God Comes Down To Us

 All Saints Day

Luke 6:20-31

November 2, 2025

 

One truth that the Lutheran church holds dear –

the primary doctrine of the Reformation –

and what Luther said he would not give up on,

even on the threat of death and exile.

Is that God comes down to us.

 

For centuries, the Church told people

that if you just prayed enough,

went to church enough,

of course gave enough money,

you could work your way up to God.

 

One of my seminary professors used to illustrate it

with a ladder with God at the top.

The church taught, in essence,

that we could climb our way up that ladder to God.

Just try harder, do more, be better, and then God will love you,

and call you righteous, and get you into heaven, and all that stuff.

 

But Luther said, No. The Scriptures don’t say that,

and that’s not how God works.
We don’t climb our way up to God

God comes down to us.

In Jesus Christ, God descended the ladder

to meet us where we are.

 

Now, originally, All Saints’ Day was a day to commemorate

the people who were thought to have made it up the ladder—

the saints who had attained spiritual prestige

mostly priests, monks, and nuns,

and martyrs and other spiritual superstars,

who were believed to be just a few rungs below Jesus himself.

  

For those of us who grew up Catholic,

we might remember hearing about these saints

in glowing terms on All Saints Day—

stories of extraordinary holiness, courage, and self-sacrifice.

 

I remember as a girl hearing about Elizabeth Seton,

the first American saint. She was canonized in 1975.

so I was seven and they really talked about her a lot.

They talked about her incredible devotion,

the children she cared for, the home she founded,

even the miracle she was credited with.

(cause every saint has to have a miracle)

She sounded perfect.

The stories of the saints were supposed to inspire us,

they told us often we could work towards being like them.

Be like Elizabeth Seaton.

 

But I wasn’t inspired.

As I listened, I thought: I could never be that good.

And I really didn’t want to do any of those things she did.

I’m never going to be that holy or serious or selfless.

And when they got to the miracle part,

I tapped out completely.

That was out of my league.

I knew was never going to be able to

work up to that rung of the ladder.

So instead of being inspired, I just felt left out.

And I don’t think I was alone in that.

 

Luther wasn’t crazy about that idea of saints either.

He didn’t think some people achieved

special powers or higher spiritual status.

He didn’t believe they had climbed up to God.

He didn’t believe that anyone could climb up to God.

Instead, he said we are ALL

both saint and sinner at the same time

not because we’ve earned it, but because

God has come down to us in Christ.

 

That’s what makes a saint: not perfection, but grace.

Not personal achievement,

but being touched by the love of God.

So the day turned into a day to remember all the saints

all loved by God, and whose love touched us.

 

Look at Jesus sermon on the plain that we hear today:

“Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry.

Blessed are those who weep.

Blessed are you when people hate you,”

 

The people listening must have been confused.

Even the poor people listening must have wondered.

The poor were seen as unclean, cursed, hated,

even deserving of their lot in life by some current or past misdeed.

They didn’t look “blessed by God”.

Blessing was supposed to look different:

wealth, warmth, full bellies, security, popularity,

respect from the community at large.

 

But Jesus says blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the hungry.

 

And these words of Jesus 2000 years ago,

And this selection of the readings by the lectionary committee

60 or so years ago, are still so relevant to us today. Of course.

(I’d sometimes like a break from acute relevancy,

but I guess I don’t get a choice.)

Right now, millions of people across

our country are facing the suspension of SNAP benefits -

the federal program that helps

the poorest among us put food on the table.

So people who are already choosing between

rent and medication are potentially now

having one of their precious lifelines taken away.

And yet, instead of sympathy, many people, 

including media and politicians are responding with hatred and scorn:

“Why don’t they just get a job?”

 “How about they work for their food like I do?”

“They’re all just scamming the system”

 

It’s like the theology of the ladder:

It’s as if we believe people can just climb their way

out of poverty by sheer willpower.

 

If it’s any consolation, most cultures

and times have had a hatred for their own poor.

 

The poor are stark reminders of our nations’ failure,

It’s easier to blame them for their situation than to look at

our own shortcomings and privilege and greed, and bad policies

that all work against their mere survival.

 

Unless something is in the news,

most people try to pretend poor people don’t exist.

We shut them out of gated communities,

we try to remain outside of their circles.

We shrug our shoulders at vagrancy laws, fees, fines,

and other rules that stack the deck against them

and prevent them from getting ahead,

and to let them know in no uncertain terms

that they’re not welcome in our world.

 

And we insinuate that if they just worked harder,

they could climb that ladder.

