Oct. 26, 2025 | Word Out!
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Sermon – Pastor Dan Peterson
Changing the Narrative
October 26, 2025
READINGS
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar?
Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe.
22 For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Gospel: John 8:31-36
31 Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
Sermon:
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the source of life, and from Jesus, the Christ, who is that light and life in the world. Amen.
According to the Lutheran pastor and theologian David Lose, we are narrative beings. We make sense of our lives through stories. The trouble is, we don’t know our Christian story anymore. Lose writes, “We are surrounded by competing truth claims, and every truth claim, whether it be proclaimed from a pulpit, touted on the cover of a magazine or hidden in the logo of an expensive brand, is part of a larger story about what constitutes the good, the beautiful and the true.”
Digital Media, of course, has made the wide array of stories even wider. Our story, the Christian story, the supposedly greatest story ever told, is accordingly, now, just one story among many. Now some of these narratives, some of these stories are obvious. Nike, for example, over the last 40 years, has used the slogan, “just do it.” That tells a story. It is a narrative of action, of self-empowerment. Pepsi, which recently changed its slogan to “thirsty for more,” reflects a consumerist narrative. That is the story it tells its customers, and that is the story its customers often tell themselves: “thirsty for more.”
There are other narratives in our culture that are more subtle. They belong to the culture in which we live. They are the air that we breathe. Consider some of them. “You are what you own:” that is another version of the consumerist narrative.
“Image is everything:” that is the vanity narrative, a narrative that keeps companies in business in an $11 billion industry every year.
How about this one? “You deserve special treatment.” That is the entitlement narrative.
“There isn’t enough.” That is the scarcity narrative.
“You should be afraid.” That is the alarmist narrative.
“Might makes right.” That is the power narrative.
These stories, knowingly or not, shape our lives. They are the stories by which we live, often without ever thinking about it. They inform the way we shop, the way we vote, the way we treat other people, the way we conduct business, the way we manage our free time, and, whether we are religious or secular, they inform what matters most in our lives.
So amidst all of these competing narratives, stories, as Christians, what is the story we tell ourselves as followers of Christ? How might this story inform our lives, and how might it challenge the dominant narrative of the culture by offering a more life-giving alternative? How might it enable us to quote the phrase from 1 Timothy 6 that we heard several weeks ago, to “take hold of the life that is really life?” How might the Christian narrative enable us to take hold of the life that is really life?
Now, there are more than one Christian narratives we might consider, especially today. Perhaps you’ve noticed something different about our sanctuary. Today, we bless the quilts. The quilts, as you know, are draped over the pews every six months and are made by members and friends of Queen Anne Lutheran Church. They are packed by members and friends of Queen Anne Lutheran Church and then with other Lutheran churches in the area, they are shipped across the world to help those in need.
What Christian story or narratives do these quilts—again, the work behind them, the work that goes into packing them and the work of shipping them—What story does that tell? To me, it suggests this: In order to take hold of “the life that is really life,” we should no longer live. We should not only live for ourselves; we should live for other people, especially those in need, whether across the street or across the world. Talk about changing the cultural narrative!
Martin Luther writes,—and I looked for this quote for years, I finally found it—”God has created us that we should be our neighbor’s steward.” That is a Christian narrative. As Arletta, our former cantor, used to say to me periodically, “It’s not about you,” it’s about you helping other people. It’s about us together, serving others out of gratitude for the grace that we have received from God.
Now, in serving others, this doesn’t mean we should be doormats, but it does mean that serving others is fundamental to who we are as a people of faith. It is our story as Christians, and the quilts you see before you today tell that story in a rather colorful, beautiful way.
Now I mentioned Martin Luther, and that probably seems appropriate, given that today is Reformation Sunday; we even have the banner to prove it. My question for you is this: How did Martin Luther change the narrative?
