CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT LOVE…AND ED TUCKER [Su, 12-19-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

Ed Tucker originally thought of himself as a Lutheran, because one Sunday afternoon, at Christmas time, when he was in 8^th grade, his father took him to a Lutheran church in their neighborhood, in Chicago, and dropped him off for the Christmas party for kids. So this is a sweet little story for Christmas… except…

 

Ed said, “I have no idea why my father took me to that Christmas party. We never went to church. I didn’t even know what a church was. My father was a huge racist and was mad at church people who were in favor of segregation. But I thought it was great. They gave me a book as a gift. No one had ever given me a book before. And they had food! I was in 8^th grade and weighed 200 lbs. I loved to eat. I kept going back.”

I’m going through old files… discarding most… keeping some… enjoying the memories… including the booklet Garrett Theological Seminary put together for the 40^th anniversary of my class. They asked each of us what we remembered most or liked best from our student days there. Ed said, “The daily commuting rides with John McFarland, when he drove in from Cedar Lake, Indiana and picked me up on the south side of Chicago.”

 

Because we spent so much time together, Ed is one of my best memories, too, not just for seminary days, but when we were together for class reunions and occasional continuing ed events. Even when we were retired, when he lived in Chicago’s western burbs and I in Sterling, IL, to be with the grandkids, we would meet halfway, in Dekalb, at a Borders store, and drink coffee and buy books and reminisce.

The guidance counselors saw Ed as a big dumb fat kid and so sent him to Lane Technical High School to learn to be a draftsman. He said, “That’s all they taught us in the drafting program. We didn’t learn English or history or that stuff. But being big and dumb, I got to be the catcher on the baseball team. After sitting at a drafting table all day for four years, I knew I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life. I applied to Chicago Teacher’s College. They’d take anybody. Except me. But the baseball coach convinced the admissions people to let me in, because he needed a catcher.”

“I kept going to church, and I met some Methodist ministers who were active in civil rights. I began to think I should be a preacher. So I applied to Garrett. They turned me down flat. I had a degree from Chicago Teacher’s College, with a baseball major and a D minus GPA. But those Methodist ministers intervened. They convinced Garrett to let me in on probation. The first quarter, I flunked every class. Garrett was going to throw me out, but those guys begged them to give me another chance.”

They did, and the church was so much better because they did.

Ed has always given me credit for getting him through the last barrier of seminary graduation, comprehensive exams, because we studied together for them. I’m glad to take any credit I can for Ed, because he had a good and fun and useful career as a preacher, but I think I was less important than he claims.

Ed not only was a warm and compassionate pastor but, because of all that drafting work at Lane Tech, an excellent artist, illustrating various publications for the church.

 

Yes, a sweet little story for Christmas… I sometimes wonder if Ed knows that he went through all that stuff, that he had a career in ministry, not because the Lutherans gave him books and snacks, or those Methodist preachers kept after Garrett to let him in, or because I guided him through comps, but because his parents took him to that Christmas party to get him out of the house so they could make love.

 

Christmas is all about love, but I don’t think I’ll mention this to Ed, since it apparently has never occurred to him, but I will find out if he reads this column.

John Robert McFarland

The title I used most often for Christmas sermons was “Odd Times, Strange Places,” even though the sermon was different from Christmas to Christmas, because that’s the story of Christmas, how God comes at odd times, in strange places, the way God came to Ed.