Becky Ramsey’s delightful post, “I Can See Clearly Now,” at wonders never cease reminded me of my own encounter with Johnny Nash’s 1972 hit single two years ago in the memorial service for a most remarkable teacher and university administrator, Dr. Frank Bonner, of Furman University. Thanks, Becky! (And thanks, Dr. Bonner!)
A Remembrance and Celebration
Job 38:1-38; John 1:1-18; John 3:1-14; Revelation 22:1-5
March 19, 2008
Who among us would have thought that the one piece of music that Dr. Francis Wesley Bonner told his family he wanted sung at his funeral was the 1972 smash hit, “I Can See Clearly Now”? Nilaouise and Frank and Beth can tell you that it took me a while to take it in when they told me. It just seemed incongruous to me. Landor, Browning, Chaucer, and Nash? And besides, we just don’t do people’s favorite top-40 songs in funerals at First Baptist Greenville. Johann Sebastian Bach, John Bacchus Dykes, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and Johnny Nash? It took me a while to take it in. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it in. But this much I knew. Frank Bonner was an incisive and inveterate interpreter of Scripture. Frank Bonner was more thoroughgoing a theologian than most preachers are. It was as though through a glass darkly I could see the gentle smirk of the old English professor who had left his pastor a final pop quiz in interpretation.
Here’s why I think so. Nearly twenty years ago, I was teaching a Wednesday evening session downstairs in the parlor on the varieties of creation imagery in the Bible. I was surprised—and maybe almost intimidated—when Dr. and Mrs. Bonner walked in and took their seats. I hadn’t been teaching at Furman long, and I didn’t have tenure yet. John Crabtree was my dean, but Frank Bonner was, well, he was Dr. Bonner. I hadn’t been teaching at First Baptist long, and there is no such thing as tenure around here. He was a legendary teacher in his beloved Fellowship Sunday School Class. It was the most important thing to him that he did, according to Nilaouise. Whenever he traveled, he would do everything he could to arrange his schedule to be back in Greenville to teach the Fellowship Class on Sunday morning. He was a former chair of deacons, a senior deacon; and did I mention that there’s no such thing as tenure around here? Not so gladly did I teach that evening. And wouldn’t you know it, when I came at the end of the session to the time for “questions and answers,” Dr. Bonner’s was the first hand to go up. “Yes, sir, Dr. Bonner,” I said, trying to hide the tremolo in my voice. “Dr. Rogers, if the sun and the stars were not created until the fourth day, according to Genesis 1, then can you tell us what, exactly, was the light that appeared on the first day?” “Thank you, Dr. Bonner. That is one of the great questions in the history of the interpretation of Genesis 1.” (That’s called stalling.) “And I happen to know that you have been reading and interpreting this passage a lot longer than I have. What would you say the light of the first day was?” (That’s called cowardice.) But in his grace extended to a young teacher, and in his knowledge as well, I suspect, that at least in that statement I had said something correct, he generously accepted the bait of the oldest pedagogical trick in the book, and he answered his own question: “I have always thought of it,” he said, “as the light of the glory of God. It was the light of the glory of God.” “Thank you, Dr. Bonner. A better answer has never been given in the history of the interpretation of Genesis 1.”
“Let there be light, and there was light” (1:3). That’s the light of the glory of God shining in creation. “And the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2:9). “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). That’s the light of the glory of God shining in incarnation. “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” That’s from the book of Revelation, six verses before the passage that Frank instructed us to read and to hear today. That’s the light of the glory of God shining in consummation. These are the passages Frank selected to be read and heard today: Job 38: the proclamation of creation. John 1 and 3: the proclamation of incarnation. Revelation 22: the proclamation of consummation. I tell you, Frank Bonner, the son of a preacher, had more theology in his little finger than most preachers have in their whole body. “There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light” (Revelation 22:5). “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a bright, bright Sun-Shiny day.”
For Frank Bonner, “I Can See Clearly Now” was a whole lot more than just a #1 popular song in 1972. It was an expression of an underlying and overarching Ultimate Reality in which he trusted, in which he lived, against which he measured wisdom and truth, and in which he was well prepared to die. He wrote in his own “Requiem,”
More frequently I wonder now
what lies beyond the grave.
