hope and death in life from Buechner

One who has been a ray of light throughout the past 35 years of my life is Frederick Buechner.  We read from Buechner every week at our mall food court Bible study (which is now in its 7th year) and I use his writings as a daily meditation. He was introduced to me by a mentor, Bob Tabscott, whose life (at least at that time) was powerful and yet full of difficult contradictions.  I came across a quote I may use in a funeral service today from Buechner.  He's talking about "preachers" or as we call it around here now the "vision caster".

 

And at the heart of the heart is Christ -- the hope that he really is what for years they have been saying he is. That he really conquered sin and death. That in him and through him we also stand a chance of conquering them. "If Christ has not raised from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in sins," Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." If preachers are going to talk about hope, let them talk as honestly as Saint Paul did about hopelessness. Let them acknowledge the darkness and pitiableness of the human condition, including their own condition, into which hope brings still a glimmer of light.

 

And let them talk with equal honesty about their own reasons for hoping -- not just the official, doctrinal, Biblical reasons but the reasons rooted deep in their own day by day experience. They have hope that God exists because from time to time over the years they believe they have been touched by God. Let them speak of those times with the candor and concretness and passion without which all the homiletical eloquence and technique in the world are worth little.

 

They believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life because at a few precious moments that is what they have found him to be in their own small deaths and resurrections. Let them speak of those moments not like lecturers or propagandists but like human being speaking their hearts to their dearest friends who at any given point will unerringly know whether they are speaking truth or only parroting it.

 

David Loar
http://www.loar.org ...family web site
http://www.fairlawnwest.org ...church web site 
http://discipledavid.blogspot.com ...my blog