Download the Bulletin from October 25, 2026
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: Romans 3:19-28
19 Now we know that, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to demonstrate at the present time his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus.
27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. Through what kind of law? That of works? No, rather through the law of faith. 28 For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.
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—Pastor Pam Russell
Grace and peace to you, from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
In these my first few days here at Queen Anne Lutheran Church, I’ve already experienced some little part of your mission and ministry.
On Wednesday, I introduced myself to the quilters. I see some of you here this morning, and I saw the joy that you take in the creativity as you piece together the fabric, but also your eagerness in sharing of these quilts with people somewhere who need close comfort and warmth.
And some of the packages you showed me were not quilted together at all. It was pieces of fabric of significant size that will be sent somewhere in the world for someone else to make into clothing for themselves. So, you’re sharing the joy of creativity across the world.
Then, too, there was this special quilting day on Friday, the day of tying the quilts together that are going to be blessed next week. And the quilters were joined by Pastor Kristy and our fellow Lutherans at the Church of Steadfast Love. So, the act of quilting quilts us together. Isn’t that a gift of grace?
Another experience I had here, quite a lot this week, was a function that you have placed in my hands and Pastor Mary’s, which is receiving requests for financial assistance and answering them with funds from church members—from you.
It’s called the Pastor’s Discretionary Fund, but it’s the church’s fund, and simply the pastor who has the privilege of meeting the person who makes the request, listening to them speak about what’s going on in their lives, praying with them if they want that, and sharing the church’s resources. Now, you and I can all do that every single day of the week, half-a-dozen times a day in the city of Seattle, whenever you pass someone on the street who has a little sign that says, “Help Needed.” But here in church, you recognize, and I experience, this face-to-face encounter as sacred, one of those very ordinary moments in which I meet God, a sacrament where the brokenness of the world that is poverty, and the life of Christ’s body, the resources that you have brought to the altar, are exchanged between two people.
It is Holy Communion. Last winter, I served as Care Pastor at St. John United over in Woodland Park, and there, too, I looked first for these ministry experiences, which are the beautiful fruit of the tree that is congregational life. St. John, collaborating with a community group, prepares and serves a meal several times a week. At lunchtime, anyone’s welcome; you’re welcome. Those who have money volunteer a few dollars to support the food each week, and those who don’t eat for free, and everybody eats together—another form of communion.
Now, St. John has a generously-sized parking lot, and once a month, this becomes the gathering space for veterinarians and people with their pets. The vets give their care for free. They’re there to serve the animals, but of course, they’re really serving the people who love those pets and have a challenge of keeping their pets healthy. And that’s kind of an unusual form of church ministry, and really the church doesn’t do anything; they just share their parking lot—but it still falls into that category of church meeting the real world, real people, and real need.
It matters so much to me as a person of faith to see where the church experiences transformation in solidarity with the world, to see where we are meeting God together and being made new by the experience. The church parking lot, the dining room, the quilting rooms, the pastor’s office, each of these becomes the foot of the cross.
On this last Sunday of October of each year, we remember that day of the Reformation. We name it October 31, 1517, the day that Martin Luther nailed proposals for discussion: his 95 theses for debate. That was just the first debate on the door of the Wittenberg Church.
Luther had been teaching in Wittenberg for a few years already, but church and community life had arrived at a moment where Luther felt he had to speak out and to invite his fellow colleagues at the university and their students to speak out and discuss some problems, some issues, some irreconcilable differences with the theology and the practice and the direction of the church of his time. That October 31, 1517 became a pivotal moment in history. It catapulted astonishingly quickly into church conflict, and then into political conflict.
And after Luther’s death—and it wasn’t just because Luther died, it was because an emperor died and a new one rose up—after Luther’s death, the conflict inflamed into all-out civil war.
Be careful when you speak up.
But from the standpoint of 509 years of history, it was just one such pivotal moment. Think in our country about the Civil War, where people who believed in Jesus Christ were divided over the justice or injustice of slavery; and the First World War, which brought every large branch of the Christian church into violent conflict – Orthodox, Slavs, and Russians, Roman Catholic Europeans, Protestant Europeans. The only Christians who managed to stay out were the very small pacifist family of Mennonites, and the Amish, the Quakers. They managed to stay out of the violence because that’s what they believe.
Then, of course, there’s World War II, in which the vast majority of German Protestant Christians, including pastors and bishops, bearers of Martin Luther’s legacy, went right along with the fascists, embracing their power and their sense of righteousness.
There were a few who held out. We know the names of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a few of his associates in the confessing church, but they were the minority. The more people know of history, I think, the harder it might be, to be Christian.
And here we are in the grip of another pivotal moment. I don’t know how many of you have attended one of the presentations when our Bishop, Shelley Bryan Wee, and fellow Lutheran Rick Steves, speak out against Christian Nationalism. Anybody been to one of those? Well, if you haven’t, it’s on YouTube. Just type in “Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee,” and you can, and you should, listen to what she has to say. She’s excellent.
I am so happy that our Bishop is standing up to say that we are living in a moment when a very public wing of the Christian church in this country see themselves as righteous over and above other human beings here and elsewhere, see themselves “in the right,” while others, including Christians, but of course other religions, or atheism, are “wrong” in their living, and need to amend their ways.
Those are our beliefs, our living, our ways.
Christian Nationalism accrues to itself glory and truth, righteousness and power.
Martin Luther was a monk, a scholar, a priest, a gifted teacher of theology. If ever there were a human being with a claim to righteousness, Martin Luther had it.
But he knew he had no claim to righteousness, no claim to goodness, no claim to power, and no claim to pride. The God who met Martin Luther in Jesus Christ met him in anxiety and despair. The God who reached out to Luther was the Holy One who became human to share our weakness and pain, and to die; to show Martin Luther, and all of us drowning in regret and honest recognition of sinfulness, that we are God’s beloved children—always have been, always will be.
We are all sinners—always sinners—and yet, through God’s love and gift, God’s yearning to be with us and among us and to work through us, we’re saints!
Humility and holy fear of God are our entire work as believers. All the rest of it is God’s work.
Luther wrote, “Through knowledge of sin comes humility, and through humility, grace is acquired. God makes a person a sinner so that God may make him righteous. Not despair, but rather hope is preached, when we are told that we are sinners. Such preaching concerning sin is preparation for grace. “And again, Luther wrote, “Christ’s righteousness and all that he has becomes ours. He himself becomes ours. “
God, through Jesus’ death on the cross, equips us human beings to live in the real world, eyes wide open. We call suffering and injustice what it really is.
Seeing God in Jesus on the cross gives us faith and courage to perceive God in the world around us—not in the centers of power, not in the White House, not in the palaces of wealth. God on the cross reveals Godself in the midst of our real, earthly, flesh-and-blood, human story.
Jesus gives us a clear view of reality. It’s not that we’ll see everything that is wrong in the world, much less our complicity in it. We’re not going to be able to fully understand that. But the grace of God, in the human being, Jesus, equips us and enfolds us into God’s solidarity with the world. We have no pride, but we have the dignity God gives us, to affirm the dignity of the human beings around us.
Jesus says, “If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Jesus tells us to continue to believe, to continue to repent, to never stop trusting in God: living, giving, loving within and around us.
God comes to us in the sacrament of Holy Baptism.
I don’t know how many of you here may have been confirmed, as I was, on this Reformation Sunday.
And here today, God comes to us in bread and wine and Holy Communion.
And then, God in Christ goes out with us into the world, where in the dailyness of life—the daily, ordinary life—God makes our living possible.
That is why we do what we do every day.
Go out.
Bear witness.
Bear fruit.
Amen.