Well, let’s talk a little bit about the context in which he lived. Luther grew up in an age described by one historian as that of fire and brimstone. He and his contemporaries imagine God as stern as a patriarch and one who had punished them for their sins. This makes sense. The life expectancy in Luther’s day was quite low. Many people died of diseases, including the bubonic plague. Luther himself suffered, or survived, rather, a plague that broke out in Wittenberg, his town, three times in his 62 years of living.
And so people imagined that all of this suffering was God’s punishment for the fact that they had fallen short. Luther himself was terrified of what would happen to him after he died. As a monk, he spent nearly two decades trying to “get it right for God,” hoping that he had done enough to earn God’s favor and to go to heaven after he passed.
Fortunately, in spite of all these doubts, the Church provided, or rather as a way to address them, a kind of spiritual security system, a set of rites that one could practice, like going on a pilgrimage or paying for indulgences to lessen one’s time in purgatory after one died, or indeed, to avoid the fires of hell, as it was.
We know this because of the literature and the art of the period. The dominant fear was one of damnation. People in Luther’s time had what I call “damnation anxiety,” and Luther was no exception. The church also, in addition to these various rites, gave practical advice for people who struggled like Luther did. They said, “Do what is within you. Do your best.” Well, Martin Luther looked inside of him, after being trained in methods of introspection as a monk, and said he could see nothing but “stinking maggot fodder,” nothing good, in other words. Why should he do what is within him, if what is within him is all bad? There was no escape. God demanded perfection, Luther tried in vain to meet that standard, and as a result, failing, he felt to do so, he hated God. God had created impossible standards for human beings to meet, and when they didn’t meet these standards, God sentenced them to hell and eternity, or thousands of years in Purgatory.
But then, poring through Scripture day and night, Luther, a professor of Biblical Studies now, rediscovered the gospel in the letters of Paul, a reversal which indicated that it is not what we do that makes us right with God, but what God has done that makes us right and sets us free. Luther, in that moment, was seized by the message that God claims us, that God embraces us, that God loves us unconditionally, which in turn sets us free, so that we can serve others, not out of fear or duty, but out of gratitude for what God has already done. Luther, thanks to the Apostle Paul, changed the narrative. Changed the story people were telling themselves or being told, and that story, of course, changed the world.
Now I mentioned the Apostle Paul in connection with Luther. How did Paul change the story? For an answer, I invite you to join me by taking a look at our Second Reading for today from First Corinthians. Verse 21: Paul writes, “For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of our proclamation—namely, the proclamation of a crucified Messiah, which to the Jews, would have been a contradiction in terms. God doesn’t send the Messiah to suffer and die on the cross; [God] sends a Messiah to overcome Israel’s enemies and set the people of Israel free. So it’s through the foolishness of this proclamation to “save those who believe”—and the translation I prefer here is “to save those who trusted in the wisdom of God,” that this is how God would save people.
So what does Paul mean here? Well, if you go to Romans 1, which Paul wrote several years after First Corinthians, Paul says the following: “Human beings have been able to discern God through nature. God’s power and glory, though invisible, were evident, obviously, in the things of God’s creation. Human beings knew God as powerful and mighty, in other words, because of nature. It pointed to a Maker, and this Maker must have been all-powerful in order to bring the world into existence. People knew God through wisdom, on their own terms, according to their own understanding.
But guess what? They remained ungrateful. They failed to acknowledge God, to honor God. And so what did God do? God, according to Paul, outsmarted them, and us, by changing the narrative. Instead of finding God where we expect to find God, on our terms, God chose to hide in weakness, in vulnerability and suffering, the sharpest expression of which is the cross, to recapture our attention.
God did that so that we would respond with faith, trust, and gratitude, rather than indifference.
I mean, it’s easy to find God when things are going well, right? To assume, as the Prosperity Gospel does, that in wealth, power, self-sufficiency, and strength, God has blessed us, that God is with us because of those things that we are capable of doing.
