October 26, 2025
Reformation Sunday
Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36
Epiphany, Winnipeg
First, the Reformation in a nutshell:
On Five hundred and eight years ago, on October 31st, a German monk named Martin Luther started something he really didn’t expect. He was a professor, and he posted ninety-five pithy thoughts, some proposals about the true nature of repentance and forgiveness, and he invited other academics and preachers to debate these points. Today we call these the 95 theses. Martin Luther had no way of knowing that that would lead to fifty or sixty people sitting at a church in Winnipeg today, just like millions of people are sitting in Lutheran churches today, and even why people all over the world are sitting in Anglican and United and Presbyterian and Mennonite and a few thousand other kinds of churches.
It started as an invitation to an academic debate, but so much more changed in just a few years. It wasn’t long before priests could get married and bishops couldn’t be princes, and regular people could have communion wine. The word started to seep out again about a God who just plain loves, and we don’t need to earn that love or buy it or prove that we’re good enough to go to heaven. If we were in court and God were the judge, God would say, before we even spoke in our defence, that we are free. It’s a gift given right there. The fancy name for that is Justification by Grace alone through Faith alone.
What started in eastern Germany soon spread its way through Germany and east into places like Hungary and Transylvania, and then further north to fabulous places like Norway (!). Somewhere along the line it took a sneaky turn to the south and today there are way way way more Lutherans in places like Ethiopia, Tanzania – eight million Lutherans - Zimbabwe, Namibia, India – four and a half million Lutherans - Indonesia and Brazil than anywhere else. Take that, Norway!
And then we all got out of bed this morning and drove to 200 Dalhousie Drive to a place called Epiphany Lutheran Church.
That about sums it up. Five hundred and eight years. Happy Reformation Day!
2. Second, the Reformation in a nutshell:
We began our time together today with confession. We stood together and spoke the truth to God and to one another and to ourselves. We came clean about the fact that we’ve hurt one another, we’ve hurt our neighbour, we’ve hurt creation. We didn’t go into details – that would take forever and would just be weird – but for that moment we didn’t hide, and we didn’t pretend, and nobody was better and nobody was worse. It’s just like Paul said in that reading from Romans: “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.” When we confessed together, we just spoke the truth together.
I don’t know what’s on your mind when we tell that truth about ourselves together. Sometimes I’m not even sure myself, or I just can’t put together all the details and scroll through a list: I did this, I did that, and I sure hope nobody finds out that I did that other thing.
But I do know that speaking the truth, or hearing the truth, begins to make us free. Just like someone struggling with an addiction can begin to recover once they’ve faced the truth that things are out of control. Just like someone who’s been in therapy for years or for a week or two knows that you need to know, in some way, what’s really going on, for healing to begin. Just like a country needs to face the truth before reconciliation can begin. Just like a grade five kid started to feel a bit free when they stopped trying to hide or pretend. Just like that same kid fifty years later knows that hiding or pretending just keeps him tied up; but speaking or hearing the truth begins to set him free.
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” There’s something about honesty and speaking the truth that begins to set us free.
Then we heard the truth that we are forgiven, and that God doesn’t hold our sin against us, like a weapon. We are made free. Court is no longer in session. We are made free.
The fancy Reformation name for this is Justification by Faith. Or Justification by Grace through Faith. And all of this is just a gift; a gift of God’s love. It’s a gift plunked down in front of us since before our lives began, long before any of us could earn it or prove that we deserve it. A gift shown to us when Jesus gave his life so that ours could be given back to us. We open up the gift and find that it’s always already been there. A writer named Rachel Held Evans put it this way: “You can’t earn God’s love, because you already have it.
You’re free.
3. Third, the Reformation in a nutshell:
Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The obvious question to ask next is “What is truth?” Pilate asked that when Jesus was on trial, we all asked it at Bible Study on Monday, and maybe today more than ever we ask that in a world where truth just doesn’t seem to matter and where lying seems to be the favourite form of communication.
But maybe when Jesus speaks of truth, the real question is not “What is truth?” but “Who is truth?” A bit later on in his travels with his disciples, Jesus starts to talk about how he’s going to be going away, and leaving them for a time. We know that Jesus’ story continues along to a cross and then an empty tomb, we kind of think we know the ending, but those people on the road with Jesus have no idea what’s coming next. They’re afraid. They’re confused. They don’t know how they’ll find the way in a troubled world.
And then Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Right in the middle there, Jesus says, “I am the truth.” Jesus changes the whole picture, and now truth is not an idea, or a fact, or getting the words in the right order, or giving the right answer, or having it all together. Now the truth is a person – Jesus - who makes us free by coming to be one of us; who makes us free by speaking the truth to us; Who knows us so well and who loves us even when we try to pretend, or hide, or cover up; Who makes us free by giving us space to be honest without fear; Who makes us free by loving us, giving his life for us, washing us in the water of baptism, and calling us to new life every new day.
There you go: The Reformation in three nutshells. We all know that Reformation Sunday is not Hooray for Our Side Sunday, or Thank Goodness We Got It Right Sunday, or even Proud to Be Lutheran Sunday. Sure, there are events that took place on October 31st, 1517, and there’s a German monk named Martin Luther, and there’s a whole history of being Lutheran that is sometimes honourable and sometimes awful, but being Lutheran isn’t really the point.
Reformation Sunday, like any Sunday, is all about the good news that is at the centre of our life together. It’s good news spoken on an autumn day five hundred and eight years ago, just like it had been spoken for thousands of years before that day, just like we have spoken it – and sometimes forgotten it - ever since that day: good news that Jesus the truth lived and died and lives again to make everyone, even us, free.
That’s the Reformation good news; that’s the good news of every day. Jesus the truth is always with us on the way, even when we don’t know the way. Jesus the truth is always at home with us. Jesus the truth travels with us, and makes us free.