Upstairs and downstairs, in the garage, a few at my new cozy office, shelves and boxes, there is a sea of books. Most are in random scandom order. Among them, there are some islands of related books, graciously gathered, thanks to Dianne.

I went looking for the clusters of books by Frederick Buechner. I pulled them out, piled them up, and began flipping through the dog-eared pages, underlined sentences from…gulp…across 40 years. (One had a page marked with a deposit slip from where we banked in the early 1980’s.)

A few weeks ago, minister-author extraordinaire Frederick Buechner at 96, completed his earth life. He generously bequeathed the ongoing presence of his 30+ books.

I am among the countless preachers in whose heads, hearts, and mouths Buechner put words that encouraged our lives and faith…AND sparked at least less-boring sermons than we would have otherwise delivered.

It will be a labor of love to share and savor with you some salient passages, realizing I will leave out more than I get in. Most will be familiar to the Buechner lovers among you. Yet by chance, if this is introductory and prompts you to seek out his words, then good for me and better for you!

I. “Jesus is crowned among confession and tears and great laughter, and at the phrase great laughter for reasons I have never satisfactorily understood, the great wall of China crumbled and Atlantis rose up out of the sea, and on Madison Avenue, at 73rd Street, tears leapt from my eyes as though I had been struck across the face.” THE ALPHABET OF GRACE, p 44.

F.B. grew up nominally religious. His early success as a novelist became shaky. At 26, 1953, he went to a service at New York City’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, listened to the renowned preacher George Guttrick speak of coming to faith anew or again.

In his sermon, Buttrick referred to the recent coronation of Queen Elizabeth ii (!) as a way of describing crowning Jesus as Lord in our lives and our hearts. With words above, F.B. describes his faith experience. He was especially moved by Buttrick’s connection of laughter to authentic faith. Fairly soon, F.B. meets with Buttrick, enters venerable union theological seminary (where several great theologians of the time taught), becomes the young chaplain at Philips-Exeter, a boys prep school. Thereafter, for the next 40+ years, full time writer, F.B. interweaves exploration of faith and life, his and ours, in his array of books.

II. “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” NOW & THEN, p. 87.

Maybe the most quoted F.B. words. His memoirs like the sacred journey; now and then; and other books affirm paying attention to our lives. Intelligent study of scripture is central. Keen observation of what is going on in the world is critical. Yet paying attention to the mix of sacred and ordinary, faith and doubt, tears and laughter, joy and grief in our lives and relationships is the crucial path for finding the tracks of God’s love with, in, among us, and around us.

III. “There’s just one reason, you know, why I come dragging in there every Sunday. I want to find out if the whole thing’s true. Just true,” she said. “That’s all. Either it is or it isn’t, and that’s the one question you avoid like death.” THE FINAL BEAST, p. 28.

These words come from a troubled young woman to her minister in one of F.B.’s best novels. I read this book early in my ministry. From then on, to this day, every time I preach, I think of that person present who may be hanging on at the edge of faith, far for the center of certainty. Truth is more than we might imagine, including preachers, live more on the edges than the middle of faith.

IV. “On All Saints’ Day, it is it not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and the overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some seedy sainthood of our own.” THE SACRED JOURNEY, 74.

Along the way, All Saints Sunday has become for me the third in the trinity of most holy days. It is exceeded only by Christmas and Easter. We name the people - the saints - whose earthy lives have recently ended - who have entered the communion of saints. For sure, they are gone, yet mystically still very real and with us. A working definition for me is ‘A saint is an imperfect person through whom we have experienced a bit of God’s love.’ F.B. puts more face and flesh in his description.

V. “Jesus made his church out of human beings with more or less the same mixture in them of cowardice and guts, intelligence and stupidity, of selfishness and generosity, of openness of heart and sheer cussedness as you would be apt to find in any one of us. The reason he made his church out of human beings is that human beings were all there was to make it out of. In fact as far as I know, human beings is all there is to make it out of still. It is a great point worth remembering.” SECRETS IN THE DARK, p. 147.

Once it was matters of racial inclusion, now we struggle with matters of sexuality. F.B’s words remind us we all need all the help we can get and give to love and be loved in this world. At best it is difficult enough. God forgive us when we make loving each other even harder on people. Of course, all scripture is to be taken seriously, though literalism is a short cut to a dead end. So to get hung up on an out of context half dozen verses amid almost 32,000 verses misses the full sweep of the spirit of Jesus whose love embraces, affirms, and includes us all – gulp, even you and me.

VI. When he showed me the Magic Kingdom, I asked the stupid question, “Have you read all these books?” He replied, “Well, why would I want to do that?” Fred was an inveterate reader, but for him books were also something to be have and hold, like loved ones.” “Frederick Buechner’s Many Benedictions,” Martin B. Copenhaver, Christian Century, Oct. 2022, p. 52.

In a recent retrospective article on F.B., the author tells of the book-filled cottage in which F.B. did much of his writing. That place amid his beloved books where the words came to him, F.B. dubbed the magic kingdom. The quote is particularly timely for me. On a fairly regular basis, Dianne urges me to come up with a plan to begin to channel my sea of books. I have begun with dribs and drabs to give my children, oops i mean, my books away.

VII.

• “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and kicking.”

• “It is about as hard to absolve yourself of your own guilt as it is to sit in your own lap.”

• “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Copenhaver cites these famous F.B. lines. Which one is most poignant for you or me, I guess depends on the particular point where we are just now in our lives and faith. For me…well, TMI, never mind.

VIII. “I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting go of all, but I begin to know that I do not need to know and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.” A ROOM CALLED REMEMBER. P. 189.

I have shared how as a college freshman I heard then young Birmingham-Southern College Chaplain Don Shockley respond to a question of what he believed happens after we die. He quoted the great pastor, humanitarian, missionary doctor – Albert Schweitzer: “I don’t know what happens after we die. Whatever God does about it will be alright with me.” Don, who fast became a mentor and hero to me, a bit later even my second-cousin in law, called such trusting God with our lives and deaths: divine non-chalance…. some days I have it.

Central to our following Jesus and serving others is the mystery of the Word of God – intelligence, love, power – becoming flesh/skin/alive in Jesus.

Sometimes the flesh/presence of Jesus, by grace and mystery, shows up in our words. For me, I hear an echo of those unwritten words of Jesus, John refers to, in such writers as Frederick Buechner.

Sigh and Doxology