John Kamal Hanna

On January 22, 2005, my cousin John Kamal Hanna died from severe injuries sustained in a car accident nine days earlier.

John is unlike any person I have ever known. The primary reason for this is because he saw each person he encountered as being unlike any he had ever known. John was utterly fascinated by his fellow human beings, interested in what they thought and what they did; how they talked and how they walked. It’s one of the reasons he was so good at doing impressions. There are those of you reading this who I think might rather have enjoyed John’s impersonation of you, even as it might have caused you to squirm a little. At times John’s impressions were so good, that the next time you saw the person, it seemed as if he were himself doing an impression of John’s impression.

As I’ve already made clear, there is no doubt that John was endowed with extraordinary personal gifts, among which was an incomparable sense of humor. Yet, the best way I can put the noticeable change in him after he entrusted himself to Christ a mere 5 years before he died was that he became more himself. His already splendid sense of humor became more abundant. Even his impressions transitioned from being a way of poking fun to being a tribute to his affection for people. That didn't make them any less uproarious by the way. To enter into a room where John was present was to usually enter a room filled with laughter, with his own distinctive, infectious laugh always standing out.

While in many respects, the “old” John remained recognizable, even as his traits became more pronounced, refined and restored, there was one characteristic, among others, that was altogether new. Quite frankly, the notion of service or being available to the point of inconvenience for those in difficult circumstances was not something that would have occurred to John. He became not just a servant, but a model servant, ready to set aside his agenda to meet a need, to provide counsel, to accomodate himself to what was necessary for the other's well-being. Yet, this did not suppress the other aspects of his personality, but only served to accentuate them; thereby, revealing more of John's "true self."

John was interested in people for their own sakes, and they flourished in his presence. To the athlete, he was an athlete; always intelligent and curious, but a voracious reader only after his conversion, to the intellectual, an intellectual; to the child, a child; to the elderly, attentive, respectful and, as always, interested and curious, in the best sense of the word. The weak, rejected or “insignificant” with him were strong, accepted and significant. With respect to all races, cultures and ethnicities, he would enter and inhabit the other person’s world, adapting himself to his thinking and environment. Even as an Egyptian he was unique in his ability to relate to other Egyptians for whom English was not their primary language, as he was fully conversant in the nuances and cadences of spoken Arabic unlike anyone else whose family immigrated when he was a mere 3 months of age. No one, not even visitors from Egypt or new immigrants, could tell an Egyptian joke the way John did. And it didn’t even matter that he would always be the first to laugh upon his exquisite delivery of the punchline that you could listen to time and again.

Four weeks before he died, John mobilized a group of people to distribute food and clothing to the homeless in Newark, NJ on Christmas morning. That which John began has continued for the last two years. Confidently, I can tell you that it is a more fitting celebration of the incarnation: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” 1 Cor. 8:9.

John was the living embodiment of the Apostle Paul’s writing in 1 Cor. 9:19-23, which, in vv. 22-23, concludes: “I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” Now some of you maybe thinking, “wait a second I thought you said John cared for people for their own sakes; but here it talks about ‘saving’ and adjusting to people for the ‘sake of the gospel.’” These are not contradictory. Because John loved people for their own sake he wanted them to know the one in whom there is the life, freedom and joy of being their true selves, just as he was “more himself.” This wasn’t an ulterior motive; nor was it him “pretending” to be interested in people so he could get credit for “changing” them. Jesus, who John freely emulated, is the ultimate one who enters into our world, at immeasurable cost to himself, for our sake and changes us.

I know all this may come across as hagiography from someone who loves and misses John. Actually, I am exercising restraint in order to keep this from being too long. During John's nine days in the hospital, and in the aftermath of his death, many people, some unknown to those of us close to him, indentified him as their "best" or "only" friend. The more likely a person was to be ignored by others, the more likely it was that John would be drawn to him.

As I’ve already said, what made John this way was not any claim to goodness on his own part, but his recognition that he was a forgiven sinner rooted in the love and mercy that Jesus freely gives. Furthermore, as I read the New Testament, I cannot help but think this is what we’re all supposed to look like as our “true selves,” for in Jesus the broken image of God, that John so readily recognized in each person, is restored and renewed. It is safe to say that this reality penetrated and captivated John more deeply than the rest of us.