Weekly Sermon: Growing in Faith - Strength in Sorrow: 10/12/2025

Our theme for October is How to Stop Stressing Out, and today we're talking

about how to receive strength in sorrow.

The very first semester of my freshman year of college, a big change happened

in my family, and it felt like the ground was shifting underneath me.

On what I thought was a fun weekend visit of my parents to campus,

my dad announced to my older sister and I that he was being transferred to Brussels, Belgium, for work.

Now, even though I was physically at college for about, I don't know,

two months maybe, living in a dorm, I had not really emotionally left home yet.

Do you know what I mean? Like, my address had changed, but my head and heart and feelings had not.

I was still very much one of the kids of the family, and so I just assumed that

if my parents were moving to Europe, so was I. Cool!

I'd barely started college. Why bother, right? I'm going to Europe.

But then my dad said to me in his next breath, you can come over after you finish your freshman year.

And then it hit me. I was no longer part of the nuclear family.

It was going to be mom, dad, and my younger sister, Julie, moving across the ocean. And me?

I was on the outside of that now.

We didn't use this language back in 1980, but I was grieving.

Not just the loss of my family being close by, not just the home that would

no longer be an hour away, but also the loss of myself, who I was.

I wasn't a kid anymore. I wasn't the daughter who could always go home.

I couldn't ease into adulthood.

I had to be grown up all at once, but I didn't want to, and I didn't feel ready.

Nobody had died, but I felt unmoored for a time and insecure about who I was,

and my external circumstances did not match my internal reality.

But that's the thing about sorrow, isn't it?

It's rarely just about one thing. It's often layers of grief that we may not

even realize when we're in the middle of it.

We usually think of sorrow in terms of death, and certainly the death of a loved

one brings a grief that is both heavy and holy.

But we also carry other sorrows that we don't always have words for.

For example, today, many people are struggling with a loss of a sense of security.

It could be financial as markets, inflation, or job security becomes unpredictable.

Or it's physical with the loss of health or capacities that we once had.

For others, an unnamed sorrow is the loss or change of relationships through

distance or estrangement. I've had this conversation with people many times.

In our divisive cultural environment, some have strained or lost connections

with friends and even close family members.

Similar to when my family moved across the ocean, I wonder if we are not all

grieving for ourselves.

This week I read an article about an artist with this insightful phrase.

We live in an era where selfhood is for sale.

Wow, that really hit me this week. It's true, though, isn't it?

In our consumer, social media, gig economy,

we are curated, commodified, monetized, and judged by what we wear,

what we drive, what we use, what we do, what we like, what we love,

which button are you going to push on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whatever,

what we spend our money on and so on.

As if who we are, our very self, could be packaged, promoted,

and sold based only on these external factors.

And then, when change or loss or sorrow strikes,

our job disappears, a health crisis hits, our curated image or our identity

connected to these roles and external factors no longer works,

we become fragmented.

We may not even remember who we are anymore or can't remember what we hold on to.

We grieve ourselves, who we were,

or that our insides no longer match the outside roles that we are supposed to

be, or that we are aspiring to, or we thought we were aspiring to.

So there is a lot to grieve these days, making sorrow a big source of stress,

because what we have lost is not just one thing.

It's layered. It's complex.

And this can be exhausting. Just thinking about it this week,

I was like, oh, I need a nap.

It leaves us feeling insecure and unmoored.

You know, when I was on sabbatical, I removed the Facebook app from my phone, and I wasn't on it at all.

That is a great way to take a nap.

I mean, I was really able to nap. I was able to sleep for eight hours a night.

Right now, I'm doing well if I get six.

Or more like, it's usually five. But Psalm 13, that wasn't in the script, by the way. I got to quit.

I got to quit, you know, freelancing.

But the good news is our passages

today psalm 34 reminds us we do have somewhere to turn when the stress of sorrow

seems overwhelming i just love this verse the lord is near to the brokenhearted

and the crushed in spirit.

