The Lutheran Hour
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"It’s All on God; It’s All on Us"
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Text: Deuteronomy 1:31
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Bill says he’s lost his religion. Now, when tragic things happen, he doesn’t do like he used to do. The other day, when his friend’s son died, a beautiful little boy all of three years old, when he finally succumbed to the tumor that had been growing in his brain, when the boy died, Bill didn’t do like he used to do when he was a Christian. He used to get angry at God or defend God or cry out to God, “How can You just sit up there with all that power and do nothing?” Bill didn’t do that anymore.
Because he took the leap, the leap of faith;—away from his old faith. Now he believes that God isn’t there at all. Or, if He is, He doesn’t care to get involved. And so, it’s on us. It’s on us to deal with it;—the consequences of our bad choices, the fallout from other peoples’ bad choices, the tragedies that don’t make any sense at all. Whatever happens, it’s up to us to make something good come of it. It’s all on us, Bill says.i
Maybe you have a “Bill” in your life. Or maybe you can relate to Bill. Maybe you are “Bill,” and you feel like you’re standing on the edge, ready to take that leap like he did, to reject the Christian faith. Before you do, could we talk? Could we talk through what it is you’re rejecting? Because sometimes people reject what they think is the Christian faith. But really what they’re rejecting is an over-simplification. Now, that may not have been the case with Bill. He seems like he’s a smart guy, like he knows a lot about Christianity and religion. But maybe even he overlooked something. Because it’s easy to simplify things. It’s easy to think that secular, non-religious people look at the world and say, “It’s all on us.” But religious people look at the world and say, “It’s all on God.”
Now, that may be true of generic religion, but it’s not true of the Christian faith taught in the Bible. The Bible teaches Christ-followers to say both at the same time: “It’s all on God”;—and;—”it’s all on us.” “It” being the hope of making something good come of this life.
Listen to how one early Christ-follower put it: He said to his fellow Christians, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” He told them to work it out, work out your salvation “because it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (see Philippians 2:12-13). In other words, God is totally responsible for making good come of this life. And we are totally responsible. It’s not half and half, it’s not 50-50, but 100 percent-100 percent. It’s all on God. It’s all on us.
Now, that doesn’t compute, does it? Maybe you’ve tried working out the numbers but haven’t been able to solve it. But that’s okay, because God isn’t a problem to solve, and this life isn’t a computation to calculate. Life is a mystery to embrace, and God is a Person with whom to relate. God is a wise and loving Father who wants to relate with you through His Son, Jesus from Nazareth, who is called Christ.
Jesus reveals this truth about our situation: it’s all on God, it’s all on us. In one moment, Jesus says, “Come to Me. Come to Me and live.” He puts it on them, “Come to Me,” He says. And if you refuse to come, that’s on you. But then He says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Then He promises, “I will draw all people to Myself.” In other words, it’s all on God, it’s all on us.
Some might call it a “paradox”;—two truths in tension that don’t seem to add up. A paradox doesn’t make sense, computationally. But it can be an accurate description of real-life experience.
Let me give you an example. I experienced a similar paradox in the field of military aviation. Military aviation, where it’s sometimes said, “Take-offs are optional. Landings are mandatory.” Some of my most formative experiences as a young adult occurred in a military aviation training environment. For two years, I served as a parachute instructor in the Air Force. I’ve made 400 parachute jumps, and I’ve taught others how to jump from airplanes at the U.S. Air Force Academy Jump School, which is the only schoolhouse in the world where the student’s first jump from an airplane is unassisted freefall;—which means that when your jumpmaster signals you to “stand in the door,” with an 85 mile-an-hour wind in your face, and a plane full of fellow students watching on your right, and a one-mile drop to your left;—it’s on you. When you step into that chaos there’s no going back, because gravity isn’t just a good idea. It’s the Law.
Now, what prepares a student to stand in that door on his or her own two feet and bear that awful responsibility? It is the training environment that prepares them. I found that, when teaching at the Jump School, it was not difficult to get the undivided attention of the students. Students at the Air Force Academy are a special type, though. Most of them are more afraid of looking bad than they are of dying. Although, it is possible to do both. And Jump School strikes you as a place where both are not only possible, but probable. Because you have about a zero percent chance of looking good on your first jump.
But, if the Jump School track record tells you anything, your odds of surviving are actually quite good. One hundred percent has been the track record so far. Over the last 58 years, the school has graduated around 30,000 students with zero fatalities.ii And we pray it stays that way.
But, just so we’re clear, the perfect survival rate is not to be credited to the students. Having been a student in this school, I can tell you at least three things about your first unassisted freefall: number one, psychologically, the fear is paralyzing. Number two, physiologically, you just about black out. Because number three, anatomically, the sphincter muscle so constricts that there is precious little blood flow to the brain.
