Buechner
I don’t turn to my Frederick Buechner books often any more. But I treasure how they accompanied me and guided me through a challenging decade of my life — from about 1985 – 1995. They sit on my shelf as trusted friends — friends who pointed me again and again to mystery, to faith, to scandalous grace . . . to God.
Here’s a taste:
“Like the Hebrew alphabet, the alphabet of grace has no vowels, and in that sense his words to us are always veiled, subtle, cryptic, so that it is left to us to delve their meaning, to fill in the vowels, for ourselves by means of all the faith and imagination we can muster. God speaks to us in such a way, presumably, not because he chooses to be obscure but because, unlike a dictionary word whose meaning is fixed, the meaning of an incarnate word is the meaning it has for the one it is spoken to, the meaning that becomes clear and effective in our lives only when we ferret it out for ourselves . . . Deep within history, as it gets itself written down in history books and newspapers, in the letters we write and in the diaries we keep, is sacred history, is God’s purpose working itself out in the apparent purposelessness of human history and of our separate histories, in the history, in short, of the saving and losing of souls, including our own. A child is born. A friend is lost or found. Out of nowhere comes a sense of peace or foreboding. We are awakened by a dream. Out of the shadowy street comes a cry for help. We must learn to listen to the cock-crows and hammering and tick-tock of our lives for the holy and elusive word that is spoken to us out of their depths.”
I loved his spiritual biographies: The Sacred Journey
I appreciated the wisdom of Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC
Then there’s the gift to every single preacher: Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
There are wonderful sermons — and some exquisite ones — among the collections in The Magnificent Defeat
Admittedly, I tried his fiction and it didn’t work for me. But that probably says more about me than about Bebb/Buechner.
Thanks, Frederick Buechner, for opening my eyes, for teaching me this:
“Strange things happen. Again and again Christ is present not where, as priests, you would be apt to look for him but precisely where you wouldn’t have thought to look for him in a thousand years. The great preacher, the sunset, the Mozart Requiem can leave you cold, but the child in the doorway, the rain on the roof, the half-remembered dream, can speak of him and for him with an eloquence that turns your knees to water.”
As I’ve told you before, I love Buechner! Thanks for the great quotes.
Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons by Buechner has kept me occupied and alive lately like that friend who you call when you just want to get away and enjoy a good football game.
Amazing stuff.
The skeptic and the cynic will read that first paragraph from Buechner and assert that it is little more than wishful imagining, a crass and feeble attempt at fabricating a beneficent God from the tragic incoherences and interstices that we are otherwise unable to fill.
And into that void steps this wonderful, eloquent, innocent faith that looks up into the face of the skeptic and the cynic and quietly says, “taste and see.”
That, to me, is Buechner.
qb
Oh Mike. Buechner, to me, is counted among the best, the most real and the most eloquent. I always want to read his words aloud.
qb, I enjoy and learn from your insights and considerable ability to express them.
Steve Allison – AMEN! I agree with your comments vis qb!! And thank YOU for stating it so beautifully too.
“The preacher tells the truth by speaking of the visible absence of God because if he doesn’t see and own up to the absence of God in the world, then he is the only one there who doesn’t see it, and who then is going to take him seriously when he tries to make real what he claims also to see as the invisible presence of God in the world…”
That is so true…authenticity in the pulpit. Now I wish some of our contemporary “praise” songs would learn to acknowledge the seemingly absense of God as well…to be taken seriously when acknowledging the presence of God. That is what I love about such classical hymns as “Be Still, My Soul” and “Abide With me”…they both acknowledge, in subtle ways, the seemingly absense of God while, in faith, longing for and recognizing the presence of God. And that is why they still bring comfort to those who have experienced the absense of God in life.
Grace and peace,
Rex
“Strange things happen. Again and again Christ is present not where, as priests, you would be apt to look for him but precisely where you wouldn’t have thought to look for him in a thousand years. The great preacher, the sunset, the Mozart Requiem can leave you cold, but the child in the doorway, the rain on the roof, the half-remembered dream, can speak of him and for him with an eloquence that turns your knees to water.”
That sounds a good sight better than “If you don’t believe in something that is invisible, silent, and improbable then you are destined to roast in hell forever like a pig on a spit.”
(If you wonder what I mean by improbable, chew on this: In Mark, chapter 13, Jesus speaks of nation rising against nation, earthquakes, and the coming of false Christs and false prophets, the stars falling from the sky, and the coming of the Son of Man “in the clouds with great power and glory”. Then, in verse 30, he says “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” But it didn’t happen, did it?)
Brett:
Yes, in fact, it did. Many authors, notably including no less than N. T. Wright, have shown that Mark 13 is thoroughgoing Jewish apocalyptic after the fashion of Daniel 7 and other ancient and second-Temple literature, remarkable imagery infused with – and bringing out the fulness of – contemporary political developments, including (for instance) Titus’ fateful siege of Jerusalem. We can surely agree that *that* was a historically verifiable event…
You may wish to disagree with those authors (for whatever reason, perhaps including an _a priori_ of some kind), but you will have impoverished yourself if you don’t give them at least an honest hearing. Wright’s _Jesus and the Victory of God_ sets it out about as comprehensively and winsomely as you’ll find it anywhere, probably. And his earlier volume, _The New Testament and the People of God_, sets the table wondrously with an estimable effort in hard-nosed, historical criticism of second-Temple Jewish texts.
Or, rather, you might wish to ignore all of it and settle for a strawman’s take on Mark 13. Lord knows an army of two-bit evangelical preachers has taken Mark 13 so literally that they have to indulge in shameful contortions to mesh it with the historical record.
Had qb been a professional preacher in years past, he probably would have made the same anachronistic mistakes.
qb
qb incomprehensibly neglected to insert the phrase “theological implications of” before “contemporary political developments” in the first para of his reply to Brett. Sorry ’bout that…an inexcusable omission. qb
I like what George Buttrick said about Buechner’s choice to enter Union Theological Seminary to become a minister, “It would be a shame to lose a good novelist for a mediocre preacher.”However, I think we know that his preaching and writing complimented each other quite well.
Peace.
Preachers, if you don’t know Buechner very well and this post interests you, get a copy “Wishful Thinking.” It’s a quirky dictionary of Bible and religion. No matter what topic you’re preaching on, if there’s an entry under that word, it will be a great springboard for your thinking. You might find yourself reading some or all of it from the pulpit. That’s what happened to me anyway.
K. Rex, watch the live video of Casting Crowns “I’ll Praise You In This Storm” on youtube. I think you’ll see this conteporary christian song definately speaks of worshiping God even when we don’t feel him. I just led the song with others for the first time over the weekend and found it very powerful, Kent