Presbyterians gather in Chicago to remember the Rev. John M. Buchanan
Former General Assembly Moderator and ‘giant of a preacher’ is celebrated in moving memorial service
LOUISVILLE — Through the majesty of music and the miracle of memory, the life of an extraordinary preacher, writer, church and community leader who inspired, shaped and delighted generations of the faithful — not least his own family — came into rich and full view as the Rev. John McCormick Buchanan was both celebrated and mourned.
“Grief is a strange and sloppy walk,” the Rev. Dr. Tom Are Jr. would later pray during the Service of Witness to the Resurrection in celebration of Buchanan’s remarkable life, held and livestreamed on Saturday at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. “We grieve because you didn’t create the human heart to let go. We simply do not know how.”
In the full sanctuary of the storied church whose pulpit Buchanan graced from 1985 to 2012 and where Are now serves as interim pastor, the service itself was preceded by a generous half hour of musical selections in which Buchanan’s own hand as a gifted trumpet player and lover of music was very much in evidence.
“John’s support brought inspiring and soul nourishing music to thousands of people,” said Dr. John W. W. Sherer, Organist and Director of Music at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester, New York, who worked with Buchanan for 16 years as Organist and Director of Music at Fourth Church. “In today's service, John requested that we offer the anthem ‘Sing Me to Heaven’ by Daniel Gawthrop and that is what we all did in his memorial. We sang him into heaven where he can now sing with all the angels in the everlasting embrace of God's love.”
In addition to serving Fourth Church, where he was named pastor emeritus, Buchanan — who died on Feb. 3 not long after his 87th birthday — was also editor and publisher of the independent, Chicago-based religious magazine, “The Christian Century,” for more than 15 years. He served as Moderator of the 208th General Assembly (1996) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and was a founding Co-Moderator of the Board of Directors of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians.
As successive speakers entered the chancel to remember and honor their colleague, friend, brother, father and grandfather, illuminating insights into Buchanan’s character emerged.
Like his occasionally irreverent sense of humor.
“John could mess with us up here in the upper chancel in moments that were sometimes less than holy,” recalled the Rev. Linda C. Loving, a former associate pastor at Fourth Church, in the brief remembrance she offered as she prepared to read scripture. “He was not just a great colleague, but a fun colleague. A laugh-until-you-cry kind of colleague.”
Loving explained how Buchanan, an avid sports enthusiast, would always “plot” for her to be worship leader on the Sunday after Thanksgiving following the football game between those two great rivals, Ohio State University, of which he was a fan, and the University of Michigan, from which Loving graduated.
“Always choosing the hymn, ‘Come, Christians, Join to Sing,’ which has the same tune as the Ohio State alma mater, he would blast the word ‘Ohio’ after the Alleluia. ‘Alleluia, Ohio!’ Like I said, John could mess with us up here!”
Loving concluded her remarks by reflecting on the single word that, for her — as well as for subsequent speakers — most accurately captured Buchanan’s essence.
Joy.
“The great mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote these words: ‘The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything,’” said Loving. “John’s face could light up with that joy; that look. Holding a child, a grandchild, a great grandchild. Or as he looked upon his beloved Sue. Or a strategic play by the Cubs, which often did require an act of God!”
Loving added that although Buchanan’s joy for his work was unsurpassed, his ultimate joy was his discipleship, which allowed him to see God in everything.
“And we all saw God at work in him,” she said, “allowing us to glimpse holy hope again and again and again.”
Loving’s remarks were followed by words of remembrance shared by four members of Buchanan’s immediate family: brother, William; daughter, Diane; sons, John and Andy; and grandson, Johnny.
Each spoke of how Buchanan had changed their lives. And, in brother William’s case, even his name.
“I have [my] name because of John,” recalled William Buchanan. “A 7-year-old Johnny raised such Cain with my family, that they changed my name — which was supposed to be Alexander — to William Paul. John has been changing me since day three of my life.”
William Buchanan also named his brother’s “gravitas,” which he said was evident in his stance on issues of civil rights, his opposition to the war in Afghanistan, his advocacy for women and his leading the PC(USA) to be “radically inclusive.”
Yet, like Loving, he also lifted up his brother’s deep joy, and his capacity to love.
“The day before [John] died, I had the opportunity to talk to him,” he said, “and the last thing he said to me was, ‘I love you, brother.’”