No, the perfect record is not to be credited to the students. All the credit;— 100 percent;—goes to the unit that runs the schoolhouse;—it’s all on them, especially the riggers, God bless them, the professionals who pack each parachute with a main chute and a reserve, a back-up triggered by an automatic activation device which constantly computes the falling student’s altitude and serves as a failsafe. What, you think Mother Air Force would send her children up there without help? American taxpayers have invested too much in these students for that. They are precious cargo.
And so are we, to God. Christ-followers are taught from the Bible that God, the God who created everything, regards each of us as His precious cargo. That’s why He sent His only Son to give His life for us, because in Christ we are His “treasured possession.” We are precious to God, and so it’s on Him to get us back on solid ground. And it’s on us. It’s on us because God chooses to treat us as responsible agents. An “agent” is someone responsible to take action. The word “agent” comes from the Latin word for “do something”;—as in “You’re falling to your death;—do something!” Or “The world is falling apart;—do something.” Or “Your friend’s three-year-old just died of a brain tumor;—do something;—something to show them that you’re still here for them.” You can do something good because God did something. God created. God created the universe, and it was all good. And part of that goodness was to make some of His creatures His partners, to give them the dignity of responsible agency, to be wise stewards of God’s power, to do something to make the good creation even better.
But then, tragedy;—some of God’s best creatures rebelled. Some who’d been given the most agency, the angels, powerful spiritual agents, some of them rebelled and became the devil and his demons. And then all humankind jumped in after them. All of us. I started living as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most. You started using God’s good gifts to serve yourself rather than your neighbor. We started to worry more about looking bad, rather than just doing right.
This is what rebellion against God looks like. It’s why the world looks the way it does. It’s why we’re all in a freefall toward death and hell, shaken on the way by wars and betrayals and brain tumors. It’s on us. We can’t blame God or the devil. We’re responsible. It’s all on us.
And yet, God took it all on Himself. That’s why He sent His Son, Jesus. That’s what Jesus was doing for us, suffering and dying on the cross. God’s Son became human to take this paradox into Himself. You can look at Jesus and say both truths at the same time: “It’s all on God, it’s all on us.” Because Jesus made our responsibility His responsibility. He made our blame His blame. He became like us in His death so that we could become like Him in His resurrection;—so that we could be restored as God’s trusted agents, forgiven to partner with God, to be beloved daughters and sons of God;—precious cargo.
As Christ-followers, we read back in the Old Testament and see how God was signaling this plan all along. We hear the story in the Old Testament books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, how God went into the chaos with His people, into the wilderness with them. In the wilderness, God was at work to raise up a community of people to stand on their own two feet, to work with God, to help catch a creation in freefall.
God had already done it all. God caught them from the clutches of an evil agent, that proud Pharaoh of Egypt. Through Moses, God told His people that He was saving them so that they could be His agents for good in the world. And God pledged Himself to them, 100 percent commitment to them, that they would be His treasured possession, and that He would carry them.
But then, tragedy. The book of Numbers tells how God’s people rebelled again. Ten times they rebelled against God. Ten times they acted as if God did not matter and as if they mattered most. Ten times they used their agency to serve themselves. So, God held them responsible. God said, “It’s on you.” God allowed them to fall into the consequences of their bad decisions. And that whole generation fell dead in the wilderness.
See, it’s part of God’s love to dignify us with agency and responsibility, even when we use that power to destroy ourselves. It’s also God’s love to carry us like precious cargo when we fail to live up to our calling. Moses said to the new generation: “…in the wilderness … you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son” (see Deuteronomy 1:31).
This is what God does. He makes a freefall into a training ground. He goes into the chaos with us. That’s what God did in Jesus because we are 100 percent His precious cargo and 100 percent His trusted agents. It’s not a computation. It’s a relationship. God loves us. But we are caught up in an awful spiritual war with eternal life and death on the line. God is training us like a good flight sergeant trains his airmen, like a good mom trains her children. God is training us to live now in the struggle of these two truths, “It’s all on God. It’s all on you.”
It’s on you, not to test God, but to trust God. It’s on you, not to live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It’s on you, to stand on your own two feet, to face down temptation, and do something. Use your agency for good, not for evil. God gives you agency because He wants a real relationship with you. God dignifies you with the ability to respond, with responsibility. And if that means you choose death and hell over life with God, it’ll be on you.
You don’t have the power to save yourself;—that’s on God. But you are called to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And I am called, because God is at work in us by His Word in us. And one day, when this war is over, and the paradox dissolves, and Christ is all in all, you and I will look back and humbly confess, “Whatever good I did, it was God who did it.”
