John Kok--1948-2020

He was my editor, my boss, my colleague, and, for a long, long time, our neighbor and good, good friend. From just across the street, we watched him grow up as a father with all those kids—six of them—some of them good friends of our kids. And there was Donald the cat and Max that sweet farm dog too. For some crazy reason, I’ll never forget their oldest daughter, fancied up, getting picked up for her first high school prom. In a way, that seemed the sweet end of childhood in the neighborhood. 

Our long-time neighbor, John Kok was struck by some massive, evil staph infection that took him so quickly it seems impossible today to imagine him somehow gone. This morning is his funeral, in the age of the coronavirus, by invitation only. We will be there. We are grieving.

As a young man, thirty-some years ago during his first years on campus where both of us taught, he had all the boldness of a Old Testament prophet, armed with "a kingdom vision" Professor John Kok picked up during his undergrad years, a Kuyperian sense of things that its advocates referred to as the college's "perspective," a theological dynamo with myriad philosophical implications and modalities. He was its pitchman. one of the three philosophical Johns, we used to call them, who kept the rest of us orthodox by their relentless advocacy and sheer intellectual power. 

Back then, Dr. John Kok could be intimidating--tall, imperially slim, deeply committed, a gifted teacher with a European philosophical education. He rose quickly to authority. He even smoked a pipe. Parties at their house some nights were an intellectual feast with guests from around the world. He loved such events, loved hosting them, loved serving up food and drinks. 

His kids changed him, as they can and do. There were a half-dozen of them, each coming into the world with the same genetic cocktail, but not any two of them the same. Lord knows it's possible for parents of any vocation to simply look past their kids, but he never did or could and would. Over time, their separate lives and stories took the edge off his determined philosophical commitments. The prophet mellowed into priest. Instead of ideas, he served people.

At school, his strengths brought him out of the classroom and into the administration, where Dean John Kok's authority in the structure meant even more accommodation. It was important for him to listen to those he served, to empathize, to help solve problems that weren't his and wouldn't be cleared up by a theory. His own late '60s passions, like so many of ours, were being slowly cured.

On his own, he became an editor, a one-man publishing house, turning out books almost single-handedly, books he believed the community he served and often led needed for the task of being  believers in this world. With age and experience, the prophet may well have morphed into a priest, but the Jeremiah in him was never left behind. Editor John Kok, in his own quiet way and corner, turned out lots of books, some of them mine.

The picture way up top--Lake Michigan--makes no sense really. It's far from the emerald edge of the Great Plains where he lived. Besides, Professor John Kok was a true citizen of the world, a man who'd spent years in Europe and adored world travel. 

But I chose that picture for a reason.

Americans have all kinds of trouble with the meaning of "kingship." The office of believer is three-fold, we like to say: we are prophets, priests, and kings. But how exactly can we fulfill that last office if we don't know how? It's tough to be a king when you're a citizen of a democracy. We have a sense of how to be prophetic, and we know how to be a priest, even if it's not easy. But how on earth can we be kings anyway?

I knew John in many ways, but I never saw him as happy as when he’d tell me about his family’s summer vacations on what we used to call “the big lake.” As many as could make it would be there--kids and grandkids, boyfriends and girlfriends, all of them on the beach, that huge loving family from all over the States and even the world. There they were, together. Dad Kok was no autocrat; there with loving wife and children all around, he served those he most loved as king.

Here they are, ankle deep in the lake. 

In whatever sweet abode John Kok's spirit now abides, I can’t believe he doesn’t have that picture and treasure it.