Customer Reviews

Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I took a class in "Christian Mythopoeic authors" I had to give a presentation on an author not discussed in the class. I presented on Frederick Buechner. My focus was on his novel, On the Road with the Archangel. While preparing for this, I found myself reading seven of his other books. Once I picked him up, it was hard to put him down. One of the books that I read was Telling the Truth. I have recently had the pleasure of re-reading it.

Buechner is a shameless recycler of themes and material (King Lear references are found almost everywhere in his writings). Most of his books don't even break one hundred pages. Still, I'd rather sort through Buechner's recyclables than the seven course meals of a lot of other writers.

Telling the Truth is the printed form of lectures Buechner gave on what it means to preach the gospel. He argues that the gospel must be presented in terms of tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale.

The gospel is tragedy because life can be exceedingly dark. We spend so much time trying to pretend, and sometimes believing that everything is fine and dandy. Yet sin is real and it causes death. We all live under the horror of a death sentence that will not be commuted. We live in the valley of the shadow of death. To try and deny this is not to preach but to play games. Too many Christ-followers try to skip over this integral part of life.

The picture Buechner paints of Jesus' silence before Pilate is jarring. It makes me uncomfortable. It must have freaked Pilate out too. This silence and the silence before the preacher speaks are the personification of what the tragedy of the Gospel is. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The wage of this "missing of the mark" is death.

The Gospel is comedy because God's provision for those who are his enemies is beyond the pale. It is in this hour of death--in the hour of our just execution--that God comes and gives us a life beyond all of our dreams and expectations.

The picture of Sarah's laughter at God's promise is the picture of our reaction when we first truly encounter the Gospel. A woman giving birth as she enters her second century of life looks easy compared to a God that we have slandered, rebelled against, ignored and even crucified loving us and redeeming us.

It is the hyper-reality of this comedy that makes the Gospel a fairy tale. We live in the drudgery of our everyday "real" lives. Yet the Gospel is more real than any of the fleeting, fading images that pass for our reality.

Buechner uses the picture of the Great Oz to convey the fairy-tale aspect of the Gospel. Just as Oz turns out to be a little old man behind a curtain, so the preacher's proclaiming of the wonder of the Kingdom looks insignificant, a lot of the time ridiculous, compared to the truth they bear.

The fairy tale of the Gospel is that all us, though seemingly frail and cowering behind the curtain of our lives, turn out to have power through Christ. The things we say and do while carrying the Gospel do indeed have eternal impact.

The Gospel must not be neutered by the understatement or ignoring of any of its elements. Sin has made our situation dire. God's provision has given us joy. The entire story offers us wonder.

I appreciate Buechner's Telling the Truth because he is creative in the making of his points. He paints vivid pictures. He does not soft-sell any element of his argument. This is a great book.

I give it my full recommendation.

Frederick Buechner's 'Telling the Truth' is one of those little books, so packed with great things, it needs repeated reading. Not that it is difficult to read, it is just full of huge ideas and grand truth.
Buechner revisits various aspects of the gospel. But his first challenge to the reader is to confront the silence of truth. Using as an example the silence of Jesus in response to Pilate's question "What is truth?", Buechner suggests truth may not be far from the ordinariness of our everyday lives - if only we would pause to realise.
'Telling the Truth' uses the recurring picture of a preacher getting up to preach. Buechner describes in detail the scene in the church, the congregation who have come to the church for so many different reasons and the inadequacies the preacher feels but, as the preacher lays out his notes "like a riverboat gambler, the stakes have never been higher."
'Telling the Truth' considers the gospel as "tragedy, comedy and fairy tale" in turn and ultimately Buechner finds the gospel "a tale that is too good not to be true."
If you only read one book each year, make it 'Telling the Truth' this year - and next year.

I have read this book 3 times in as many months, and I will be reading it again. The first time I read it, I was swept away emotionally and ended it feeling totally wrung out, yet still uplifted. The second time I began to understand the meaning. The third time I was able to integrate emotion and thought, and I finally grasp what he means by (1) the truth being found in silence, (2) tragedy as an inevitable part of life, when God seems absent and the world is dark and empty, (3) comedy as the unexpected event, God making himself present in unlikely and unanticipated ways, (4) the fairy tale, too good to be true, where good overcomes evil, light overtakes darkness, and people are transformed; but in the gospel it really is true--and here is joy, but a joy accompanied by tears.

Still there is more to be learned. This book is absolutely a masterpiece of interwoven themes and images, thoughts and emotions, reality and imagination, literature and life.

"The preacher climbs the stairs to the pulpit and pulls the chain, turning on the light. He deals out his note cards like a riverboat gambler. The stakes have never been higher."</P>

An excellent book on preaching the gospel.</P>

Beuchner presents Pilate, Abraham and Sarah, and others as if they were living today. Tremendous insights.</P>

It is the only book of its kind I've ever read more than once. I've read this one five times.</P>

A riveting, explosive, whimsical, masterfully-written philosophy of preaching. This book is not just for the preacher, but also every Christian who, with the commission of Christ, is to tell the Story. Yet on the other hand, this book shakes the antics out of the would-be preacher and tells him what he should be in the end picture. Buechner's command of language and literature will leave your head spinning with bedazzlement and great profundity. It is but a short 98-page read, but it's a punch that you might not have been expecting! Read it now!

A book that talks about sin without being judgemental; about grace without being cheap. If everyone would read and take to heart the Gospel as presented by Buechner, perhaps the Christians would be easier to live with and grace would be more accessible.

"The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner... That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven.... That is the comedy.... In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen."

And that is the basis for Frederick Buechner's book. That as evangelists we need to remember that the Bible is more than just a book, it starts as tragedy, it becomes so outrageous to be comedic and then amongst it all, God loves us so much that it's a fairy tale. And as with all fairy tales, that all who accept the outcome, the ending is happy. And we must keep all those things in mind. And preach the Bible with love.

Frederick Buechner uses a number of "secular" works to illustrate his points. He points to the tragedy of "King Lear" by Shakespeare, he goes over the fairy tale sof C.S Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz".

To illustrate the comedy of the Bible, he turns to the Bible itself, going over the promise of God to Abraham and Sarah about the birth of Isaac, and how they laughed... the idea seemed so preposterous. And it does seem preposterous in a way, the promises of the Bible... so outrageous as to be almost impossible to believe. And that is why the Bible turns out to be fairy tale, because what is "too good to be true" isn't. It happens, and it happens to us.

Buechner writes with colorful prose, but you won't get lost in the verbiage and his meaning will come out crystal clear. He conveys to us a message that speaks to us and tells us to speak the Word with urgency, and do it emphatically, colorfully, just as the Bible is colorful itself. Do it with compassion, do it with love and do it with inspiration.

"Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in that silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people... you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it the catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have."

This is one of the most wonderful meditations on the Gospels that you will ever find. It provides insight that you will find in no other author's work.

I've only read it once. This week, I'm going to read it yet again.

The author uses illustrations from King Lear, The Wizard of Oz and other fictional works to illustrate Biblical principals about the gospel and aspects about preaching it.

This is a good book that offers encouragement for those who want to share the gospel. Good insights.

This is a superbly written view of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Buechner uses parables of various contempory situations to bring new life and relevance to the scriptures. If you are looking for fresh creative insight into the Bible, this is definitely one to check out.