My Sermon for Sunday, October 26, 2025, Reformation Sunday

October 26, 2025, Reformation Sunday

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott





John 8: 31-36




Typically, I tend to approach Reformation Sunday through a historical lens—and a very old history, at that. You probably do too—it’s an occupational hazard of being a Lutheran. We hear the word “reformation,” and we think of that day back in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg door.

Even when I try to think about more recent history, the examples I come up with are still a hundred years old, like the reformation that leads to modern day Pentecostals. That Reformation happened in LA, the Azusa Street Revivals that began in 1906.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s wonderful to know our history. But the danger is that we think that the time of Reformation is over. We think the Holy Spirit might be somewhere taking a long, well-deserved nap.

This problem of seeing Reformation as a historical phenomena compounds as we grow older, at least for most people I know. When we’re younger, many of us grow up hearing the stories of past generations and wondering where we’ll fit into that story—or how we’ll break out of the old stories. We dream of the mark we’ll make on the world: maybe it’s writing a great American novel or making a film that will capture our time in a way that others don’t. Maybe we’ll break a sports record. As we get older, most of us settled into lives more ordinary. If we’re lucky, we have successes, sure. But they’re likely not the ones that people will make into banners that will hang on church walls 500 years from now.

Even when we see possibilities of the God doing a new thing, like the election of a bishop for the national organization that we had this past summer, we may look closer to home and wonder why God doesn’t ever do a new thing closer to where we live. I know that the search committee of Faith spent a lot of time in the past year working with two synods and with Redeemer Lutheran over across the state line. For a time, that might have felt like a new way of being church was about to emerge, only to have it all end rather abruptly.

Here is where our historical lens can fail us, as we look at that distant church door in Wittenberg in 1517 and feel like we’re failures as we compare ourselves to a young Martin Luther. We might look at our own faith journey and wonder if there’s anything we feel as strongly about that we would say, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” These days, what kind of stand would we have to make to result in being taken before our newly elected bishop to make an accounting of ourselves? It’s tough to imagine.

But how would our stories about ourselves change if we compared ourselves not to young Luther, but to Luther in his later years? Not Luther, the transformer of the Church, but Luther, the translator of the Bible into German?

When Luther made his stand, he needed to lay low for awhile, which turned into 10 months hidden away in Wartberg Castle. He needed something to do—so he translated the New Testament into German. He went on to translate the whole Bible into German, a project that would take the rest of his life. We might say that’s how he spent his retirement years.

It's a project that he wouldn’t have had time to do, had his life not taken the wrenching path that it did when he nailed his theses to the door. Luther didn’t want to create his own religion. No, he wanted to improve the one he already had. If we could go back to 1516 and talk to him, he would not have had a vision of creating a name for himself as one of the most influential thinkers of the Christian church. Like many of us, he was looking for ways to get through the day with his integrity intact. In 1515, he was made an administrator, in charge of overseeing eleven monasteries in his province—no time for Biblical translation there.

The 95 Theses are very different than the kind of theological writing that he also completed while sequestered in Wartberg Castle. The 95 Theses, published when Luther was still a very busy man, are like underdeveloped wisps of thoughts. I hear the word Theses, and I think of something a graduate student would produce. That’s not what Luther created in 1517.

In the 1520’s, on the other hand, Luther produced his best writing—writing that he had time to create because his life had taken an unexpected turn, because he faced the change and made the best of it.

So, if we sit here on this Reformation Sunday, wondering where the Holy Spirit is in our own lives, rest assured that God isn’t finished with any of us yet. If we sit here on this Reformation Sunday feeling bad because we haven’t done the important work we were put on earth to do, rest assured that there is time. Is there enough time? That depends on the work and the larger world.

But here is good news: the work that God gives us to do is not ours alone. We don’t have to finish it. We are here in the church that Luther built—but although he gets the credit, he was not the only builder. In fact, if others hadn’t published his 95 Theses and distributed them beyond the church door, we might be sitting in a very different kind of church.

In my sermon last week, I went off script. You may or may not remember that I talked about the dreams and visions that God has printed in our hearts—not our collective heart, but in our individual hearts. I’ve come back to that idea through the following week as I’ve thought about Reformation Sunday. I’ve thought of each one of you as I’ve prayed, and rather than feeling afraid, I’ve felt intrigued and curious about what God might be doing in our individual and collective lives.

This coming week, I’ll not only pray for us as individuals, but for Faith Evangelical Lutheran, as a congregation. I believe that God has a vision for us as a bigger group too, and I continue to pray for clear discernment of that mission for us all.

For those of us lucky to live long enough, we know that our vision for our future will change. What we wanted when we were young—those hopes and dreams might change as we age, particularly if those hopes and dreams of our youth required the body of our youth. We know change is scary. During the crises that create the opportunity for reformation, God promises to be with us.

It’s easy to focus on shattered dreams as the heartbreak that they are. But shattered dreams can make way for something better. Realizing that we’re no longer on the path we once assumed we were on can make way for us to find a more satisfying path.

So, if on this Reformation Day you’re comparing yourself to the Martin Luther who nailed those theses to the church door, comparing yourself and coming up short, take heart. If you’re looking at pictures of Faith Lutheran in past years and feeling sad about our current place in the world, take heart. Perhaps what will emerge will be the modern equivalent of the translation of the Bible into German.

What is that modern equivalent? Churches have been asking this question for decades. I am not sure, but I do know this: the translation of the Bible into a language that all could understand is one of Luther’s most significant contributions to moving the world from a medieval viewpoint to a more modern one. In fact, this project of Luther’s last years may have transformed the world in a much more profound way than the nailing of the theses on the Wittenberg door.

So, in this time of late autumn, let us remember the fullness of our heritage, both as ELCA Lutherans and members of Faith Lutheran, here in the far northeast corner of Tennessee. Let us remember that although the signs may point towards winter, the Holy Spirit is not done with us. I say again, God has imprinted in all of our individual hearts and in our collective heart as Church hopes and dreams that we are uniquely equipped to bring to fruition. Let us continue to discern the full bounty of God’s hopes and dreams and let us trust that God will help and guide us to that harvest.