Will He be there to show me how
To leave the life He gave?
As into night my soul is thrust
And ended is life’s day,
will there be one whom I can trust
To guide me on my way?
Or when at last my sun goes down
And darkness dims my eyes,
Will I in depths of darkness drown—
Or other suns rise?
Somehow I know I can believe
That when this life is done,
My Saviour will my soul receive
As my last battle’s won.
So do not grieve when I am dead,
But think of me with love.
What lies beyond I do not dread
I’ll wait for you above.
“Think of me with love,” he wrote. Nilaouise, we would all do well a take a lesson from you and Frank in your unfailing devotion and tenderness toward each other for 67 years—“Do you think it’ll last?” We would all do well to take a lesson from Frank in his latter days that no matter the pain his caretakers caused him and no matter how mightily he fought it and them, he would always say to them when they were done, “Thank you, dear.”
We all know “FBI Bonner,” as John Plyler called him, whose investigation uncovered the perpetrators of a multitude of collegiate pranks. We all know of the model teacher, academic leader and university administrator. The testimonies are innumerable of the Furman alumni who say that they would not have made it at Furman if it had not been for Dr. Bonner. The truth be told, there are other students and faculty alike with other stories, stories of how they think they would have made it at Furman if it had not been for Dr. Bonner. The common denominator in every one of those stories is the Frank Bonner we all know who said, “I will do what I believe is right. I don’t care what people think of me.” In truth, he cared, all right; but he cared more about doing what he believed was right than about what people thought of him. Whether it was integrating Furman University in spite of his own S.C. Baptist Convention’s insistence to the contrary, or ensuring that the sciences were funded in spite of his own S.C. Baptist Convention’s resistance, or defending academic freedom in the face of the ranting and railing of Baptist preachers, if it was right, you did it. If it was fair, you did it. He was willing to forfeit popularity to do what he believed was right. We all know that Frank Bonner and have our own stories to tell.
But we don’t all know the Frank Bonner who wrote beautiful letters to his children on their graduation or their departure for graduate school. We don’t know of his children’s sense that as loving and tender as their mother was, their father was more tender still. We don’t all know the father who encouraged his daughter to pursue her passion when she expressed reservations about what she really wanted to do in life because she did not want to become like the others she saw in the field. He said, “Then why don’t you be the one to make the change. You don’t have to be like them.” We don’t all know the father who took his son on a memorable tour of England in search of a hallowed beverage he called “corney ale,”—that the English never seemed to have heard of, but he sampled their fare all around England just in case what they had was what he was searching for. And then he surreptitiously suggested to his son as they deplaned at the Greenville airport, “Don’t tell your mother about the corney ale.”
We don’t all know the jokester. A favorite line in an elevator when a tall man stepped on board, was to say, “Bet they don’t call you shorty.” It served his and his family’s humor well until not too long ago a rather sizeable woman stepped into an elevator with Frank and Nilaouise, and he welcomed her aboard with a cheerful, “Bet they don’t call you skinny.” His sense of humor was undiminished even when the humor of it bounced back on him. Frank and Nilaouise vacationed sometimes with the Tom and Edna Hartness. One day at Okracoke, they went out on the Hartness’s boat. Edna had fixed the four of them box lunches including hardboiled eggs. When lunchtime came, she distributed a box to each, and they began to eat. Francis, the funny guy, reached in his box, took out his egg, and as was his custom, cracked it on his forehead, only to discover that he had met his match in Edna Hartness who had put a raw egg in his box.
As we remember and celebrate the life of Francis Wesley Bonner, churchman, academician, husband, parent, grandparent, great-grandparent extraordinaire, we recognize that some will remember him with admiration and awe, some with gratitude and respect, some with resentment and fear, some with laughter and friendship, and those who knew him best will remember him exactly as he said: “Think of me with love.”
“I think I can make it now, the pain is gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared. Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for. It’s gonna be a bright, bright Sun-Shiny day.” Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Amen.
This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.
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