(But, by the way, we’ve greased the rungs and cut

most of them in the middle)

But if you keep trying, you could be like

us up here with our many blessings.

 

But Jesus says otherwise.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the hungry.”

Not because poverty is holy—

but because God is present with them.

Because God comes down to where the need is greatest.

Jesus is turning the ladder upside down.

Blessed are the poor.

 

And “woe to the rich”.

“Woe to you who are full now”

It’s not a condemnation, it’s a warning:

Don’t believe the lie that financial success

and earthly blessings and security

means you’ve climbed closer to God.

Don’t think blessing is something you can earn or hoard.

Don’t look for God on the top of that ladder.

 

Because God is already here—on the ground,

with the poor and the grieving and the broken and the hungry.

God has come down to us and calls us to do the same.

If you want to work your way to God, come down the ladder.

That’s where you’ll find God.

 

The good news is that along with all the cruelty and the

callousness erupting against the poor,

there is also an eruption of compassion and caring.

An outpouring of concern, love, food and gifts

from people to help people that they don’t even know.

Our pantry shelves are fuller this week

because of that compassion.

 

And that’s what All Saints’ Day is really about.

Not about a few people who managed to be perfect.

But about all the ordinary people—past and present—

through whom God’s grace has shone.

 

The ones who prayed for you,

who taught you faith and cared for you,

who forgave you when you didn’t deserve it.

The ones who sat next to you in church,

who made casseroles for funerals,

who gave food to those who were hungry,

who showed up for others quietly and faithfully.

The ones who didn’t try to climb the ladder,

but simply let God’s love come down to them

and work through them.

All the saints.

 

There is no ladder to God. 

There’s only Christ—God with us and God for us.

All of us.

The blessed and the woeful,

the accomplished and the struggling.

The sinners in heaven,

and the saints still stumbling here on earth.

 

We are not loved because we are saints.

We are saints because we are loved.

Who Moved My Church?

 John 8

Reformation Sunday

October 26, 2025

 

Have you ever heard of this book,

“Who Moved My Cheese?”

Apparently everyone in the world read this book in 1998,

but I hadn’t read it until someone told me about it a few years ago.

 

It’s technically about the changing landscape of business

that was happening in the 1990’s

The whole book is basically a fable or a parable,

with lessons sprinkled throughout the story.

And the basic story is this.

There are four little creatures living in a laboratory cheese maze. 

Two are mice and two are kind of little humanoid,

I’m not sure why.

 

Their job was to find the cheese in the maze.

For a very long time, the cheese would always show up

in Cheese Station C. They would find their way there,

get their cheese, eat their fill,

and come back when they needed more.

The cheese was always there.

It went on for, it seemed like forever.

They got used to it.

 

Then one day, they woke up and went to Cheese Station C,

and the cheese wasn’t there.

It just wasn’t there.

Then they went back the next day,

it wasn’t there again.

When it didn’t show up the second day,

the two mousy creatures decided

that they needed to go looking for more cheese.

 

The maze was big and scary and there were parts

they hadn’t been to in a long time since

they found the cheese in Cheese Station C,

and they hadn’t been anywhere else,

but they knew they needed to just needed to leave.

 

But the two humanoid creatures,

they just sat there. And they sat there.

They came back to Cheese Station C every day,

and they cried and they yelled and they complained.

 

They longed for the days

that they would just come to their place,

Cheese Station C and they would just find it.

They wished those days would come back.

The cheese never showed up again,

But they wouldn’t go anywhere else.

They just kept coming to Cheese station C.

 

They said they had been used to Station C.

They had been going there so long

that they deserved it, they were entitled to it,

and how dare they (whoever “they” were)

not bring the cheese to Cheese Station C.

But they wouldn’t move

and they were getting more and more hungry

and weak and sad and depressed every day.

Just sitting around asking “Who moved my cheese.”

 

Eventually, one of the humanoids wises up

and decides to go and leave Cheese Station C.

While he’s looking for the cheese he learns a lot

of valuable lessons, until he finally arrives at

Cheese Station N and he finds that’s where the

cheese has been moved to.

  

He found that the two mousy creatures were there

had found it a long time ago and had been enjoying it.

We never find out what happened to the

last humanoid, he could have been looking,

or he could just still be sitting there

complaining, waiting and starving.

Who moved my cheese?

 

I bring up this story, because it’s Reformation Day.

Obviously, you see the connection, right?

 

This is the day we celebrate change. Reformation.

Specifically change in the church.

Today we remember and celebrate the day that Martin

Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church

protesting the very bad theology the church was teaching.

