Funeral for James Lee Sorenson - October 2, 2019

Order of Service – Funeral for James Lee Sorenson 

Prelude: Organ Music

Procession: All please rise.

Call to Worship:
Heavenly Father, You have assured us that through Your Son all shall have eternal life. Trusting in Your faithfulness and mercy, we await that glory filled day when You raise us all to life in triumph and we shall stand before Your throne. Standing there with all Your creation made new in Christ Jesus, basking in the glory of Your eternal Heavenly Kingdom. 

Greeting:
We have come together within the strengthening fellowship of friends and family:
to remember the life of James Lee Sorenson;
to share our grief with God and with one another;
to reaffirm our faith in God's unfailing goodness;
to hear again God's promise of resurrection;
and to commend Jim to God's everlasting care.

Music:     Go Rest High On That Mountain - Vince Gill

Opening Prayer:
Gracious God, your love endures forever.  Your faithfulness is unfailing and all your promises are true.  The movement of your Spirit is evident even in our darkest moments.  Attend to us now in our grief as we trust you will.  
Speak words of comfort to our hearts.  Open us up to receive your hope.
O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother Jim.
We thank you for giving him to us, his family and friends,
to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage.
In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.
Give us faith to see death as the gate of eternal life,
so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth,
until by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Music: When I Get Where I'm Going - Brad Paisley

A reading from the Old Testament:

Psalm 65 NRSV
Thanksgiving for Earth’s Bounty
1  Praise is due to you,
O God, in Zion;
and to you shall vows be performed,
2  O you who answer prayer!
To you all flesh shall come.
3 When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us,
you forgive our transgressions.
4 Happy are those whom you choose and bring near
to live in your courts.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
your holy temple.
5 By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance,
O God of our salvation;
you are the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas.
6 By your strength you established the mountains;
 you are girded with might.
7 You silence the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples.
8 Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;
you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
9 You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
10You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
11 You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

A reading from the New Testament:
Matthew 20:1-16 New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Music: Dancing in the Sky – Dani & Lizzy

Message:  Pastor Roy Karlen – Woodlawn Christian Church
James Lee Sorenson was born in Lake City, Iowa, on July 11, 1948, to Fred and Dora  Sorenson.  Jim was baptized here at Woodlawn Christian Church on November 5th, 1956 by Reverend Prather.  He was a 1966 graduate of Lake City High School and continued his education at Iowa State University graduating in 1970 with a degree in Forestry.  On June 13, 1999, Jim married Lana Caswell right here at Woodlawn Christian Church. He was a member of Calhoun County Pheasants Forever and ISU Alumni Association.  Jim's life's work was primarily that of a farmer, he loved the land and he loved life.

When I asked his family to give me some words that described Jim they said the following: 
Gentle, friendly, family-oriented, relationships were very important to him, he was competitive, he loved games and he wanted to win, he was a kid at heart and never grew up. He loved Iowa State and was a fan of all their sports, especially football and he had season tickets to their football games for 40 years.  They told me that Jim was a friend to nearly everyone, that he was a great listener, and he was always smiling.  He loved to garden and always had a large garden. I was told that he was rarely ever stressed and was always easy-going, even-tempered, and laid back. He always believed that God would provide.  They said that he was a Jack-of-all-trades. Jim enjoyed antiques and going picking with Lana. He enjoyed playing cards, especially euchre. The family said Jim was a survivor, that he loved animals, he liked to hunt, to fish, and to just be outdoors.  That he was a farmer, and he loved his farm. I was told about his great love for the 4th of July and fireworks. And finally, it was shared that he would truly be missed by so very, very, very many people.

As I said earlier, Jim was born here in Lake City, he was the youngest of three boys and grew up on the farm that he and Lana have lived on for so many years. He attended 'country school' during the 1st and 2nd grades before coming to school in Lake City.  After graduating from college, Jim lived and worked for a time in Boone, IA, working for 3M.  Later Jim worked construction and a few other odd jobs before returning home to farm in the early '70s. Jim raised sheep for many years and for the last 18 years he and Lana were very well known for their sweetcorn, “Sorenson's Sweetcorn”.  They raised 18 acres of sweetcorn and worked hard together to build the business.

