Let the Rain Come

"And no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth..."
Genesis 2:5

The Bible is replete with simple parables which illustrate deep biblical truths. One of perhaps the most popular would be the Parable of the Talents where three servants were given three different amounts by their master. The first two servants returned bigger amounts than the ones originally given to them while the last servant did not make use of the amount given to him so he returned to his master exactly what he received. Of course, we know that the the last servant received a lot more than mere verbal bashing. However what the master told the first two servants is one of the most repeated lines from the Bible which best serve as an inspiration for the frontliners in ministry work. The words go, "Well done, good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21)."
On August 7, in the stillness of the evening, one of God's faithful servants closed his eyes and woke up to hear those words from the Master Himself. It was a peaceful, painless transition, as noiseless as the quiet but fervently passionate manner of service he had always rendered the Lord. Pastor Rudy Acosta was finally called home to rest in God's eternal embrace in a manner befitting that of a faithful servant.

To be honest about it, I have yet to ask my mother how old he was. After all for me, he was as ageless as he was tireless. I have known him for as long as I could remember and yet I never noticed any radical change in the way he looked, except when I go through photographs taken during my parents' wedding and I see the marks of the years that pass on his face and on his hands. He was a little over five feet in height, diminutive even for Filipino standards, quiet, unassuming and in the latter years of his life, trodded along with a trademark gait that I can still picture clearly in my mind. His coversational voice was soft and melodic, laced with that trademark lilt that older Visayans especially have. However, when it was his turn to stand on the podium to deliver his sermons, the lamb became a roaring lion. He was possessed with fiery fervor and passion which exploded in every stomp of his foot, every twist of his hand, every slam of his fist, every hunch of his back and in each and every word uttered by his tongue.
I do not recall exactly when I first heard him speak or how old I was but it must have been in one of those occasions after Sunday School in primary level when I grew tired of waiting for my parents in the playground and my two bottles of Yakult had run out like the wine in the wedding in Canaan. Growing restless, I decided to venture inside the "boring church for grown-ups." I grew up in a white-washed, old-fashioned Baptist church with the towering steeples, wooden pews, stained glass windows and occasional bats where children were herded off to Sunday School in the mornings. When I planted my foot on the tiled floor and took a peek, I remember being captured by the image of this man with a thunderous voice which I figured couldn't possibly fit in his small frame. His presence was commanding and his stares were so intimidating they almost bordered on gloating. To me and my pigtails, he was scary. Scary enough to send my frilly socks flying off my shoes. Before I could turn around and run out to tell my friends how the boring grown-up church was not exactly boring after all, he shifted seamlessly to being thoughtful and reflective like a Ferrari on quick deceleration, with his head cocking to one side and his hand curled in a balled-up fist resting under his chin. For me, morphing from a T-Rex to a diplodocus in a snap was was nothing short of cool.
I remember on one weekday, my mother dropped by the church for some business. One of my friends was the associate minister's daughter so as the two of us snuck up to their house on the pretext of getting a drink of water (a prelude to our usual game of hide-and-seek), I passed by Manoy Rudy's living quarters in the church parsonage and I saw him inside, walking around quietly, with absolutely no trace of the fiery preacher anywhere. He couldn't seem to hurt a fly but on the podium, he was as consumed as a bonfire.
Now for a kid, the manner is what matters. But as I grew up, I looked forward to his sermons Sunday after Sunday not because of the way he delivered them but primarily because of what they contained. I look up to him as one of the greatest preachers who have walked my side of the world and I followed him around depending on which church he moved to, from Lapaz to Molo to Mandurriao to Jaro. His command of both English and Hiligaynon worked well to his advantage as he could swiftly shift from quoting the English text to bringing the point closer to home and heart by using poetic yet familiar words of our local dialect. His brilliance and intelligence were astounding and he overhauled the Bible like a backhoe digging through the soil and sifted through each word and every sentence like a goldpanner. He would squeeze the very essence out of scripture until the understanding comes like a fresh breeze. His theological viewpoints though were never compromising on accuracy and clarity and were always delivered with the strongest and most emphatic of punchblows, enough to outlast the toughest of spiritual pugilists.
Pastor Acosta was also an educator and he taught at the Central Philippine University's College of Theology. A lot of the pastors I've met were mentored by him and his influence is apparent in the way these pastors deliver their sermons. About two years ago, I met up with an old friend (who, since our days in the children's choir, had now become a pastor himself) in a church anniversary we both attended and in the middle of his sermon, he started to share one anecdote after another about Manoy Rudy. Then he lightheartedly said in the vernacular, "It should be obvious by now who my mentor was."
He remained unmarried until his death but like a sower hurling seeds across a field, he had brought many lives to Christ in the same manner that a child grows under his parent's tutelage. It is one thing to hear someone speak about Jesus and to actually see him walk the talk and in my opinion, that was what made him effective. He was not perfect of course, as none of us are but he was a man of humility who loved Christ with a quiet yet simmering ardor which was difficult not to emulate. He was a simple, quiet man and in the latter years of his life, I slowly came to regard him as a grandfather of sorts.
About a year ago, after Pastor Acosta had retired from the church he was ministering to in Jaro, my mother requested him to be part of her office's workplace ministry where he was to deliver messages or sermons once a month during our Sunday worship services. We were a little apprehensive as he would be speaking to a group of people who were practically strangers to Scripture so my mom asked one of the regular attendees how the service was for him. I personally remember chuckling as the attendee started raving about how everyone was entranced by the "old, seemingly feeble pastor" who surprised them by speaking very well while "bouncing" around the podium. "And we had gone straight from work to the worship service as there was overnight work to be done," he narrated. "But none of us fell asleep!" Thus began his love affair with this small group of people who always looked forward to and will sorely miss his sermons on the last Sunday of every month. He adopted a different paradigm with this group. Gone were the profound words and the complicated illustrations when he spoke before this crowd. He went back to the basics, spelling everything out in clear, broad strokes like an expert swordsman's demonstration.
The last time I saw Pastor Acosta was on April 27, a day after my father's birthday. It was his time of the month to preach and I remember he was surprised to see that I was home for the summer. He gave me a light punch on the shoulder, a greeting he begun to give me when I started dressing up grunge-style in my dad's huge T-shirts during my teens. He spoke about the Beatitudes and about being "salt of the earth and light of the world," a sermon I had heard him deliver years before when I was in high school. I noticed he looked thinner than I remembered and when I shook his hand, I turned his palm over and I told my dad that he looked a bit yellowish to me. He told me he didn't feel anything and that maybe it was because he was getting old and starting to lose his appetite.
On June 20, he was rushed to the hospital after he collapsed inside his home. My dad noted that he had a large mass in his liver. Alarmed by the size of the mass, my dad kept on asking him repeatedly, "Are you in pain?" His answer was a constant "no" and that amazed my dad. Usually, according to my dad, patients with a liver mass that big were writhing in pain but Manoy Rudy was not. He was discharged from the hospital after a couple of days and he still continued to accept speaking engagements after that. In fact about three or four weeks ago, he was off to another speaking engagement outside the city, tireless and dedicated to the Lord's call even as the sand in his hourglass was almost running out.
In one of his many sermons, he came up with a very simple illustration for faith which apparently a lot of people liked as it was quoted every so often. It's something I hope I won't forget at some point, as a way of holding on to the memory of a person who had brought me to the saving knowledge of my Maker.
Faith, according to him, was walking out into the hot sun with an umbrella in hand simply because you prayed for rain.
What I'd give to see Manoy Rudy drenched in Heaven's torrents.