On that day, God moved the cheese on everyone.

And the so the church and then the whole world changed.

 

We could say that the Lutherans were the early adapters,

the ones who first figured out that God’s spirit was moving

in another direction away from the bad theology,

away from the strict hierarchy that made God

inaccessible and cruel.  Lutherans were the first group

to stop sharing the idea that said our only access to God

was through priests and bishops, Who rejected

The theology that said that God wanted your money

or was going to leave you and your loved ones in purgatory. 

 

Lutherans were the ones who were out front.

Not the first ones who thought something was wrong,

but he first ones who did something publicly

and led a movement to change the Christian Church.

They followed the spirit of God and were the first

to get to that other station and receive the manna so to speak.

 

And ever since Lutherans have been right there on the fore-front of

change, right. We are always Reforming. Right?

Lutherans are known for our eagerness to change!

Okay, maybe not.

Some of us do have the ability to change,

but the truth is we usually have to be

dragged over to the new station.

Or, even worse, some of our churches

end up starving at the original one,

just saying ‘who moved our cheese?’

 

I mean we were used to the fact that

At one time the church that had

unquestionable influence in modern western society.

We just assumed for a long time that

every church would be filled every week,

As a denomination, we got use to the days

when you could build a church in a new

suburb and know that it would succeed in a few months.

 

Just a couple of generations ago,

It was assumed that most everyone you met would

know the stories in the bible, know the story of Jesus

and that most people in America would commit their

Sunday morning to coming to church building and worshipping.

And we assumed that the next generation would just

do the same thing that we had been doing.

Those assumptions are dying, that church is dying.

We’re watching it happen.

Fewer people deciding to go to church.

More people identifying themselves with no religion at all.

We’re seeing more people outside the institution of the church

dismiss the church’s relevance to the rest of society.

The church as we know it is dying.

 

And a lot of faithful people in the Lutheran church and other

denominations are sitting around and saying

“Who moved my cheese?”

We’re complaining about other people,

“why don’t they come to church regularly like they used to?

Why isn’t the church a priority in their lives?

Why can’t it be like the old days?

Why don’t the young people like and value what I like and value?

They have no right, Who moved my church?”

And this was all the stuff going on before this year.

 

And like the humanoids in the maze,

we’re also hoping, if we just sit here

and do the same thing that we’ve been doing

maybe do a little cosmetic work,

Get more comfortable lounge chairs,

Add a banjo and maracas on Sunday morning,

and update the worship service,

maybe it will all come back to be like it once was.

Just stay constant and the world will catch up again.

 

We keep blaming society, and wishing that society

would change and  go back to the way it was,

But society never “goes back.” Does it?

 

So either all is lost, and we’ll never find the cheese again,

Or maybe this dying is the work of the Spirit.

Maybe everything is not working like it once was,

so that we have to get off our keisters and

do something different.

 

Maybe God wants us sniffing

around the maze again so that we can find

our purpose, find our meaning,

find our relevancy again,

be forced to listen to the people we’re hoping to reach,

and find Jesus gospel again for the next generation.

Maybe God wants a new Reformation.

I’m re-reading this book by Brian McClaren,

called “Everything Must Change”

I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago where

he talks about the Suicide Machine we’re living in.

I thought it came out 10 years ago, but it was 2007,

so that’s almost 20 years ago, so the alarm has been sounding

for churches for a while, and it was sounding way before him.

 

In the book, he talks about taking a trip in 2004 to

Burundi and Rwanda in East Africa to talk to a bunch of pastors.

This was just after the time of the time of the terrible civil wars

between two warring tribes the Tutsi and Hutus

which had gone on for 4 decades.

 

Neighbors and families were killing each other

with any weapon they had, garden tools, knives, hammers.

in 1994, 800,000 people were killed in a 100 day period

and at the time he went, random fighting was still happening.

 

They brought about 50 church people from all

tribes together to talk about this.

And the host pastor said to the group,

“I’ve been part of the church here since I was born,

my father was a pastor, so I would go to church up to

5 times a week and in over 50 years,

I’ve heard one basic sermon:

You are a sinner, you need to repent in this life

and believe in Jesus or you’re going to hell after you die.”

 

Everyone laughed in recognition that this was the only sermon

they ever heard either, it was all about

what would happen after death.

That’s all the missionaries ever taught them.

 

He said that his whole life had been lived in the midst of

the realities of hatred, distrust,

poverty, suffering, corruption, injustice,

He knew Jesus had a lot to say about that,

but he had never heard a sermon that addressed those realities.