Jim loved his children and grandchildren, the family has endless memories of playing sports, board games,snowmobiling, hunting, fishing, and trapping with their father and grandfather.  He was especially devoted to attending the grandchildren's sporting events and in fact Lana and Jim didn't renew their Iowa State tickets this year just so they'd be able to attend more of their grandchildren's competitions.  I mentioned that Jim loved the 4th of July and it was the love of putting on the firework displays for the grandchildren that really motivated him.  Lana and Jim would make a trip each year to Missouri to purchase fireworks.

The family told me how Jim only knew how to make one dish... and that was peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.  It was something he was known for, though he did also help Lana make salsa each year from the bounty from their garden.  This past year was the first time that Jim and Lana didn't have an enormous garden, they took the year off due to Jim's health but were already making plans for next year.

Lana and Jim had a mutual love for antiques and spent a great deal of time searching for unique and unusual items to sell in their booth located in 'Antique Iowa' in Story City. They would stop and shop at flea markets and shops as they traveled to their winter haunts in Texas.  They spent the last five winters in Texas and shopped all over and even down into Mexico for antiques and collectibles.  For a time Jim and Lana had the Raccoon River Gallery here in Lake City.

I mentioned that Jim enjoyed playing cards and especially euchre.  He played euchre every day with his card group in Lanesboro.  The games first started at Ester's gas-station and then moved to Daisy's Cafe when the gas-station closed down.

Jim was always an outdoors-man, loving to fish, to hunt, and to trap.  He trapped mink for many years and enjoyed hunting deer every year.  He was given the 'Tail Feather' award for his activity and involvement in Pheasants Forever and he always considered himself a conservationist.  Jim planted many windbreaks for wildlife habitat and to fight wind erosion.

The family will always hold precious memories of picking raspberries with Jim and of consuming these berries along with homemade ice-cream.  The raspberries and ice-cream were a family tradition for Jim.

There simply is no end to the memories that Jim has left behind with his family and loved ones, please share these memories with each other after the service during our luncheon here in Fellowship Hall.  The last thing that the family told me about Jim was that he will be missed... indeed he will be missed.

God does not cause tragedy to happen... but what He can do and what He will do if we are attentive is to show to us in these times of darkness and dis-pare His love for us.  Good can come out of tragedy and loss if we are determined to do good in the name of God.

What God has done here today is to demonstrate to each of you His love for you all... He has reached out to you and brought you here to His house, where if you allow Him he will put His arm of comfort around you and bear you up in your time of grief. God has brought each of you here to be His agent of comfort to His children as they ache with broken hearts.  He has chosen you to comfort them and He has chosen them to comfort you. Just as Christ grieved over the death of Lazarus, God grieves over the death of Jim.

As one called to be God's advocate and at times like these God's voice I declare to you all... unequivocally... God LOVES you... He calls to you to come to Him, place your weary and worried head upon His shoulder... pray to Him of your sorrows and He will grant you His peace.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

As the words of the Apostle Paul spoke to all of us: 
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Finally, let us find comfort in these wonderful and well known words in the 23rd Psalm, these words that remind us that no matter where we go... our Lord is with us, and that no matter how rough the seas of life may be, that if we come to Him and cling to Him... those turbulent seas will become still waters.

Psalm 23 King James Version (KJV)
23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The family has requested that we all sing together the very well known hymn by Horatio Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul.  Considering the incredible tragedy and loss that Horatio had just suffered and which led to his writing of this hymn, it is especially appropriate that we sing it here today.  No matter how much loss Horatio suffered, no matter how much loss we suffer... as long as we hold firm to our faith in our loving Lord... it is indeed well with our souls.  Praise be to God.

Please turn in the hymnal in front of you to Hymn #561 “It Is Well with My Soul”.