It doesn't deny that we have difficulties or we'll have loss and suffering,

and it doesn't offer easy answers.

But this passage does promise us the presence and the strength of God.

God is always near in Jesus Christ to help us through. We see this clearly in our story from Luke.

The widow of Nain also suffers under layers of sorrow and grief that are complex

and threaten to unmoor her life completely.

She is walking in the funeral procession of her only son.

And those who have lost a child know that this is the most heart-wrenching grief there is.

And this widow has not only lost her son, but in her time and culture,

she has lost everything with him. her livelihood, her future, her place in society.

She owns no home, no property. She has no inheritance.

She will become a beggar when her son's wallet is empty.

She is grieving her child, yes, but also her security, her identity, her selfhood.

She has gone from mother to pauper. She has grief upon grief,

layered and complex, left insecure and unmoored.

Notice that as Jesus and his followers meet the funeral procession,

Jesus does not wait, as he does in other healings, for her to ask for help.

He doesn't even ask her what he would like for him to do for her,

as he does in other healings.

Instead, what does he do? He immediately recognizes her vulnerability.

Jesus sees her. Jesus sees all of her, all of her grief,

all of her layers of sorrow and the sadness over her son, the loss of her livelihood,

the insecurity of becoming a beggar.

And he says to her, woman, do not sorrow.

Do not cry. And he is moved with compassion, which literally means to suffer with.

In seeing her sorrow, Jesus suffers with all of the layers of her sadness and loss.

And then he takes immediate and radical action.

He acts immediately to restore her son's life. He resurrects him right there.

He just says, get up, arise. And in doing so, Jesus not only raises her son

to new life, but also he raises her.

He resurrects her and her life.

Jesus gives her back her identity, her hope, her whole future.

Both son and mother are truly risen in Christ, alive in Christ,

with an identity and a selfhood that comes from where?

Only from God's love alone.

In Jesus Christ, our selfhood is not for sale.

It's not fragile, market-dependent, tied to any external conditions or even at the mercy of loss.

Our selfhood is not for sale. Our selfhood is a gift.

It is a pure gift. We are named, claimed, and always restored. by the living God.

You are not a commodity, although the market forces would like you to believe that.

You cannot be curated or cast aside when jobs, health, or finances,

or relationships change or even fall apart.

Your identity is a gift of the living God who made you.

You are a beloved child of God. It is on the banner right over there.

You can read it every single Sunday when you feel insecure.

You can come by in the middle of the week and ask to come in the sanctuary and

read it on the banner when you need to be reminded.

You are created, named, claimed by Christ in the waters of baptism.

You are restored like the widow of Nain, even before we have the words to ask for it.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

So whatever layers of grief that you can name today, Jesus sees you and all of your sorrow.

Jesus knows you and your heart.

And Jesus moves toward you in compassion, and he suffers with you.

That means that nothing that you go through is unknowable by God.

Nothing you think, feel, or experience is a mystery to God.

You know, the mystery of God is only one way.

Did you know that? He is a mystery to us, but we are not a mystery to God.

Do you got that? It's not a mystery to God.

The grief in your heart, the sorrow that you carry, the disconnect you feel

sometimes between the external and the internal.

Why? Because Jesus is with you. Because Jesus is near to you.

Because God is near to the brokenhearted. Because Jesus restores you with what

you need. because you are a child of God.

So you can bring your whole self, broken, weary, sorrowful, to Jesus.

He does not expect you to have strength because Jesus plans already ahead of

time to meet you at the funeral procession,

to meet you in your hurt places or in your insecure self, and to give you his

strength for your sorrow.

And as Jesus steps toward you, trust that your identity is safe in him,

for he was there at the beginning when the word was with God and the word was God.

And he was in your beginning and he has already made you beloved.

And now Jesus just wants you to trust your belovedness.

Trust him with your whole self.

Stop trying to commodify what has already been bought on the cross.

You're already whole. You're already forgiven.

