A little over a week ago, on July 3, 2010, my dear friend, Pastor Kenny Ye, was killed in a bus accident (here is the AP news story about the accident). Kenny was going to Sri Lanka for a mission trip to train church leaders in that country, but he had a brief layover in Seoul, South Korea, where the accident occurred. The airport bus on which he was riding swerved to avoid a stalled vehicle and fell off a bridge, plummeting 30 feet upside-down. Kenny was traveling with one of my former seminary professors, Dr. Gary Parrett, who survived the bus accident but is seriously injured and in a coma. Please pray for the recovery of Dr. Parrett (many Biola people will remember him as having preached for several Biola and Talbot chapels last semester).
I first met Kenny over a decade ago because we lived on the same dorm floor as classmates at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Kenny was a vibrant, unforgettable guy, and truly larger-than-life. He was often loud and boisterous, with a hilarious sense of humor. Me being a Red Sox fan and he being a Yankees fan, we’d let each other have it—but more often than not, he’d win (simply by virtue of the fact that he could just pick me up and hang me upside down until I cried mercy)!
I recall all the trips we took together: camping in Acadia National Park (Maine), doing a Polar Bear Dive during the first snowfall in Boston, Disney World, England (and taking a crazy overnight bus to Scotland), New York City (mainly to watch Broadway musicals—we were huge Lea Salonga fans and saw her perform in both Les Mis and Miss Saigon, though The Pirate Queen was just awful), Walden Pond (where he tried to dump me in the water), Cooperstown (Baseball Hall of Fame), eating crab in Maryland, an Orioles game at Camden Yards, Vancouver, Whistler, and Santa Barbara. He’d drive people around in his little red Honda Civic (later upgraded to a little black Mazda Miata), loving having the convertible top down, and relishing the feel of the wind as he talked theology and ministered to people. Some of my most profound spiritual moments came as he would expound theology to me in his car and we would listen to Tim Keller sermons on his iPod. It was from Kenny that I learned that the Christian life is not one extreme or the other but is often that hard middle way (and you can see that influence throughout many of my blogs—I am constantly advocating a “third way” and that was largely Kenny’s influence, via Tim Keller and the Parable of the Prodigal Son). He also gave me a piece of advice that has always stuck with me, which I often pass on to my students: “Don’t take yourself too seriously; but take God seriously. And know the difference between the two.” Kenny worked hard and played hard, but most of all, he loved all the people under his care, whether they were part of his congregation or just his friends.
I had a lot of nicknames for him: K-Rod; Dice-K; Kid ‘n Play; Kentastic; Special K; Circle K; Kendo; Kennedy Lake; Kennilicious; Kennedy International Airport; Kentucky Fried Chicken; K-Fed; Kenobi; Kid Rock; O Kenada; Clark Kenny; K Dawg; Kentucky Derby; R. Kenny; Kenny G; Kennedy Space Center; Kennebunkport; O Say Ken You See; Ken & Barbie. He would call me, in turn: A-Rod; Mel Allen (“How about that?”); Tim Allen; Leaving Allentown; Alienation; Alaska Pipeline; Alzheimers; Alimony; Abimelek; Allen Parsons Project; Yo Arnold; Alvin the Chipmunk; Aloysius; A-1 sauce; and Alan Ye (“the way it should be spelled”). But to those who he ministered to under his pastoral care, he was simply “PK”: Pastor Kenny.
Kenny was a big man, and he would give you a bear hug every time he saw you. But he was more than just a big teddy bear—he knew that life was not just about encouragement but also incisive discernment, and he could cut straight to the heart of the matter better than anyone I knew. Every time I would be arrogant or stupid or trying to impress girls or trying to justify something to myself, he would call me out on it. He knew what was in a man’s heart and he never let people get away with it—but this keen counselor’s insight was always balanced with care. He was like a big brother—willing to say the hard things to me that no one else would say. But I always knew that we were family, which is why he had a right to say such things.
