Frederick Buechner's Blog, page 37

Grace

Grace is God in his givenness. Faith is not sui generis.  It is a response to the givenness of grace. Faith is given a glimpse of something, however dimly. Men and women of faith know they are strangers and exiles on the earth because somehow and somewhere along the line they have been given a glimpse of home. Maybe the little tangle of navy blue wool on the carpet was grace, even if it could be proved that it had only come from my own sweater. By grace we see what we see. To have faith is to respond to what we see by longing for it the rest of our days; by trying to live up to it and toward it through all the wonderful and terrible things; by breathing it in like air and growing strong on it; by looking to see it again and see it better. To lose faith is to stop looking.

 

-Originally published in Secrets in the Dark

Tears - a reading by Frederick Buechner

 to see the video.

This reading by Frederick Buechner from was delivered on the Chicago Sunday Evening Club TV program, originally airing on 5/10/92.

Our thanks to 30 Good Minutes at .

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Anger

 In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic.

On October 2, 2016 we will celebrate the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.  Here is this weeks reading from Psalm 37:

Psalm 37:7-9
Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices. Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret--it leads only to evil. For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.

Here is Buechners note on Anger originally published in Wishful Thinking and later again in Beyond Words:

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

International Day of Peace

In recognition of the International Day of Peace, here is an article originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words.

Peace has come to mean the time when there aren't any wars or even when there aren't any major wars. Beggars can't be choosers; we'd most of us settle for that. But in Hebrew peace,shalom, means fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself.

One of the titles by which Jesus is known is Prince of Peace, and he used the word himself in what seem at first glance to be two radically contradictory utterances. On one occasion he said to the disciples, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). And later on, the last time they ate together, he said to them, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you" (John 14:27).

The contradiction is resolved when you realize that, for Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love.

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Righteousness

In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic.

On September 25, 2016 we will celebrate the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.  Here is this weeks reading from the book of 1 Timothy:

1 Timothy 6:6-12
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Here is Buechners note Righteousness originally published in Wishful Thinking and later again in Beyond Words:

""You haven't got it right!"" says the exasperated piano teacher. Junior is holding his hands the way he's been told. His fingering is unexceptionable. He has memorized the piece perfectly. He has hit all the proper notes with deadly accuracy. But his heart's not in it, only his fingers. What he's playing is a sort of music but nothing that will start voices singing or feet tapping. He has succeeded in boring everybody to death including himself.

Jesus said to his disciples, ""Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven."" (Matthew 5:20) The scribes and Pharisees were playing it by the Book. They didn't slip up on a single do or don't. But they were getting it all wrong.

Righteousness is getting it all right. If you play it the way it's supposed to be played, there shouldn't be a still foot in the house.

The Eye Of The Heart

By faith, we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to the last truth.Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things by faith we struggle against all odds to be able to see that the world is God's creation even so. It is he who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world.

-from Secrets in the Dark

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Every One of Us

In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic.

On September 18, 2016 we will celebrate the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.  Here is this weeks reading from the book of 1 Timothy:

1 Timothy 2:1-6a
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all. (emphasis added)

Here is an excerpt from Buechners sermon The Kingdom of God originally published in The Clown in the Belfry:

The power that is in Jesus, and before which all other powers on earth and in heaven give way, the power that holds all things in existence from the sparrow's eye to the farthest star, is above all else a loving power. That means we are loved even in our lostness. That means we are precious, every one of us, even as we pass on the street without so much as noticing each other's faces. Every city is precious. The world is precious. Someday the precious time will be up for each of us. But the Kingdom of God is at hand. Nothing is different and everything is different. It reaches out to each of our precious hands while there's still time. (emphasis added)

 

Brown on Buechner and Faith

Today's blog post features an article by the late W. Dale Brown, Founding Director of the Buechner Speaker Series at King Univeristy and author of The Book of Buechner.

As long as religious folks persist in frightening their young with notions of a faith that brooks no doubt, there will be a place for a writer like Frederick Buechner. In my own book on Buechner, the indexer found 25 references to this theme in Buechner's work. In Wishful Thinking, doubt is "the ants in the pants of faith." In Alphabet of Grace, he says, "If there's no room for doubt, there's no room for me." In The Magnificent Defeat, he says that faith "defies logic and reason," and argues that "God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him."  Such lines lace the more than 30 books of Buechner's career-the memoirs, the sermons, the fiction, and he rest. For me, the theme rings true and works as points of consolation. They assure me that living with the uncertainty, the mystery, is part and parcel of the business of our lives.

I suppose it is true that speaking of doubt has become fashionable in our time. "Lord I believe; help my unbelief" has become a mantra of sorts. But Buechner always adds something like, "Thank God, it is enough." Enough to keep faith alive. Emily Dickinson says, "We believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour. It keeps believing nimble." Those of us who discovered Buechner as we struggled with the black and white backgrounds of fundamentalist teachings needed to hear that God was not offended by our doubts anymore than He was put off by our waffling inconsistencies. Buechner's entire career rests in this middle ground between abject secularism and shrill fundamentalism.

One might especially explore the fiction for such ideas. Look at the very early novel,The Season's Difference, for example. Often excluded from studies of Buechner the Christian writer because the book comes before his famous conversion experience in Buttrick's church, his seminary years and eventual ordination; the novel nonetheless circles on the cynic versus the mystic, the doubter versus the believer. And the conclusion is that "maybe" there is miracle indeed. Such pondering is everywhere in Buechner from the Bebb novels to Godric, from The Son of Laughter to On the Road with the Archangel, the question resonates: "Is there a God who cares who walks along beside us?" And the answer is "maybe." Just "maybe." And the "maybe" provides enough light to live by.

Give the final word to the venerableSaint Godric who grouses, "Nothing human's not a broth of false and true." Buechner is deadly honest about the "false," the suffering, the blindness, the missteps. But we are going back again and again to Buechner's work because of the way he also foregrounds the "true," the possibility, the happy ending. As he puts it in Telling the Truth: "The frog turns out to be the prince, the ugly duckling the swan . . . . There is no less danger and darkness than in the brothers Grimm, but beyond and above all there is the joy of it, this tale of a light breaking into the world that not even the darkness can overcome."

Dale Brown, Founding Director of the Buechner Speaker Series at King University and author of The Book of Buechner

 

Waves

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see realitynot as we expect it to be but as it isis to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

-Originally published in The Magnificent Defeat

Weekly Sermon Illustration: One Lost Sheep

In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic.

On September 11, 2016 we will celebrate the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost.  Here is this weeks reading from the gospel of Luke:

Luke 15:1-7
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ""This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."" So he told them this parable: ""Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Here is an excerpt about one lost sheep from Buechners classic book:

God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turn out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up 1/ Amazing Grace."" If you have to explain it, don't bother.

I think that these parables can be read as jokes about God in the sense that what they are essentially about is the outlandishness of God who does impossible things with impossible people, and I believe that the comedy of them is not just a device for making the truth that they contain go down easy but that the truth that they contain can itself be thought of as comic.