On Getting Through

 

On Getting Through

For

Northshore UCC, Woodinville, WA

February 16, 2025

 

Scripture: Jeremiah 17:1-8

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

Don’t worry. This sermon is very different from the other two I’ve given you here in the past three months. They were both pretty political. This one isn’t, mostly.

Here’s something I’ve learned in my 78 years of life on this planet, and I’m sure most if not all of you have learned it too: Life isn’t easy. Sure. Sometimes it is. Sometimes we sail along easily enough. Sometimes we’re able to enjoy life. But those of us who have lived more than a few years know that troubles will come. They always come sooner or later. They come in at least two varieties. There are personal troubles, and there are the world’s troubles. I’ve spoken to you about our world’s, or at least our nation’s troubles, before. It’s the personal troubles I want to focus on this morning.

I don’t know any of you well enough to know what personal troubles you’ve had, though I’m sure you’ve had them. I do, of course, know the ones I’ve had, so let me share a couple of them with you as examples of the kinds of troubles we all face at some point in our lives, and of how my Christian faith has gotten me through them.

Before I became a pastor, I was a lawyer. I worked as a lawyer in Washington state for over twenty years. I loved being a lawyer at first. Sometimes I could hardly believe that I was lucky enough to be one. But that initial euphoria didn’t last. I did OK as a lawyer. I was a good lawyer though I don’t think I was a great one. I worked for three different downtown law firms and made partner at none of them.

So eventually I opened my own law office, and within two years of doing so I ran into big trouble. Enormous trouble, actually. I began to burn out badly on law. I became clinically depressed. I had what they call passive suicidal ideation. Thank God the ideation was passive not active. I wasn’t making a dime practicing law. Frankly, I don’t know why my first wife didn’t leave me during those three years or so when I struggled with depression, though thank God she didn’t. I finally overcame these troubles by going to seminary and working for several years as a legal services lawyer providing free legal representation to low income people facing eviction. It was law that at least at times had a good deal in common with ministry. I received my MDiv degree in December, 2000. In March, 2002, I was called as pastor of Monroe Congregational UCC, and I was ordained in the UCC in June of that year. I actually preached what we call a neutral pulpit sermon for the Monroe search committee here at Northshore. That’s the professional trouble I ran into and had to overcome. It was turning to my Christian faith and going to seminary that saved me from that great big trouble.

Then there was a time of personal trouble that was even harder for me to overcome. In fact, I really haven’t overcome it yet, and I don’t actually think I want to overcome it. So forgive me if I choke up a bit telling you about it, which I certainly will. I have referred here to my first wife. That’s not my current wife Jane, whom some of you I think know. No, my first wife’s name was Francie. We met as undergraduates in college in the 1960s and were married in 1972. She was the first love of my life. She became the mother of our two children. She thought she was marrying a Russian historian, and she spent a year with me in Soviet Russia as I did dissertation research. She became a professional sign language interpreter, and she was very good and very professional at it. She stayed with me through the years of my depression as I just mentioned. She wasn’t a very religious person, though in some ways she was more spiritual than I am. She ended up being a pastor’s wife, something neither of us could remotely have imagined when we were married in 1972.

Francie came down with breast cancer in the early 1990s. She had surgery, and we thought we had beaten it. We hadn’t. Just as I was finishing my seminary work, we learned that it had returned. We thought we could manage it for years to come. We couldn’t. In late 2001 we learned that it would be terminal in fairly short order. I’ll never forget the Monroe search committee asking me if there was anything else they should know about me. I said yes. My wife is dying of breast cancer. Thank God they called me anyway. She died on July 31, 2002, at 10:45 in the evening, a date and time I will never forget for as long as I live. We’d been together for thirty years.

I thought I was prepared, for I had known that her death was coming for quite some time. I wasn’t. I completely fell apart. But a rather odd thing happened. We were at home in Lynnwood when Francie died, and my pastoral vestments, my robe and stoles, were at the Monroe church. I began to wish that I’d had them at home. I wanted nothing more than to wrap myself in the symbols of my Christian faith.

I didn’t have my robe or a stole, but I did have one such symbol. It’s this cross that I’m wearing this morning. I wear it every time I preach. It isn’t fancy, but it is precious to me. See, Francie gave it to me on May 13, 1977, just after I completed my PhD in Russian history and became Dr. Sorenson. On the back it has Francie’s and my initials, the date May 13, 1977, the date of my dissertation defense, and the Russian word “molodets,” which translates roughly as “congratulations.” I put it on shortly after Francie died. It helped. I don’t know how I would have survived that night if it hadn’t.

So it was something associated with my Christian faith that got me through these two big troubles I’ve experienced in my life. I overcame depression by going to seminary. I survived grief that was stronger than I though I was capable of feeling at least in part by putting on this cross. My Christian faith got me through. I am completely convinced that nothing else could have.

Our scripture reading this morning brought these and other troubles I’ve had to my mind. In that passage from Jeremiah we read: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.” Jeremiah says they are like a tree planted beside water, a place that enables the tree to withstand the troubles that come its way. He compares these people to those who trust in mere mortals, who, he says, are like people living in a desert not able to withstand much of anything.

Jeremiah’s images here say a tree needs water in order to survive, which, of course, a tree does. But Jeremiah says a lot more than that. He says that we humans need trust in God every bit as much as a tree needs water. Without water a tree dries out, becomes parched, and eventually dies. Jeremiah says, in effect, that without trust in God, that’s what happens to us humans. Maybe we survive physically without faith in God. An awful lot of people do these days. But we don’t survive very well spiritually without trust in God. Without trust, that is, faith, in God our spirits are likely to shrivel. Our souls may well become parched. We’re likely to become spiritually unwell. Our troubles may well overwhelm us.

Friends, this text speaks powerfully to me because I doubt that I would have survived either clinical depression or Francie’s death without my faith in God. Without my ability to trust that with God I would get through my depression alive. And even more importantly, Francie’s death may well have destroyed me without my trust that with God Francie was finally safe. Without my faith in God, I truly have no idea how I could be up here talking to you this morning.

So, folks, I’m sure you have or have had troubles. I know we live in a troubled nation and a troubled world. I don’t know your personal troubles, but I’m quite sure you either have them, have had them, or will have them. The great good news of our Christian faith is that trusting in God, that is, having faith in God, will get us through all of our troubles. Faith in God won’t necessarily make the troubles go away. That’s not how it works. But Jeremiah knew, and I know from my personal experience, that trusting that somehow with God everything is all right, hard as that is at times to believe, will get us through. Faith in God will make it possible for us to bear troubles we can’t believe we would otherwise survive.

In our troubles, God is our lifeline. When we fall, God is our safety net. When we see no way forward, faith in God gets us through. I hope that many of you have experienced that truth just as Jeremiah did and I have. Or if you haven’t that some day you will. For it is just about the most important truth there is for us mere mortals. In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a God of universal love and unconditional grace. Trusting in our God of love and grace can make life seem worth living when nothing else does. Trusting in our God of love and grace will get us through when nothing else can.

Friends, please believe this foundational truth of our Christian faith: God loves you. Period. Unconditionally. No matter what mistakes you’ve made in life, and we’ve all made them, haven’t we. Sometimes it’s hard for us to love ourselves. It is never hard for God to love us nonetheless. It is that unconditional love, that unconditional grace, of God that can get us through whatever we must get through. It is all that has gotten me through what I have had to get through. For that great good news, let all the people say: Thanks be to God! Amen.