enhance your online worship service at home, you can have a candle in your space lit for the majority of the service that can be extinguished near the end after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable, by having something small to eat and drink prepared for consumption. Further instruction will be given at the appropriate time.
May God’s redeeming and reforming love be upon you this day and always!
Send your Spirit, O God, that we might be renewed, redeemed, and reformed by your grace, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
What in the atmospheric river is up with this weather? In case you weren’t aware or were fortunate to be outside of the Pacific Northwest since this past Friday, we have been hit again with yet another atmospheric river. A term, by the way, that I never even heard of until like a few years ago, and now I can’t seem to escape it. It is talked about so often in the news, and every time I shutter.
Not because I’m afraid of the rain, mind you, it’s just a bit of water and I can handle that. Not because I’m afraid of the cold, a short bout in prairie winters has taught me how to deal with that. And not because the heavy rain does a number on my lawn. I mean, that does bother me but I have to admit that my lawn wasn’t that great to begin with despite my best efforts.
What makes me cringe when these rains hit the part of the world that I happen to be in… is how the traffic goes. Or doesn’t go, as it were.
I mean, I get it. The rain makes the driving conditions difficult. The roads are wet and more slick and hydroplaning is a real concern. The visibility is almost nonexistent because of the water beating on your windows and how it could so easily fog up. And who knows what kinds of debris, potholes, and small animals could be lurking under those puddles that we have to drive through?
But my goodness is it frustrating trying to get anywhere by car in this rain. The other day I had to go out to Langley for something and what an ordeal that was to be stuck behind all these unnecessarily slow moving cars and forced to stay at or below the speed limit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a road rage monster or anything, no matter what my family, friends, or anyone who gets in my way on the road will tell you.
It’s just that when the rain hits, it’s like all our past experiences and learned skill means nothing. Our ability to read, predict, and navigate through traffic patterns is negated when people start to drive erratically and nonsensically because of this water falling onto their windshields. Driving in general in this weather is less of an experience and much more of a chore when we have to pander to the insecurities of others, those who like to camp in the fast lane while going well below the flow of traffic, and basically everyone who isn’t as good as a driver as me. Who again, isn’t at all a road rage monster but is actually quite pleasant and patient behind the wheel.
I know, you might not share these specific frustrations around driving, in fact, it might sound foreign to you, which might make you the problem. Seriously though, maybe you have similar frustrations in other areas outside of driving, like when those around you seem to hold you back because they aren’t at your level. Perhaps it’s your less-skilled teammates in whatever sport you play, or your colleagues at work or school who like to ride on the coattails of your hard work, or maybe even your partner or spouse who can’t seem to ever get things right the way you say they should be.
Or, maybe it’s those who claim the same faith or religion as you, but have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to theology, doctrine, or practice. The frustration comes when we have to deal with people who don’t get it, who can’t do it, who just aren’t as good at whatever it is as we are. It tests our patience and we feel frustrated.
And we wouldn’t be the first ones to feel this kind of frustration with our peers and those around us. It’s been going on I’d imagine since the beginning of humanity. Our bibles give us a creation story that is riddled with frustrations, unmet expectations, and comparisons that just aren’t all that fair. And then throughout the history that we get, we see nation against nation, tribe against tribe, and religion against religion in this fabricated competition of who is best, who is the most faithful, and who can get to their destination the quickest, even through unfavourable weather.
I mean, when I say it out loud, it seems silly, doesn’t it? Yet we engage in this mentality anyway. We can’t help it. It’s in our nature. It’s like… we’re slaves to it.
And I think this is what Jesus was talking about in today’s gospel reading. In this part of John, Jesus was teaching them all of how they were equally sinful and without a right to condemn each other. Many believed in his words, but some did not. And so he tells them that abiding in him and his Word is what will set them free.
This is where the people lose it. Set us free? Us? We’re not slaves to anyone.
Well, maybe not slaves in the strictest sense of being someone’s property. But we are controlled by our impulses, by our paradigms, by our sin that tells us that we aren’t who we are and we need to do something about it.
And so we compete. We compare. We size ourselves up against each other to see who wins the battle of humanity. This is what I think Jesus was talking about. This is what he tells us that abiding in his Word will set us free from.
Free from sin, as he describes. But also free from the mentality that we are in competition with each other. Free from the need to compare our value and worth against each other. Free from thinking that because we are better than the notorious “them” that we should have the right and responsibility to put them into their place.
That is nice and all, but I think there’s more. Abiding in God’s Word doesn’t just “free us from” but also “frees us to”. See the truth that Jesus gives and teaches frees us to love, to be in community, and to see how we are forgiven and welcomed into God’s family as God’s people. We are freed to serve others, to witness God’s grace, and to simply be.
Be saved. Be loved. Be still to know God.
Those are the words of the Psalmist for today, but also I think this is what Jeremiah was saying in our first reading as well, how we are able to know God and God’s laws as they are written in our hearts. It isn’t a matter of doing or acting, but a matter of being. Being a human, being a sinner, and being lifted up and brought into God’s fold anyway.
This is what our faith hinges on. This is the truth that sets us free. And this was the motivation for the Protestant Reformation that we observe today.
See roughly 508 years ago (I know right, it seems like only yesterday), but back then a little known Benedictine monk by the name of Martin Luther saw incongruencies in the theology and practices that he was taught and what he was seeing in scripture. He felt that there were a lot of do’s and do-not’s prescribed by the church that weren’t necessarily founded in the Word. His frustration came as he tried and tried to do all that he was required to do and not do all that he was required to not, but he felt himself failing every time. It got so bad that it’s reported that he even threw his bible against the wall.
That is what I call frustration. He couldn’t help but feel condemned by his own faith. He compared himself to what he learned was good and right, and they would not, could not, and never have been able to line up.
And so he spent time in the Word. He read with new eyes. He abided and put his faith in Jesus.
There he saw something new. Grace. He studied specifically the book of Romans, a portion of which we get as our second reading for today, and saw that he, we, and all people are justified and saved by God’s grace as a gift, so that it cannot be earned by knowledge, actions, or driving skill, but through the faith of Jesus Christ.
Imagine the liberation he must have felt. Sure, things didn’t change over night or even much over the next 500 or so years, but the truth was there. We needn’t compete. We needn’t point fingers. We needn’t put others down to lift ourselves up.
Rather, we can see how we’ve been saved from ourselves, freed to know our unchanging position in God’s kingdom, and constantly being reformed to be God’s people in the world, beloved, redeemed, and welcomed to be part of this eternal and equitable body of Christ in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