You're already covered in grace.

And when all of us grasp this together, isn't that the most beautiful thing?

Isn't that what it means to be the body of Christ together?

And that's what happened for me my freshman year in the community of campus

ministry with Pastor Tim McGordon,

who was the first person to suggest that I should consider becoming a pastor in the Lutheran Church.

But being in the faith community helped anchor me in our faith in Jesus.

And that is who we are for others.

And we become a safe place for people to bring their whole selves.

And as we grow, more people will know that this is a space where they can be

their authentic selves.

And to receive strength from Jesus for the sorrows of life and not just hear surface platitudes.

Oh God, I hate platitudes, but you know that already.

Don't you hate platitudes? I mean, some of them have real meat behind them,

but sometimes we have to explain that for people, right?

So when we rest in the identity that God gives us, what do we become?

We become a counter testimony to a world that tries to monetize our lives and divide us.

So we seek to be a community, not of competition and judgment,

but of compassion and grace, of authenticity and hope of what is real and what is important.

And when we do this together the

kingdom of God grows and people are like yeah I want to be with y'all because

this feels great over here right yeah doesn't it feel great over here y'all

it does doesn't it and then lives are changed and people discover that in Christ

sorrow is never the end of the story.

The strength of Christ is the end of the story. And it's not just for some, it's for all.

Gosh, that is what makes me crazy about the public narrative of what Christianity is.

That it's for some, but not for all.

People need to hear us say that it is for all. Jesus died for all.

For God so loved the world. Do you know what the word is in Greek for world?

For God so loved the cosmos.

The cosmos.

That's all y'all.

Right? Haven't we talked about all y'all before? That's everybody.

That's the whole cosmos.

I don't know who everybody is in the whole cosmos.

I bet there's a whole rainbow out there too.

The compassion of Christ is not just for some, but for all, the whole rainbow of people.

Resurrection and new life are always the end of the story with Jesus,

not just for some, but for all y'all.

So guess what this leads to in the end? Lower stress!

And guess what? It's backed by research. I love that.

Studies show that people who regularly attend church services,

good for you, have up to 55% lower risk of dying prematurely.

All right, we're all going to be here for a long time. Yay.

We have better mental health. We have lower measures of physiological stress,

and we have less distress when hard things come. Woo-hoo!

That doesn't mean that faith pulls us out of pain overnight,

but being a part of a community, being known, practicing faith,

helping others, has measurable power to reduce stress.

And we also have a community that shows up for us in our sorrows. Amen?

Amen. So your mission this week, should you choose to accept it,

and I hope that you will, is twofold.

Number one, bring your stress and your sorrow to the Lord.

Just talk with Jesus like you would a friend.

And like I said before, this is not to inform Jesus.

He already knows you are not a mystery to him, nor to God.

But this is to unburden your heart and soul.

And it's to build your relationship with Jesus. So as the gospel song goes,

have a little chat with Jesus.

All right? I do that all day, every day.

I think he's heard a lot from me. And if you need Jesus with some skin on, look around you and me.

You can talk to any friend in this community who would be honored to be a trusted

companion on this journey of faith. I know that. You know why?

Because I know every single one of you pretty well.

And they would be honored to be a companion on your journey of faith.

And that is why we are all here together. Amen?

Amen. We are here for each other. Number two, invite your stressed out friends and family to church.

St. Luke's is part of a stress-lowering healthy lifestyle.

Woo-hoo! You have the research, right? I just shared with you the research.

I'll put it in the newsletter this week. Right? You can copy and paste,

you can forward, you can say, come to church with me. It's part of a healthy lifestyle.

There you go. We're all about that. And why? Because we know there is no external role,

no money, no thing in the world that can buy what has already been given to

us as a free gift by the God who has made us and by the Christ who has saved us on the cross.

Let the church say amen go in peace unstuck from stress and anchored in God's

love carry Christ's compassion into a world that longs for hope as you love,

serve and welcome all thanks be to God and we will.