by Mike Sears –
Thomas Currie retired from serving as dean of the Charlotte campus of Union Presbyterian Seminary Campus. A former student offered this tribute to him. The staff and board members of the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation, Inc., concur with his reflections and share their appreciation for Currie who is a continuing board member.
The measure of a man: is it the way he presents himself to the world; how well he performs the tasks of his job; or, is it in the sheer mass of the effectual mundane things, like the way he conducts his household; the way he raises his kids; his love for his wife? I know very little of any answer by way of this criteria for the Reverend Dean Dr. Thomas Currie III. My guess is I’d be humbled by his faithfulness in these “small” things.
What I know best from Dr. Currie is simply put but ineffably full. “Full of what?” you might ask. Well, I ask myself the same question, curtailing the innate desire here to make a joke, as was oft the way of our loving, in-class koinonia, cultivated by this man’s love of teaching faith seeking understanding. One word comes to mind: gospel.
(Courtesy of Union Presbyterian Seminary, photo by Duane Berger)
Dr. Currie’s red ink moved along the double- spaced lines of my bi-weekly essays like a plow, turning over the dry, dusty crust of my contorted take on Scripture, theology and tradition. Underneath that break, pull and pop of those deep roots choking out a chance at new growth and life was the moistened, nutrient-rich, good soil ready for the Word. A patient, kind and worthy plowman, Dr. Currie kept his hand fast to the plow, turning it over in us and for us week after week. He hoped in a Holy Spirit that sows, fertilizes and waters God’s way, God’s truth and God’s path into the souls of the called. Dr. Currie knew that good soil was ready for the Word, and that Word was the gospel, the seed his Savior’s scarred hands constantly cast. Anyone reading this who knows anything of Tom Currie knows these words — the Word — to be as essential to his being as is his very life-breath: “Jesus is Lord.” Again, simply put, that Word is ineffably full; and, so full were the hours we spent at the feet of this faithful teacher of the Word.
I was fortunate to spend six years as a part-time seminary student under the leadership and professorship of Dr. Currie. Even after graduation, this man of the gospel continued to pastor us, his children in the faith. A couple of years into my first solo pastorate, Dr. Currie carved out a lunch meeting with me, as I was deeply discouraged at the apparent sickly state of ministry in my congregation. In a little sandwich shop a mile or so down the road from the seminary, the universe was reduced to the size of his face, which seemed, oddly enough, to shine a bit while, through closed eyes gently shadowed by the eaves of a dead serious brow, he spoke perennial words — once again, the Word — still thriving in the garden of my ministry: “Michael, Jesus was never cured on the cross.” We are not above our Master. Our only task as pastors is — like John the Baptist in the Grünewald painting that was a favorite of Dr. Currie’s hero, Karl Barth — to simply point to the cross. We point to the cross as pastors because it is our only hope, our only degree, our only merit, the only grace allowing us to open our mouths and proclaim the very gospel of Christ’s death, resurrection and Lordship over all of life. Tom Currie, child of God and servant of Jesus Christ, my brother in the Lord, articulated that for me. Like golden apples in a silver basket were those wise words at that moment in my ministry.
Ministry makes one lose touch sometimes with strong, life-pumping veins sprouting from that vine of Christ’s body. I was taken aback to learn that God’s big Texan would turn in his dean star soon and hang his hat on other racks. A smile washed away my bewilderment as I remembered Dr. Currie’s “bat-signal”: Texas BBQ and Bluebell Ice Cream.
In all seriousness, though, the hours I spent at Dr. Currie’s feet and the endless hours that the Holy Spirit recalls his words to me will always culminate in a word, in the Word: “Jesus is Lord.” Though we’ll lose his leadership, we’ll never lose that joy amid suffering Dr. Currie always talks about. See, that’s what happens when a saint’s particular call changes and he or she must move on. We come to see that it was never themselves to whom they bid us come and see. Saints decrease as Christ increases. As Karl Barth said somewhere in “Church Dogmatics” when speaking of Grünewald’s painting, “ … one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger. Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?”
That’s the Reverend Dean Dr. Thomas Currie III I recall from my time at Union Presbyterian Seminary at Charlotte. Wherever the Spirit moves him from here, you can be absolutely certain of the one thing which this saint’s life’s work continually ministers in faith, hope and love in order to make certain: “Jesus is Lord.” May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you, Tom Currie, and us all forevermore as this walk with Jesus Christ in the world but not of the world continues.
MIKE SEARS is associate pastor of Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, North Carolina, and a 2008 graduate of Union Presbyterian Seminary at Charlotte.