In many ways, he and I were opposites. He is Korean-American, and I am Chinese-American (given the fact that our surnames are so similar, he would always swear that his was the original spelling and mine was just a corruption); he’s a large guy, and I’m not particularly big; he’s a talker, I’m an emailer; he was heart and I am head. It took me only 3 years to finish my M.Div. but it took him 10, but that belies the fact that I think he was still a lot smarter than me despite all my earned degrees.We stood next to each other at graduation (because our names were ordered alphabetically) and he wept when he got his diploma because it had been a long-time coming and he had to overcome many obstacles to get there; but I still maintain that, between the two of us, he definitely had the keener mind (and a more magnanimous spirit). But I think this is part of what made Kenny what he was—things were never easy for him, so like the Parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:36-50), the one who possesses less has greater appreciation and thankfulness for everything in life. Or rather, he only appeared to have less, but really he had more—and that is, I think, one of the Gospel principles of Jesus’s upside-down kingdom which Kenny so often showed me by his word and his life lived out.
Kenny ended up being a pastor in Baltimore, Maryland, but he always maintained a heart for missions, regularly traveling to places like Turkey, Namibia, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka to bring the Gospel. And it was on one of these trips that he lost his life. This is the first time in my life that a close friend of mine has died. I have lost three grandparents, but it is a completely different thing to lose someone unexpectedly “before their time.” Of course I put that phrase in quotes because everything is in the Lord’s timing. Yet, that doesn’t make this pill any easier to swallow.
The main question I have been wrestling with is this: Why would God take someone who was faithfully serving him?
Reflecting on the kind of God we serve, I think we often (wrongly) still think he operates in a quid pro quo manner, i.e. he is a reactionary God: we do something wrong, we get our hands slapped; we do something right, we get rewarded. But that turns God into a predictable slot machine. And that turns Christianity into a religion of works, making it just like every other religion on earth.
The fact of the matter is, we worship a God who loves to lavish grace on us—to people who don’t deserve it. If we wanted a God who gave us our just desserts, I’d be quaking in my boots, because none of us deserve very much at all if we are rewarded according to our behavior! Now, of course some people in the Bible did lose their lives because of their sin (e.g. Uzzah;, Ananias and Sapphira), but I think that is not the usual way that God acts. This is why the Psalmist so often laments the fact that the wicked prosper and the righteous have to wait for justice to come. How long, oh Lord?
If death is often not a punishment for wrongdoing, could it possibly be just the opposite—a reward? I know that seems strange to contemplate, but Jesus did say that those who die for his sake will be accorded the highest honors in heaven. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all but one of the twelve disciples were martyred. And the Apostle Paul, himself a martyr, said: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
This is just speculation, but I wonder if God calls people quickly to himself if they especially please him. I have listened to a lot of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) in my life, and unfortunately a lot of it is rubbish. But two of the most profound singers that have affected me are Keith Green and Rich Mullins. Green was considered a modern-day prophet, refusing to give us candy-coated sugary songs but instead challenging us with lyrics like:
“The world is sleeping in the dark
that the church just can’t fight ‘cause it’s asleep in the light
How can you be so dead when you’ve been so well fed?
Jesus rose from the grave and you, you can’t even get out of bed!”
And Mullins was nicknamed the “Ragamuffin Poet” because he was a modern-day St. Francis of Assisi, giving away all his money for the sake of the poor and ministering to Native Americans while living on a reservation, but expressing his theology poetically with lyrics like,
“We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made,
forged in the fires of human passion
choking on the fumes of selfish rage.
And with these our hells and our heavens
so few inches apart, we must be awfully small
and not as strong as we think we are.”
Keith Green died in a plane crash and Rich Mullins died in a car accident. Why did God take the two most profound and uncompromisingly Christian CCM singers?
I am a big baseball fan, and I also think of Roberto Clemente, the first Latino to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Clemente was not only a phenomenal hitter, he was an extraordinary Christian. He often took trips to Latin America to deliver food and other supplies to the needy. He had just reached the 3,000-hit landmark in baseball when a devastating earthquake struck Nicaragua in 1972. Roberto Clemente flew out there to deliver relief supplies to the victims and died en route in a plane crash. How do we make sense of Clemente, Green, and Mullins? I think of Rich Mullins’ prophetic song, “Elijah,” in which he says:
But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire
And when I look back on the stars
Well, It’ll be like a candlelight in Central Park
And it won’t break my heart to say goodbye
…
But the Jordan is waiting
Though I ain’t never seen the other side
They say you can’t take in
The things you have here
So on the road to salvation
I stick out my thumb and He gives me a ride
And His music is already falling on my ears
Kenny, you went out like Elijah, now go with God. I take comfort in knowing that we will see each other again.
“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” (Psalm 116:15)
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” (Matthew 10:28)
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24)at Kennedy Lake, Canada
