Unwrapping gifts

            I have always said that I didn’t want to be a pastor because you never want to do what your Dad did. My Dad was my pastor and at times I didn’t want a pastor, I wanted a dad. I grew up my own person, mapping out my own path. I was never a great athlete. I played sports for fun but even if I experienced success at a particular activity I usually quit in favor of trying something new. I was never a successful student until college. I didn’t have any desire to study if the subject didn’t seem to have a particular use in life or my own personal interests. I never worked for the praise of others or my family. It was often a source of concern for my parents.

            I enlisted in the Marine Corps and I worked as a Police officer. I was deployed to Iraq and took part in combat operations. I worked in a violent economically depressed city as a Police officer. I was surrounded by death and destruction in both of the vocations I felt I had been called to. Regardless of my vocational callings I remained a consistent participant in weekly worship throughout my life. My faith was an integral part of my life and I found it was part of my identity.

            While I may not have always appreciated my dad because of his strict manner of discipline, I don’t think I could have asked for a better pastor. I grew up with a man that told me what it meant to be a Christian from the lens of a Lutheran pastor. I grew up listening to confessional Lutheran theology daily. When I grew up and left home I had not grown into a student, a cop, a Marine, a husband, or a father. I had grown into a seeker; a young man that sought God around every bend. I sought God in the war in Iraq, the streets of the city that were blighted by crime, I sought God in my marriage, my children, and later I searched for God in every theological topic I explored and studied. I spent hours weekly outside of the classroom reading Kierkegaard, Tillich, Bultmann, and many others, just to seek out a deeper understanding of God. I didn’t do it because I wanted the answers but because I wanted a deeper understanding in how God found a way into every facet of my life, regardless of how joyous or horrible. I just had the confidence that God was, without question, there. 

            As Lutherans we talk at length about faith as a gift from God. I do not deny that faith is a gift from God but my understanding of that gift isn’t much different from the gift you get at Christmas as a child. Even the gifts you want seem that much better when a parent is carefully watching as you unwrap it. Now as a father I get to experience this same joy. I remember, my father, expressing his own delight and joy when I unwrapped my gifts as a child. Christmas was my father’s favorite holiday and it still is today. I recall his assistance, unwrapping my gifts and his delight in watching me play with new toys, sometimes playing with me.

            I guess this is the connection I have finally made; my father was the best pastor I could have had regardless of how we interacted as father and son. He was the greatest pastor I could have had growing up because of his care for that gift that was delicately poured onto my head by his dearest friend, classmate, and colleague on the day I was baptized. I recall his unwrapping of the gift as he quizzed my Lutheran understanding of the sacrament of Holy Communion while I was preparing for my first meal at the communion table. I remember his careful precision in assembling that gift (using the confusing instructions that came with it) for many hours and years while preparing me personally for confirmation. I tried to downplay his pride as I took that gift for a spin when I left home, attending worship on my own and finding my own places of worship.

            Today I went to his office to look through his books and vestments. He showed me the box of chasubles, stoles, albs (fancy clergy clothes for worship), commentaries, and various other books he was entrusting to me. He then pulled out a folder with various newspaper clippings over the years that he had collected. As he looked through those clippings he came across an article he had written but never sent anywhere. He read it to me. It was written weeks before my return from Iraq. My battalion had lost 48 Marines and Corpsman who were killed in action during my deployment. The war had taken a very personal toll on him. I’m not sure what it had done to him in his faith but in the article he spoke of me, less as the little boy riding the Christmas bike around the parking lot on training wheels and more as the Olympic cyclist he couldn’t keep up with anymore. This article was written in the days before I had contemplated seminary, before I had begun to deeply explore scholarly theological texts. In the article he proclaimed that I had changed the very nature of the sacraments for him because of the reverence and longing with which reached for them. He claimed that I had changed his view of worship because of the longing and passion with which I approached the chance to attend a worship service in a makeshift chapel in the middle of run down military base. He was choked up as he read and I sat awkwardly listening, fiddling with random items sitting around the room.

            The article was grossly inaccurate. My father’s perception, my pastor’s perception, was biased because he wanted to believe that his son had taken that gift and far surpassed the abilities of the father. He was inaccurate because it was he who helped to unwrap, assemble, and teach me to use this gift. I’m not certain where I would be today if he had not taken such a personal role in sharing this gift. I often resented him for it but when the day came I had to tell a parent that their child had been killed, watch a friend die, or face the possibility of my own death, I knew that of all the gifts I had been given, this was the greatest.

            I have tried to explain this to my father, my pastor. I have tried to continue and sanctify this gift, given by God and tenderly cared for under the guidance of my father. I still try, but one thing I cannot make clear and that is the role my pastor/father had in all this. Tomorrow he will retire after 40 years in ministry. 40 years, helping to unwrap, watching with delight as that gift is first made identifiable by that one precise rip of the paper, tediously spending hours assembling that gift, and arduously instructing on its practice and use. The challenge in explaining to him just what he has done is helping him to realize that he has not just done this for his son, he has done this for many members of the Body. Introducing a gift that we as children can never fully master but as a pastor and father he has taught so many the value, the joy, and the assurance of that gift.

            I love my dad. I love him as my dad but he will never be just my dad, he’ll always be my pastor. I’m thankful for every pastor who has ever served me, for the gifts they shared with me. My dad will always have a special place in my life, though, because without him that gift may very well have been left behind in the middle of a desert town or a violent city street. Instead that was the gift that washed my wounds, remitted my shortcomings, fed my hunger, and assured me life. Without that gift I very well may still be alive but I, without a doubt, would not be living.

             So, after 40 years of serving God’s Church, thank you for being a servant of the gospel of Christ in my life, when it was the only gift I had. I hope I can model the servant that you have been and the servant you continue to be in my own life.