Music: It Is Well with My Soul – Hymn #561

Closing Prayer:
Immediately following this service we will proceed to the Lanesboro Cemetery for the committal service.  The family has asked that only the immediate family attend the graveside service due to the rain and the condition of the cemetery as a result of all the rain.  Please wait here for us in Fellowship Hall and continue in further celebration of  Jim's life and a time of shared remembrances and closure.  Please allow this closing prayer to serve as grace for that meal.

Let us please pray:
O God, our Strength, and our Redeemer, Giver of life, and Conqueror of death, we open our hearts to you just as we are.  We celebrate your gift of life freely given but are grieved by a sense of loss in the face of death.  The love which binds us to one another leaves us aching as ties are broken.  Accept our tears as emblems of devotion, and transform them into waters of life to nourish us in the days ahead.

We trust you.  We love you.  We know in Christ that your love is everlasting.  Nothing can separate any of us from your abiding care.  With you is eternal life.

With confidence, we now entrust Jim to your unfailing love and overflowing goodness.  Through the power that raised Christ from the dead to live eternally with you, lift up this, your child, to life fulfilled beyond our imagining.  We give you but your own, enfold him in your everlasting arms, hold him for he is yours.
Now strengthen us, through the gift of your Spirit, to face into the future with confidence that you stand with us.  Grant that the changes of life may leave us stronger as we journey through life.
Reassured of your abiding presence, help us to knit more firmly the ties that bind us one to another.  Renewed by your love, help us to love in ever-larger circles so as to embrace your people everywhere till at last we are all united eternally through Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Benediction:

Exit Music: Hunting, Fishing, Lovin Everyday – Luke Bryan

Committal Service:
We selfishly want to hold on to Jim. It brings great pain to let go. Living in the resurrection hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the trust of a loving God and in the promise of eternal life, we now commit his body to its place of rest. We will continue to mourn our loss, but his laughter will warm the kingdom of God. We will continue to love Jim, but God will now take care of him. We will continue to carry Jim in our thoughts, but he will be kept safe in God's hands. Receive him in the arms of your mercy, O God, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace.

Let me share with you all at this time... these cherished words penned by the one and only Paul Harvey, these words concerning farmers, it's called “So God Made a Farmer”:

So God Made a Farmer - Paul Harvey
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.
"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.
"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.

Today, we bury a farmer... and we give back to the Earth one of its very own.

Let us hear now these words of reassurance from our God:
PSALM 121
We lift our eyes up to the hills.
From where does our help come?
Our help comes from the Unseen One,
The Maker of the heavens and the earth,
Who will not cause our feet to stumble,
Our protector who never sleeps.
The Abundant One preserves us,
The Watchful One is our shelter and support.
The Vigilant One guards us from evil,
And keeps our Life-breath safe.
The Shepherd guards our going out
and our coming in from now unto eternity.

Hear now a reading from the 1st Chapter of 2nd Corinthians:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.

God has called you each to console the other, please accept this calling in the days, weeks, and years to come and be His comfort one to another.  Through your love for one another, He has shown His love for all of you, and for Jim.  Praise be to God.

Let us pray:
In sure and certain hope that, as Christ lived and was the first to rise from the dead, we too shall have new life and will join our heavenly Father along with all the saints in a new and better place. We, therefore, commit our brother Jim to the earth from which he was made, and lay to rest this mortal body that it might put on immortality. The Lord bless him and keep him; the Lord make his face shine upon him and be gracious to him; the Lord look upon him with favor and give him eternal peace.  Amen

Believing in the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we now entrust Jim to the care of Almighty God and we ask Our Father to lead Jim to the room made ready just for him. As we now commit his body to its final resting place; we commend his spirit to its new home. Rest eternal grant him, and let God's light perpetual shine upon him. Almighty God, as you once called our brother Jim into this life, so now you have called him into life everlasting. 

Let us pray together the prayer that our Lord taught to us............

This concludes the graveside services.

May the Lord bless you and keep you and may His strong arms uphold you and comfort you in the days, weeks and years ahead.  Go in His peace.