Frederick Buechner's Blog, page 39

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 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 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 venerable Saint 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

 

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Just Beyond Our Grasp

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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 August 7, 2016 we will celebrate the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. Here is this week's reading from the book of Hebrews:

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

The following is an excerpt from the sermon 'Follow Me' found in :

Faith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved. Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.

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What's Prayer?

What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard.

- from the novel Godric

Whether You Call on Him or Don't Call on Him

'there are some things I would be willing to bet maybe even my life on. That life is grace, for instance - the givenness of it, the fathomlessness of it, the endless possibilities of its becoming transparent to something extraordinary beyond itself. That - as I picked up somewhere in Jung and whittled into the ash stick I use for tramping around through the woods sometimes - vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit, which I take to mean that in the long run, whether you call on him or don't call on him, God will be present with you. That if we really had our eyes open, we would see that all moments are key moments.

-Originally published in Now and Then

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Hosea and Gomer

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 July 31, 2016 we will celebrate the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. Here is this week's reading from the book of Hosea:

Hosea 11:1-11
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.

The following is originally from Peculiar Treasures and later published in Beyond Words:

Gomer

She was always good company-a little heavy with the lipstick maybe, a little less than choosy about men and booze, a little loud, but great on a party and always good for a laugh. Then the prophet Hosea came along wearing a sandwich board that read "The End is at Hand" on one side and "Watch Out" on the other.

The first time he asked her to marry him, she thought he was kidding. The second time she knew he was serious but thought he was crazy. The third time she said yes. He wasn't exactly a swinger, but he had a kind face, and he was generous, and he wasn't all that crazier than everybody else. Besides, any fool could see he loved her.

Give or take a little, she even loved him back for a while, and they had three children whom Hosea named with queer names like Not-pitied-for-God-will-no-Ionger-pity-Israel-now-that-it's-gone-to-the-dogs so that every time the roll was called at school, Hosea would be scoring a prophetic bulls-eye in absentia. But everybody could see the marriage wasn't going to last, and it didn't.

While Hosea was off hitting the sawdust trail, Gomer took to hitting as many night spots as she could squeeze into a night, and any resemblance between her next batch of children and Hosea was purely coincidental. It almost killed him, of course. Every time he raised a hand to her, he burst into tears. Every time she raised one to him, he was the one who ended up apologizing.

He tried locking her out of the house a few times when she wasn't in by five in the morning, but he always opened the door when she finally showed up and helped get her to bed if she couldn't see straight enough to get there herself. Then one day she didn't show up at all.

He swore that this time he was through with her for keeps, but of course he wasn't. When he finally found her, she was lying passed out in a highly specialized establishment located above an adult bookstore, and he had to pay the management plenty to let her out of her contract. She'd lost her front teeth and picked up some scars you had to see to believe, but Hosea had her back again and that seemed to be all that mattered.

He changed his sandwich board to read "God is love" on one side and "There's no end to it" on the other, and when he stood on the street corner belting out

How can I give you up, 0 Ephraim!

How can I hand you over, 0 Israel!

For I am God and not man,

The Holy One in your midst.

(Hosea 11 :8- 9)

nobody can say how many converts he made, but one thing that's for sure is that, including Gomer's, there was seldom a dry eye in the house.

What It Means To Be a Christian

Click here to listen to the interview clip of Frederick Buechner and his description on what he believes it means to be a Christian.

God

Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.

-Originally published in Beyond Words

Weekly Sermon Illustration: Ask For It

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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 July 24, 2016 we will celebrate the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. Here is this week's reading from the gospel of Luke:

Luke 11:1-13
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ""Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."" He said to them, ""When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."" And he said to them, ""Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. ""So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!""

The following is an excerpt from the sermon 'The Power of God and the Power of Man' from :

Maybe some say, ""I know human love, and I know something of its power to heal, to set free, to give meaning and peace, but God's love I know only as a phrase."" Maybe others also say this, ""For all the power that human love has to heal, there is something deep within me and within the people I know best that is not healed but aches with longing still. So if God's love is powerful enough to reach that deep, how do I find it? How?""

If that is really the question, if we are really seeking this power, then I have one thing to say--perhaps it is not the only thing, but it is enormously important: ask for it. There is something in me that recoils a little at speaking so directly and childishly, but I speak this way anyway because it is the most important thing I have in me to say. Ask, and you will receive. And there is the other side to it too: if you have never known the power of God's love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it-I mean really asked, expecting an answer.

I am saying just this: go to him the way the father of the sick boy did and ask him. Pray to him, is what I am saying. In whatever words you have. And if the little voice that is inside all of us as the inheritance of generations of unfaith, if this little voice inside says, ""But I don't believe. I don't believe,"" don't worry too much. Just keep on anyway. ""Lord, I believe; help my unbelief"" is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.

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