 

He asked the crowd of church people, 

“have you ever heard a sermon that told Tutsi people 

to love and reconcile with Hutu people? 

or for Hutu people to love and reconcile with Tutsi?”

None of them raised their hands.

 

Jesus does have a lot to say about enemies loving each other,

and about poverty, distrust, hatred, suffering, and corruption.

And how much could the church have done in those places

to change and alleviate the situation?

But they were stuck on that one message.

“Believe so you don’t go to hell.”

 

The main idea of the Reformation,

that we are justified by God’s grace alone and not our works

was an amazing and earth-shattering revelation in 1500.

It literally changed the world when Luther brought it out.

 

The idea that God loves us no matter what we do or don’t do

is still astounding, it’s still good news, it has freed us to take risks

and do great things for God and for others.

And I believe it with all my heart.

But we can’t just stop at what was amazing to society 500 years ago.

 

That was the Reformation the 1500’s needed.

In Luther’s times, most people were worried about

whether they were going to hell and purgatory after they died.

These days, hardly anyone is worried about that,

but sometimes we’re still just responding with the same answer,

and basically doing church the same way they were then.

  

Have we clung to that and only that too long?

Did we spend so much time talking about Hell that we

forgot to talk about God’s kingdom on earth

which Jesus did all the time?

 

Should we have believed Justification by grace,

and moved onto emphasize just as fervently

how Jesus wanted us to live our lives here on earth  

instead of just focusing on our life after death?

 

If we did maybe then we wouldn’t have so many Christians who

believe that empathy and compassion are bad and,

who have abandoned the actual teachings of Jesus in favor

of Christian Nationalism and other idols.

 

Maybe, like the Tutsi and Hutus, we should  be

addressing the hard things that Jesus has to say to us

in this world in this time, before everyone kills each other.

 

We need another Reformation where pastors and people

who know about God’s love and inclusion are as vocal about it

as those who use God for hate and violence.

It’s not too late now. And I think God is getting it done.

Sometimes without us if necessary.

 

Here’s what I’m seeing regularly on social media:

In posts about some of the outrageous and hateful stances that

some Christians groups have taken on poverty,

immigration, and violence,

I see agnostics, atheists, people who left the church,

or hadn’t stepped into the church for decades,

coming to Jesus defense against these stances.

They’re saying things like:

“In Exodus, it says to welcome the immigrant”

“Jesus said love your enemies”

“Jesus said he came to bring good news to the poor.”

 

I’m hearing this kind of thing from people

who I know are long time church avoiders and even

They’re looking up passages in the bible.

They’re reaching back into their Sunday school and youth group

teachings that they’ve buried for years, and they’re using their

prophetic voices to teach Jesus message to others.

It may just be because they’re angry,

but they’re still doing it.

I’m not even sure what to do with this yet.

But I think God is doing something.

 

We have a world that is screaming out from

poverty and violence, from disconnection and

isolation, lack of meaning, fear, distrust, anger . . .

and we have a savior with a story

that speaks to all of these things.

Not just about going to heaven.

 

But how will anyone know unless we tell them?

Like the title of McClaren’s book says:

Everything must change.

 

Maybe the best thing that could happen to us is that

Our cheese is moved, then we have realize

that the message we’ve been sending isn’t resonating.

Maybe the best thing that can happen to us is dying

so that we can rise again.

 

Today, we know how the Reformation ended.

It changed the world in a good way.

The people weren’t under the thumb of

church hierarchy, they didn’t need to live in fear

of a wrathful God any more.

And that change led to developments in science,

art, politics, literature and so many things we

hold dear today.

We can look back and say that overall it was

a great advancement for the world.

But by all accounts, being

in the middle of the Reformation in Luther’s time

was a great unknown. Lots of good people did

some not very good things. it was uncomfortable,

it was awful, it was violent, it was unsure, it was deadly for some,

it was chaotic and messy.

It was a great upheaval of everything the people

knew and depended on.

But in retrospect, overall the massive change that it brought

was good for humanity.

Today we are in the middle of another Reformation.

Things are changing in our world in so many ways,

we can hardly keep up with it.

You can feel it.

God is doing something new in our world.

And it can feel terrible and unsure, messy and chaotic.

 

But let’s not find ourselves moping around

at station C complaining that the cheese hasn’t come to us.

That things aren’t the same as they once were.

 

Let us be the part of Christianity that tells the world

that God loves us all unconditionally,

that mercy, compassion, forgiveness,

and care for the poor and outcast are

essential elements of Jesus message for us.

 

Let us be part of the Reformation that is at hand