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

Don't Lose Heart

 Luke 18: 1-8  October 19, 2025

 

So is this parable of Jesus saying is that anything I pray for,

if I pray long enough and hard enough, I’ll get it?

So if I pray to win the lottery or,

If I pray to have the body I had at 25,

Or if I pray with Janis Joplin

for the Lord to buy me a Mercedes Benz,

It will happen if I just ask often enough.

Some people think that’s what this parable is saying.

 

But that just doesn’t sound right does it?

That makes God sound like a vending machine.

If we put the right amount a prayers in, God gives out our request.

That does not sound like something that Jesus would say.

And it just doesn’t sound like the truth either.

 

So maybe Jesus means something different.

And this time, Jesus actually tells us what that is: Justice.

 

Jesus says when we cry out for justice

we can be assured that God will give it.

We know that whenever we pray, God listens to us.

But when we ask for justice,

we can live in confidence that one day, we will see it.

Justice. We throw the word around a lot,

but what does the word mean?

There are actually several definitions to it.

Commercials with personal injury lawyers seem to use it a lot.

And maybe that might be a part of it.

But when the bible mentions it,

Justice is a concept of moral rightness or fairness.

The right of all people  to be treated fairly under the law

in this world, without discrimination or preference.

It’s a moral principle that requires upholding

what is right and equitable.

 

Basically for us, justice means reforming the world in God’s image

where there is no prejudice, neither male nor female, slave nor free,

Greek nor Jew, justice is making the world

more like the kingdom of God

 

When we pray for God’s will every week in the Lord’s prayer

we are praying for justice:

for food for the hungry and for the oppressed to be set free,

for people to be treated fairly and rightly.

 

But sometimes I think having powers of this world 

do the right thing for all people seems like a pipe dream now. 

It seems like an impossibility.

 

Even though we pray for justice every week,

I’m not really sure we believe it will come.

We dream about it, and we ask for it.

But almost immediately we give up on it.

We kind of say, “Yeah, right.”

ad with that, it’s like we’re giving up in advance almost.

Like we’re convinced that injustice will win.

 

I get it. Things don’t look very hopeful now for righteousness.

Everything we’re experiencing in the world is “unprecedented”

we are living with a lot of unknowns right now

we seem to be going down dangerous paths

that we haven’t been down before.

 

Lots of regular people are worried about their

healthcare going away at the end of the year,

or becoming too outrageously priced they can’t afford it.

The poor are getting poorer and the rich are absurdly rich

and they seem to be flagrantly ignoring the law all the time.

Our country was one of the least corrupt in the world,

but now it seems like it became one of the most.

Our National Guard is being turned against our own cities.

People are being taken off our streets by ICE because

they fit a particular racial profile.

Justice just doesn’t seem in the cards right now.

Brian Mclaren, the great theologian, in his book

Everything Must Change called our society in the US and

elsewhere the “Suicide Machine”.  I think that seems apt.

He says that the stories that frame our world are out of control,

profit comes before people,

and violence has been found to be a shortcut for

people to get what they want.

And the result is that everything we do has become

a destructive force in this world.

Society is basically killing itself.

 

He wrote this almost 8 years ago, but it seems

like we might be further in it now than before.

I mean I do feel like I’m being pulled into a machine of injustice

things that I can’t stand and can’t abide by,

but I can’t seem to stop either.

 

His book says that we need to change those narratives

or we will all be sucked up into the machine.

 

Asking for justice in the middle of this machine

seems futile, it almost seems ridiculous.

Even if we get our immediate, current issues dealt with

we’re still got the normal, everyday, run of the mill injustice

that we’ve experienced since the beginning of this country

and the beginning of time.

 

This mountain seems ridiculously high and we don’t know the way

up it, and we’ve lost our shoes, and we’re out of water.

Asking for justice feels like we’re screaming into the wind.

 

I know that it seems like the possibility of justice is remote at best.

But Jesus tells his disciples not to lose heart.

And Jesus was talking to his disciples in his time.

And in Jesus time, justice must have seemed not just a stretch,

but absolutely impossible.

  

Equality was not really even a concept,

the income gap between the rich and the poor was more

enormous than we could imagine.

Most of the people were poor, many were starving.

And the small number of rich and powerful

had no qualms about manipulating things to their benefit

and didn’t even give the impression that they cared.

Due process was not even a term, property was taken,

and people were removed and killed by the government

without any hearings or trials.

 

AND at that time there was no constitution to refer to or ask

leaders to adhere to. No Magna Carta.

There were no checks and balances.

There were no elections to look ahead to.

 

I know we seem a little thin on justice right now.

But our world is far more fair than it was then.

There was no idealistic system of representation to rely on,

no premise of personal freedom

or individual rights or equality to appeal to.

At least we have words and ideals to refer to and to

demand that leaders to aspire to.

 

Then it all depended on who was in power at the time

and what their whim was and what they decided.

The idea that a regular person would see justice:

that they would be treated fairly without discrimination

probably seemed utterly hopeless.

 

But still Jesus tells his disciples not to lose heart.

