Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. New York: HarperCollins, 1977, 40-41.
The preacher is not called to be be an actor, a magician, in the pulpit. He is called to be himself. He is called to tell the truth as he has experienced it. He is called to be human, to be human, and that is calling enough for any man. If he does not make real to them the human experience of what it is to cry into the storm and receive no answer, to be sick at heart and find no healing, then he becomes the only one there who seems not to have had that experience because most surely under their bonnets and shawls and jackets, under their afros and ponytails, all the others there have had it whether they talk of it or not. As much as anything else, it is their experience of the absence of God that has brought them there in search of his presence, and if the preacher does not speak of that and to that, then he becomes like the captain of a ship who is the only one aboard who either does not know that the waves are twenty feet high and the decks awash or will not face up to it so that anything else he tries to say by way of hope and comfort and empowering becomes suspect on the basis of that one crucial ignorance or disingenuousness or cowardice or reluctance to speak in love any truths but the ones that people love to hear.
3 comments:
I think this passage is true not just for preachers but for all of us who are trying to live a spiritual life, to speak the truth about reality, to speak so that others may hear the kingdom of God in our voices. We must discover how to be truly ourselves, truly human, and we must not neglect the darkest corners of that human condition.
God, please help me to speak the truth even when I do not feel your presence, to search for your kingdom even when it seems unlikely that such a place really exists. Help me to serve you by being a human among humans and to be willing to keep serving in the darkest places of human experience.
As priests all of us unto God, we need to speak the truth, to share the truth, to live the truth. Who are you truly, God, and why do people so frequently -- too frequently? -- make you masculine for the rest of us to relate to?
My truth, Godess of my heart, is that you are feminine and love me even as I tell that.
"it is their experience of the absence of God that has brought them there in search of his presence"
Too often this is true for me, God. May I be blessed by Thy grace to remember You all days, in every moment of each day, so that in remembering to look, I do see You, and in seeing You, I am full of grace.
Please.
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