So maybe we need another analogy. Because, on our own, we couldn’t pull the ripcord and save ourselves. On our own, we blacked out and fell to our death. But even then, God came through for us.
It’s like what happened with Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade. Flight Sergeant Alkemade was a rear gunner with the Royal Air Force during World War II. On March 24, 1944, he was flying a mission with his crew over Nazi Germany. Just before midnight, his aircraft was attacked. The plane was engulfed in flames. The pilot shouted over the intercom, “Sorry, boys, I can’t hold her. Bail out! Bail out!” But Sergeant Alkemade was trapped in the back, in the gunner’s turret without a parachute. His clothes were on fire. His oxygen mask was melting to his face, smoke filling his lungs. And he made an awful decision. Three and half miles above enemy territory, he rotates the turret, and with nothing but a prayer, does a backflip into the night. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was the feeling of being suspended in space.iii
And maybe you’ve been there with him. Maybe that’s all of us, in one way or another. Bill, the guy I told you about in the beginning, the one who lost his religion, he said that, in the moment when he turned his back on God, he imagined himself on “a narrow ledge, far above the ground.” He imagined himself leaping from that edge. He imagined that all his problems with the mysteries of God would be washed away. He wouldn’t need to solve the God problem anymore. But even in his freefall, Bill couldn’t help but pray, “God help me.”iv
I’m a preacher and a pastor, but I can relate to Bill. I’ve got all the same doubts and questions as him. I don’t know why God lets us do such awful things to each other. I don’t know why this war has gone on so long. I don’t know why this training environment has to be so cruel. I just cling to this: Jesus, whom I hear about in the Bible, is the best Person I’ve ever met. And if God caught Him when He blacked out, then somehow Jesus will catch me.
That’s His promise for you, too. I don’t know what human agency brought you to listen today. But it was God who made it happen, 100 percent. Because you are precious to Him. He sent His Son for you, to give you the power to become the person He made you to be. And no matter what happens, Jesus will catch you. One day, you’ll wake up and see.
When Flight Sergeant Alkemade woke up the morning of March 25, 1944, he was lying in a pile of snow surrounded by pine trees. He could see the stars above him, framed by the hole he had formed in the tree limbs when he smashed through them at 120 miles per hour. The snow he landed in was almost two feet deep, sheltered from the sun by the pines. Twenty yards away, it was bare ground. If he had landed there, nothing would have stopped his fall. But here, the supple tree limbs had slowed his descent just enough for a soft catch in the snow. Not one of his bones was broken.
The Royal Air Force report of the incident reads as follows: “It has been investigated and corroborated by the German authorities that the claim of Sergeant Alkemade, No. 1431537, is true in all respects, namely, that he has made a descent from 18,000 feet without a parachute and made a safe landing without injuries, the parachute having been on fire in the aircraft. He landed in deep snow among fir trees.”
When Nick opened his eyes early that morning, he said to himself, “Jesus Christ! I’m alive!” It was not an expression of blasphemy, but heartfelt thanks.v
Following the war, Nick returned to England. He got a job in a chemical plant. At the chemical plant, he had three more close calls. First, there was a gas leak that almost killed him. Later, a broken pipe in his work area caused a freak explosion. And then a steel beam snapped out of the blue and fell on top of him. By God’s grace, he survived them all. And then Nick exercised some of that agency of his and looked for a career change. He opted to become a furniture salesman.
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i This is a summary of William Lobdell’s book, Losing My Religion. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.
ii There have been some injuries, however. See “Air Force Academy cadet sustains significant injuries in basic parachute training,” Colorado Springs Gazette, August 9, 2023. Accessed on July 16, 2025 at https://gazette.com/military/usafa/air-force-academy-cadet-sustains-significant-injuries-in-basic-parachute-training/article_3a51350e-3651-11ee-81bb-9fa469657dad.html
iii “The Indestructible Alkemade,” by Guy Revell, Royal Air Force Museum, December 24, 2014. Accessed on July 16, 2025 at https://web.archive.org/web/20190722130806/https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/blog/the-indestructible-alkemade/
iv Lobdell, Losing My Religion, 282.
v Ian Mackersey, Into the Silk: The Dramatic True Stories of Airmen Who Bailed Out – And Lived. Hardcover published by W.W. Norton, 1958. Kindle e-book edition, 220.
Reflections for September 14, 2025
Title: It’s All on God; It’s All on UsNo reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Lord, Support Us All Day Long” by Stephen P. Starke & Joseph D. Jones, arr. Walter Pelz. From We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O Lord: Hymns of Stephen P. Starke (© 2011 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
“Jesus Sinners Doth Receive” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.