For Pastor Herm

Just last week, we took a run up to Willmar, Minnesota, for the funeral service of a very dear friend and former pastor, Pastor Herm Van Niejenhuis, who, with his spouse, Dee, retired from the church we attend. He did so almost exactly when we retired and departed for rural Alton. The Van Niejenhuises chose Willmar because Dee grew up there, a place she could, after many years in the ministry, be comfortably surrounded by family. 

Three years ago, after a routine physical, he was told, as was she, that he was carrying pancreatic cancer. It was not a pleasant surprise. Pancreatic cancer takes no prisoners. Suggested time?--a year or so, maybe more.

He fought valiantly and grabbed two whole years more than the doctors guessed. But pancreatic cancer is no joke, and, as promised, it finally took him a couple of weeks ago.

The family asked me to say a few words at the funeral. Herm was my friend.

I told the crowd in the downtown Lutheran church where he'd blessedly drifted off to in those late years, that once upon a time I was taught that the office of pastor carries with it a three-fold obligation: to be a prophet, a priest, and a king--all three offices." 

"Let me tell  you about Pastor Herm," I said, then told three stories. 

The first was from Pastor Herm's farewell party. For a power point presentation, I'd run around town getting a picture of each family waving goodbye to a pastor everyone loved, even though no one ever could have called him conventional. When I got to the Landman family, one of the kids didn't show up outside. "Hannah?" I asked.

"She's not coming," Hannah's mother told me. "She doesn't want Pastor Herm to leave." Back then, Hannah was ten years old.

That's a priestly story, Pastor Herm as warmly pastoral, even to the ten-year-olds, loved by all.

Then prophetic, Pastor Herm as prophet--not particularly difficult either.

At a classis meeting, when a new seminary grad was being quizzed by the old guys, someone determined to make him answer this question. The elderly pastor asked the kid something to the effect of this question: "Draw a line around what you believe to be 'the Christian life." 

Pastor Herm interrupted softly by raising his hand in the company of all those stalwarts. "You don't have to answer that," he told the candidate.

Theologically at least, prophetically, Herm's life had taught him that one cannot draw lines around the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Whatever circle one might create could not, would not define the Almighty. 

My guess is that the meeting had no more vivid theological lessons that what Pastor Herm offered in that single comment.

Tomorrow: the office of king.