William Buchanan tearfully closed his loving tribute by repeating a phrase from a souvenir that his brother John once bought him.
“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” he whispered.
As three of Buchanan’s five children and one of his 13 grandchildren then shared their own remembrances of the “pastor, mentor, friend, colleague, father, grandfather and great grandfather” who had touched countless lives, daughter Diane began by expressing “deepest gratitude” to the Fourth Church community for supporting their family through the profound loss first of their mother in July 2024 and now, only some seven months later, their father.
Family members were able to supplement the already detailed portrait of Buchanan with reminiscences from his more private life — everything from his feigning stomach pain and falling on the floor whenever they cooked something for him, to building sandcastles at his family’s favorite vacation spot in Holden Beach, North Carolina, to his love of music, food, cooking, board games and working in the garden, where his famous sense of humor would also often show up.
“We sometimes learned the hard way,” Diane Buchanan said. “If he was watering his garden, stand out of range of the hose.”
Stating that she was proud to be his daughter, she closed by calling her father “a bright and guiding light in my life.”
“I will ‘hold to the good’ as he always urged us to do,” she said.
Following his sister, Buchanan’s son, John R. Buchanan, added that their father loved big occasions, travel and reading, and gently pushed his family toward a greater appreciation of the arts.
“He showed us all what a committed life looked like,” he said.
And son, Andy — wearing the tie that both he and his father got married in — marveled at how their father would always get flowers for their mother on the anniversary of their first date.
He said it always made him feel bad that he didn’t do more.
“Here he is in his 80s,” Andy Buchanan recalled, “and he remembers the date of his first date.”
Andy Buchanan also spoke of how his father changed Fourth Church by bringing its mission into the city and the world.
“He insisted that church shouldn’t just happen within the walls of the church,” he said, “but be out in the community doing service in the world.”
And both son, Anhdy, and grandson, Johnny, emphasized that Buchanan believed in the kind of faith that encouraged questions.
“I always had a never-ending supply of questions that could exhaust the most patient of adults,” recalled grandson Johnny Buchanan. “I could ask him anything, and he encouraged more. ‘Keep ‘em coming! Game on!’”
Johnny Buchanan said that his grandfather never shied away from the “big” questions.
“Questions like, ‘How do you do know if God is real? ‘What happens after we die?,’ wouldn’t end the conversation but inspire more,” he said. “I mostly remember the feeling of someone who opened my mind and was inspired by my questions.”
Like the others, Johnny Buchanan also remembered the love — the personal relationships his grandfather had with each of his grandkids.
“He made each of us feel seen, valued and deeply loved,” he said.
When at nearly two hours into the service, the Rev. Adam Fronczek, a former associate pastor at Fourth Church, took the pulpit, he began by praising Buchanan as “a giant of a preacher.”
“Although he was a great writer and a preacher,” he said, “it was the life he shared with each of you that made him human and relatable.”
Fronczek noted that as he was preparing to preach on Psalm 139, one of the scriptures Buchanan had chosen to be read at his memorial service, while he could recall many of his mentor’s sermons, he couldn’t remember one on that passage.
When Fronczek did ultimately succeed in locating a sermon Buchanan had preached early in 2006, he said it reflected on “calling.”
“His sermon was about running from God and the way God calls us back, starting with Jonah, who attempted to get away from God,” he preached. “Ministry can be like that. [John] once described it to me as a blessing and an offering and a burden. We’re expected to be model citizens, and quite often it’s lonely, carry the strugglings and sufferings of those in our care.”
But Psalm 139, Fronczek concluded, is for all kinds of people.
“It’s important to the lonely and to pastors, to be embraced and held by a God who will never let us go,” he said. “‘Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?’ Whether we’re embraced by God or we’re running away, we at all times feel that push and that pull of the calling, yet the blessings far outweigh the burdens.”
Because Buchanan closed every service by charging the congregation to “hold to the good,” Fronczek did likewise.
“Let us hold to the good in the face of struggle, believing when we are not entirely sure,” he said. “This thing we’re doing, a Service of Witness to the Resurrection: we are here because we believe that John is at home with his Savior, who will one day welcome us, too. Let us walk through the door.”
Fourth Presbyterian Church has created a webpage dedicated to the life and ministry of the Rev. John McCormick Buchanan; click here.
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