Frederick Buechner is a teacher of preachers. His influence on the church of the twentieth century is a two-step process. Many of the common folk of the church have no idea who he is; they can t even pronounce his name (it rhymes with seeker, sort of). { 195} But chances are, their pastors have been inspired by Buechner's
prose, and his words help them tell their people the truth about God.
As a writer, Buechner seems to live two lives. In one of them, he has enjoyed some success as a novelist in the secular market!
His fiction blends John Updike and Flannery O'Connor, New England soul-searching and down-home oddities. His four-part serial The Book of Bebb both bothers and blesses the Christian reader with its seriously flawed hero, the preacher Leo Bebb.
You're not likely to find another story of redemption that grabs your guts like this one.
Buechner the novelist has also dabbled in historical fiction with Godric and Brendan and even biblical fiction with Son of Laughter, Jacob's story. (The conniving patriarch who wrestles with God is Buechner's kind of hero.) In all of his novels, Buech-ner is at his best describing the inner conflicts of his charac-ters—those wrestling matches with God. He is keenly aware of human foibles and our constant need of God's grace.
But the primary influence of Frederick Buechner on the church has come through his various books of theological essays, sermons, inspirational remembrances, and collections of wit and wisdom. His humor and slightly cynical tone resonate with pastors and church leaders. As a preacher himself, he knows the territory. But this isn't just entertainment: Buechner helps his preacher/readers understand what they do for a living.
Books like The Alphabet of Grace, Whistling in the Dark, and Wishfiil Thinking offer short definitions of various subjects (some
theological), always with humor, but often with valuable insight. On the boldness of praying the Lord's Prayer, he writes in Whistling in the Dark, "To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze. ... ft is only the words Our Father׳ that make the prayer bearable. If God is indeed something like a father, then as something like children maybe we can risk approaching him anyway."
We select Telling the Truth for our list because it speaks most clearly about what preachers do, and thus it represents Buech-ner's primary influence. Subtitled The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, this slim volume reminds preachers that they're really just delivering the news—the bad news of sin first, but then the glorious good news of redemption. Don't let the "fairy tale" worry you. He's not saying the gospel is untnxe—on the contrary! It's about the huge issues of good and evil that affect all of us. "To preach the Gospel in its original power and mystery," Buechner writes, "is to claim ... that once upon a time is this time, now." This novelist's skill as a wordsmith and a ere-ator comes into play here, in a work that is deeply inspiring. A seminarian won't find many homiletics texts like this one.
"The task of the preacher is to hold up life to us; by whatever gifts he or she has of imagination, eloquence, simple candor, to create images of life through which we can somehow see into the wordless tmth of our lives." Using his own artistic gifts, Frederick Buechner has empowered a few generations of Christian preachers to proclaim the good news with power and beauty.