Years later, people used to ask Buechner, "How did your father die?" He would always say, "He died of heart trouble." Then he said, "That was at least partially true. You see, he had a heart and it was troubled." And at the depths of that trouble were no spiritual resources on which to depend. The Buechner family lived on as best they could. Young Frederick went on, as his father had, to Princeton, went back to the Lawrenceville Prep School where he was a junior teacher of English, and he published a novel that was greatly acclaimed critically. It looked like he was going to have a very bright future. In fact, so bright that he resigned his teaching post and began to write full-time. Then he had that mysterious malady that often happens to writers. He hit a block where nothing seemed to come. He became very, very despondent because nothing was working for him. At that juncture one of his friends said, "You might like to go to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. There is a wonderful minister there named George Buttrick. He bequeaths hope, he gives energy. You might find what he is doing to be helpful." And all of this is not something Buechner had ever done before.

He began to go to this church and sure enough this distinguished Englishman did begin to speak home to his heart. One Sunday in the midst of a sermon, Buechner had a genuine religious epiphany. God happened to him, if I can use that metaphor, in a profound sense that there was something beyond us on which one could rely. Because the experience was so powerful, young Buechner made an appointment to see Dr. Buttrick the next week. As they talked the grand old minister sensed the potential of this young writer. At that time the Rockefeller Foundation had a series of grants that they were giving to people just like Buechner. People who were interested in the ministry and, therefore, perhaps would like to consider preparing for it. Even though he had not been in church over a dozen times in all his life, to his great amazement, he matriculated at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and for the first time in his life encountered Holy Scripture. It was a completely unknown realm to him before.

He says as he began to live into this great document he was amazed by two things. First of all, the utter honesty of Scripture, even the greatest heros were depicted with all of their strengths but also their flaws. But he said even more significant to him was a motif that he began to discover as we worked his way through the pages of Scripture, that with this God called Yahweh, the seemingly worse things were never the last things. God always seemed to have something else that God was able to do. In fact, the image of an ingenious alchemist is the image that came to Buechner. Alchemists, you remember, were those ancient scientists who tried to take lead and somehow transmute it into gold. Well he began to trace through Holy Scripture how again and again, when it seemed like people were at the absolute end of their ropes, that this Alchemist God had a way of doing something even with the worst that human beings had done, and bring out growth and bring out redemption.

A vivid example of that is the wonderful set of stories about the Old Testament patriarch, Jacob. He had only really loved one woman in all his life, a lovely lady named Rachael. He had done a great deal in order to win her hand in marriage. But for some reason she was not able to bear children. Back in that era

that was a terrible handicap. Polygamy was practiced back in that time and so other wives were brought in. Across the years they produced ten sons for Jacob. Then mysteriously Rachael was able to bear a child and Joseph was born. He was the eleventh child chronologically, but he was the first born child of the beloved Rachael. When Rachael died giving birth to a second child, little Benjamin, in his grief Jacob took all of the affection that he had for Rachael and began to channel this on her first born son. As a result, he gave things to little Joseph that he didn’t give to any of his other sons. He never asked anything of this one so he became a pampered, spoiled child. The other brothers naturally had a great deal of hostility because of the unfairness of their father. It was a very toxic family situation.

One of the ways that Jacob showed his favoritism was that he gave Joseph a coat unlike anything he had given to his other sons. King James called it "a coat of many colors." A more accurate reading of the Hebrew is that it was a coat with sleeves on it, something that only a prince would wear, someone who didn’t have to do physical work. Naturally the brothers hated that coat because of what it symbolized. And, of course, Joseph was terribly spoiled by being the object of all this favoritism.

One day old Jacob sent Joseph out to see his brothers who were having to work in the field. He was wearing that hated leisure coat. When they got him out away from their father, all of their pent up anxieties and hostilities exploded. They almost killed Joseph with their bare hands. But then wiser heads said, "But wait, he is our own blood." About that time a group of Midianite slave traders was passing by so they sold their brother into slavery, took that hated coat and dipped it in blood, and took it back to their father saying that Joseph must have been accosted by a wild animal. Everything about that situation is tinged with evil: the way Jacob had shown favoritism, the way the brothers had been jealous, the way Joseph had become so spoiled. Everything about it seemed to be awful. And yet amazingly this Alchemist God, who has the power to take the seeming worst and bring out of it that which is unbelievably good, was at work in the live of Joseph.

When he went down to Egypt he was sold to a man named Potiphar. Now for the first in his life something was asked of him. He was given responsibilities and he began to flourish in ways he would have never flourished if had stayed with the pampering of his father. In fact, he was so effective he rose to be the head of Potiphar’s household. Everything was going wonderfully for the young Hebrew, but then Potiphar’s wife became sexually attracted to him and tried to seduce him. When he resisted her, she turned the table and accused him of the very thing that she had done to him. As a result, Joseph was taken out of Potiphar’s household and put into a royal prison. Once again it seemed to be the absolute worst thing that could have happened. But remember the God who made all things and can mend anything was still at work in the life of Joseph.

