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.