But wow, it takes faith and trust to appreciate and affirm God’s presence in the midst of suffering, in the midst of hardship, and in the midst of loss, right? That’s exactly where God resides when Jesus dies on the cross, according to Paul. Not as evident in glory, power, and might, but found hidden in suffering and in vulnerability. That’s how God, through the cross, changes the narrative.
One theologian writes, “If God is present in Jesus at the moment of defeat and rejection, then most of our guesses about who God is, and where God is to be found, in glory, power and success are wrong. God is the one whose ways are beyond ours, the one who comes to the weak, the marginal, the underdog. This is nothing less than a revolution in the concept of God. On the cross, God again, according to Paul, changes the narrative— makes it about God finding us in the midst of a vulnerability, rather than us finding God on our terms, where we expect or assume God should be.
Pro tip: If you ever get into a debate around the nature or existence of God and somebody says to you, “Well, if God is all-powerful,”— stop them right there. The cross shows us another side of God, not a God of power and glory the way we would expect, the kind we associate with worldly rulers, like emperors, even presidents. No, God comes to us in a way we wouldn’t expect, to elicit faith and trust, to restore the right relationship God longs to have that was ruptured and broken in the Fall. God changes the narrative on the cross. God meets us on God’s terms, not on ours.
Of course, Paul is not the only person who challenges the dominant cultural narrative during his time in the name of the Christian faith. There is one other person who changes and challenges the narrative in the New Testament as well. Can you guess who that person might be?
Jesus! Hello! Jesus. (Like I always tell, or have told my former students, if you don’t know the answer, just say, “Jesus.” I will at least give you partial credit!) Jesus is the answer. Look at the last verse of our Gospel reading for the day. It’s there that Jesus says,—talking about the Pharisee who expected God to meet him on his terms, versus the tax collector who met God on God’s terms,—Jesus says, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, will be brought down, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Instead of favoring the powerful and the prideful, Jesus says, God favors the humble. Once again, God reverses our expectations. And if you have any questions about that in the Gospel narratives, look at the people with whom Jesus dines and spends his time: sex workers, tax collectors, people on the fringes of society. The life he leads changes the narrative. The kingdom of God, it turns out, will be full of what the Apostle Paul calls nobodies, Rubbish. Riffraff.
In any case, the kingdom of God turns our expectations, our world upside down, and we as Christians are called to enact it, just as Jesus did, by standing up for justice and caring for those who are less fortunate, so that as we pray every single Sunday, “God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Dear friends in Christ, I have homework for all of you. You have heard this morning multiple examples of how Christianity has changed the narrative for the sake of making our lives, and the lives of those with whom we live in this world, better. They have changed the narrative from one of self-preoccupation, to the common good. They have changed the narrative from one of arrogance, to humility. They have changed the narrative from “me” to “we.”
The quilters, Martin Luther, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus of Nazareth challenge narratives of power, narratives of pride, narratives of indifference, narratives of arrogance, narratives of self-preoccupation, narratives of self-aggrandizement and narratives of selfishness, and replace them with narratives about caring for other people, about living for the vulnerable, about having gratitude for the many gifts that God has given us, including the very breath of life, and the narrative of humility, of recognizing that you and I don’t have all the answers, but as the Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians 13, “we all see in part, only on the last day will we see in full.”
Which of the four narratives that I named speaks to you?
The quilters, and their concern and care for others;
Luther, and the narrative of grace, of being freed from expectations no one can satisfy, to live for others out of gratitude for what God has done, gratitude;
or, finding God hidden in suffering—the narrative of God’s vulnerability over and against, the narrative of power;
or indeed, the narrative of Jesus, who flips our social world on its ear, humbling the exalted and exalting the humbled.
Which of these speaks to you? And if none of these speak to you directly, let me ask you this: What’s another narrative, another story in the Bible, that you rely on to make sense of your life?
David Lose says, “The Christian narrative is being lost.”
Let’s find it.
Let’s reclaim it.
Let’s change the narrative.
And all God’s people said “Amen.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.