Joseph became skilled there in the prison as an interpreter of dreams. When the Pharaoh, the head of that land, was troubled by nightmares, someone remembered the young Hebrew in the jail. He was taken to Pharaoh and he was able to help him understand that his dreams were saying that they were having times of wonderful abundance but they should husband some of that because a famine was coming. Pharaoh was so impressed with Joseph that he lit him out of prison and made him the number two official in all the Egyptian hierarchy. Joseph was able to husband enough of the affluence of that great time that when the famine did come, Egypt became the bread basket of the Mediterranean basin. Jacob and his sons, who were starving to death back up in Palestine, came down and, because of what Joseph had done, the descendants of Abraham did not starve to death.

At the end of this incredible saga where the seemingly worst always opened into something very good, the brothers came to Joseph and apologized to him for all they had done. He said, "Look, do not weep. You meant what you did for evil. I will admit that. But God used it for good." This Alchemist God can take just about anything and do just about everything with it. That is the basis of hope that I want to give you. The basis that it is never too late to wonder how God may take your situation, bad as it may seem at the moment, and like an ancient alchemist bring from it incredible good.

Winston Churchill got this motif that was so important to Frederick Buechner. Two things toward the end of his life illustrate this. Right before he died in 1965, he was asked to give the commencement address at a college. He was very old by that time and had to be helped to the podium. They say that he was so tottery when he got up they weren’t sure he would have strength enough to speak. At last he raised the head that had called Britain back from the brink and said to those graduating seniors, "Never, never give up." And with that he turned around and sat down. They say it is the only commencement address in history that’s been remembered verbatim by everybody who heard it. But his faith was that we must never, never give up because who can tell what this God, who can make the things that are out of the things that are not and can make dead things come alive again, might still be able to do with any difficult situation. Bet your life on it. The seemingly worse things are never the last things with this Alchemist God. God always has something creative up God’s sleeve. What that means is there is a basis for hope and for never, never giving up.

Interview with John Claypool
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: John, your metaphor of the ingenuity of an Alchemist God helps us understand that we should never give up. You know something about that don’t you?

John Claypool: I do because, as Frederick Buechner says, "Life works us all over before it’s done." We are all carrying a sack of rocks of sadness and disappointments. You and I have talked before about losing my only daughter thirty-two years ago. She died of leukemia.

Talbot: Laura Lou.

Claypool: Laura Lou is her name, a wonderful Southern name. I have learned in that dark and difficult experience that, as bad as it was, I was not alone, there was something else at work that was capable of taking bad things and bring good things out of it. I feel that is so important right now in the life of our country, Lydia, because September 11 is still an open wound for so many of us. We wonder what is going to happen. People ask me where was God when this happened. Well, of course, the truth is God is love, in my judgment, which means God is non-coercive. Every time there is love, there is also the gift of freedom. I think God took the risk of giving our species freedom because of God’s confidence in that ingenious ability to take bad choices that we make and somehow transmute them into growth and into blessing and into redemption. What Joseph concluded is that even the things that people do to us that are meant for evil, God still has the capacity to use them for good and I am basing my life on that.

Talbot: John, in the depths of your despair over the death of your precious daughter, only ten years of age, where did you put your anger?

Claypool: My anger? Well I understood my anger as just the frustration that is natural when the way it is so much less than the way it was. I think anger is utterly appropriate. It is frustration. It’s wanting things to be one way when they are another. But what I did was to openly acknowledge my frustration. I always reminded myself that the depth of my grief corresponded to the depth of my love. If I had not had deep affection for Laura Lou then I wouldn’t have been all that upset about her death. The more profoundly we love, the more profoundly we go into grief when something is taken away that we love. But what helped me more than anything, and I have said this before to you on the program, was realizing that she was a gift and not a possession. There is a mystery about her death that I still don’t understand but there’s a deeper mystery about her birth: that I ever got to be with that little girl for a single day.

Talbot: And that can never be taken away.

Claypool: Right. And that’s incredible good fortune. Something I did not deserve, something that was not in any way an entitlement. It was a sheer and total gift. The night I realized that Laura Lou was a gift and not a possession, that she had belonged to Another before she had ever come into my life, it didn’t lessen the sadness one iota and I wish to God that she was still living, but what it did do was save me from a lifetime of bitterness and resentment that frankly wouldn’t change anything. Resentment is acid in our souls. It wouldn’t have brought her back, it wouldn’t have made me any better. Thinking of her as a gift and not a possession freed me from spending the rest of my life with my fist in the face of God and led me to open my hands in astonished gratitude that I had ever gotten to know her at all.

Talbot: God’s answer to the Good Fridays in our lives is Easter.

Claypool: Is always Easter. Nobody expected Easter. Here, all of a sudden, God took something that we had mangled and corrupted and he raised up and sent Jesus back to us. If anybody treated my son the way that we had treated Jesus it would not be in my thought to raise him up and send him back, which to me is the marvel of Easter. Not just that God could raise him up, but that he would want to and have enough mercy to do so.

Talbot: And therein lies the hope.

Claypool: Therein lies the hope.

Talbot: John Claypool, thank you for your authentic message.