Not to give up hope. To keep praying for justice.

And that is what this parable is about

as Luke so kindly tells us right at the beginning.

Keep praying for justice.

 

Imagine being that woman in the parable.

She comes to a judge she knows is unjust.

But yet she comes to him repeatedly

asking for the right thing to be done.

Asking for justice. She doesn’t throw up her hands

and give up prematurely, she keeps going back,.

 

Knowing that the decks are stacked against her

to begin with, as a woman in that time,

and as a widow without a husband to represent her,

and then to have her case in the hands of an unjust judge.

It would actually have been easier to give up.

Easier to just walk away exasperated and cynical and move on.

 

But she does not live a life of resignation even in the face of

this desperation. She lives a life of hope and expectation

a belief that the right thing will happen, justice will be done.

Her whole life is hopeful, ready for this judge to act right.

 

That is what Jesus is asking of us.

To always be ready for God’s will to be done.

 

I think that the most hopeful character in this parable

is that unjust judge.

And I don’t think this unjust judge is God by the way.

This judge has no love of people, no interest in helping the widow,

he has no respect for God at all. He’s not a man of faith or integrity,

He is on the side of injustice.

And yet he’s hopeful for us because he still becomes part of God’s plan.

At the end of the day, even he ends up working for God’s justice.

 

God’s vision will be done. Nothing will stop it.

We are asked to make our lives a living prayer of hope.

Not just that we keep asking, but that we actually

believe that justice will happen.

 

I mean, what if we actually lived the prayers we prayed?

What if we expected it so much that we formed our lives

as if it would happen?

 

Think of it like this: it’s a silly illustration but still -

If I asked for jelly beans to come from the sky

and I really believed that request would be answered.

What would I be doing?  Would I sit in my living room,

With my arms folded and my head down? No.

 

If I really believed that my prayer would be answered,

I would go out in my yard, with my hands out

and my eyes looking up. I might get a box or a paper bag.

But yet, our stance when we ask for justice is more

like sitting in our living room with our arms folded

and the blinds closed.

 

Right now when we think of any of these good outcomes

for those cogs in the wheel of the Suicide Machine to stop churning–

things like healthcare, income equality, environmental solutions, 

peace, reasonable gun control, and end to hate and racism –

the response we get and give mostly is exhausted cynicism.

Sitting in our living room with our arms folded.

We say things like:

 “There’s no way. I won’t hold my breath. Right. Eye rolls.”

We give in before we’ve even started doing anything.

Persistent Widow
James Janknegt

 

But if I really believed that those 

prayers would be answered,

my stance and my life would be different.

What if we lived in absolute

expectation and hope that God will find a way,

and what if we shaped our lives around that hope?

How can we live our lives as a prayer,

ready for God’s will?

 

As if the kingdom of God were in our midst and

going to happen at any moment.

With our arms open and our faces looking with hope

toward what we’ve prayed for.

Jesus wants our lives to be a living prayer.

Not Pollyanna positivity, denying the realities of the world,

but with determined optimism.

 

I feel like I’ve told this story before,

and I’ll probably tell it again, because it’s a good one.

Bishop Tutu was an Episcopal bishop in South Africa during apartheid

and one of the main figures in getting apartheid revoked in the 90s

 

He was very outspoken he encouraged protests and boycotts

and in return he received many threats from that

unjust government.

 

In 1988, one of the most contentious eras of those days,

on an Easter Sunday morning,

hundreds of worshippers of many different races

gathered for service at St. George Cathedral in Cape Town,

where Bishop Tutu was presiding.

 

In the middle of the service a group of the

notorious South African Security Police

came into the service and gathered in the aisles of the church

around the walls some with machine guns

and some with writing pads and tape recorders,

waiting to record what Bishop Tutu would say.

Tutu had already been arrested a few weeks earlier.

The parishioners were nervous, there was a pall over them.

If Bishop Tutu said something radical,

he might be arrested or even shot on sight.

But if he didn’t say anything then the apartheid regime

would have won by intimidation.

 

Bishop Tutu came out to the pulpit to preach,

and he started bouncing up on his heels and laughing.

And everyone started laughing with him.

Which lifted the crowd.

 

And then he addressed the police directly.

He said to them in the warmest, but firmest and clearest tone,

“You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods.

And I serve a God who cannot be mocked.

So, since you have already lost,

I invite you today to come and join the winning side!”

 

And at that, the worried crowd, leapt to their feet

and praised God and started dancing in the cathedral,

and danced into the streets

and danced right up to the armed security forces

that were surrounding the cathedral,

who just backed up and let the people dance.

Bishop Tutu was right. Justice would prevail.

God would help them see the end

of that terrible system of government.

The side to be on was God’s side.

 

God’s vision will be done. Nothing will stop it.

It may take a while. It may take way longer than we want.

But we are asked to live our lives

in hope and prayer and even excitement, waiting for that day.

Arms outstretched, readying our lives for that day

when we will see God’s kingdom fully revealed.

We are asked to make our lives a living prayer of hope