TRIBUTE TO JOHN CLAYPOOL

It is an honor to be here today for this living document, this worship service in honor of John Claypool. I am most thankful for the invitation from your exceptional new young pastor, Greg Pope, and from Rowan, John's son, himself a remarkable man, to receive the Yale Medal this fall; a gifted and giving man.

There was a whole generation of young ministers all over the country, especially but not exclusively Baptist, who were inspired to go into the preaching/pastoral ministry, or were inspired in their preaching/pastoral ministry by the power of John Claypool=s preaching. I was one.

His preaching had a clarity, an immediacy, a distilled profundity and the elemental power of what Emerson called life passed through the fire of thought. Where later he gave the famous Beecher Lectures, the Yale Lecturers in Preaching, we cheered him on as he spoke the "truth of the gospel" we had heard through him for years.

I think I am the only minister to have followed John in two churches. I know the transformative impact of his preaching first hand.

I lived in the "borrowed light" of his magnificent preaching and ministry, my words and deeds amplified, magnified, highlighted, underlined, made better than they were, because he had preached in those pulpits.

I remember visiting a woman in the hospital here in Louisville. She was in the recovery room after surgery still groggy from anesthesia. I held her hand, we talked a bit, I offered a prayer and after the prayer she said, "Thank you, Dr. Claypool." "You're welcome," I said, smiling to myself and feeling very proud for the association.

We ministers stand in for one another, stand for one another, stand with one another, stand by one another. Some plant, others water what another has planted, some harvest. It is all grace.
I'll never forget phone calls John Claypool made to me to encourage me. He always worked to aid my ministry in the places we had served. No small grace. How I would like to conclude my remarks is with a sonnet of sorts, what poets call a "found poem" - - that is a poem made up entirely of another=s words. Here are some of the most luminous of John=s words, avenged in 14 short sections:

John Claypool: A "Found Poem" in (Roughly) Sonnet Form

I
Life is gift.
II
What I am affirming is
that generosity was the primal motivation
that caused all things to come out of
nothingness into existence.
It was an act of total and complete graciousness.
III
See me this morning as your burdened and broken brother,
limping back into the family circle
to tell you something of what I learned
out there in the darkness.
IV
And who knows...maybe the day will come
that Laura Lue and I can run again and not
be weary,
that we may even soar some day,
and rise up with wings as eagles.
But until then - - to walk and not faint,
that is enough. O God, that is enough!
V
And I am here to testify
that this is the only way down from the Mountain
of Loss.
I do not mean to say that such a perspective
makes things easy,
for it does not.
But at least it makes things bearable
when I remember that Laura Lue was a gift,
pure and simple,
something I neither earned nor deserved
nor had a right to.
And when I remember
that the appropriate response to a gift,
even when it is taken away is gratitude,
then I am better able to try and thank God
that I was even given her in the first place....
I see it now,
there is only one way out of the darkness - -
the way of gratitude.
VI
[Here are prescient words preached in 1969 on fanaticism and violence.}
I hope you will remember the foundational
premise of scripture:
All things come from God - - everything is in Him
and He in everything.
If this be true then while nothing [created]
is worthy of ultimate devotion,
neither is anything worthy of ultimate contempt.
Therefore as you deal with anything
- - objects or persons or what - -
never forget, you are also dealing with the
One who made them.
VII
Reconciliation of the profoundest sort
is the true business of the preacher.
His or her goal is to reestablish a relation
of trust
between the human creature and the ultimate Creator.
VIII
...The secret of ministry consists of two things:
first, the faithful tending of our own woundedness,
and second, the willingness to move to the aid
of another
and make the fruits of your woundedness available
to others.
IX
Only that which has happened to us
can happen through us.
X
The two best gifts I have to give
are the things that are saving me
and the places where I am still struggling.
XI
I am moving to "the Anglican room of God's house."
"The vast cathedral of many rooms and many tables."
XIII
Grace is the dominant divine quality.
God is Mystery; The Mystery is gracious.
XIII
God lives at the end of our ropes.
XIV Bene-Diction
Depart now in the fellowship of God....
So I pray for you, my brothers and sisters:
Go now, go with God, do not be afraid.
There is goodness, there is grace,
there is love that wants to travel with you
all the day long
and eventually bring you home.
[And, finally, this in his own handwriting, in the closing
of a letter to me]: Go gently
and under the Mercy.
Go gently, John, and under the Mercy.