From “Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons” by Frederick Buechner
From the Foreword by Brian McLaren:
A new generation of preachers is coming up, and I can’t think of anyone more enjoyable and exemplary for them to read than Buecher. They need to observe his art in creating an old woman with thick glasses, eating popcorn at the movies, or a fat man in a pickup, complete with gun rack and Jesus Loves You sticker (in “The Church”). They need to reflect on how these characters – sketched so minimally – do something that elegant points or abstractions never could have, especially when Buechner brings them back later in the sermon, adding one devastating detail to each. The next generation of preachers will learn something precious from Buechner in this and a dozen other ways, not, we hope, so they can analyze it or talk about it, but so they can actually catch something of his art, his eye, his heart, so they unconsciously, accidentally, might trade in a few of their points and abstractions for a teenage girl with acne, smoking a cigarette, or the young bride in high heels wobbling down the aisle on her father’s arm.
This new generation of preachers will have a natural affinity to Buechner because he, unlike a popular painter known as the “painter of light,” never paints light without shadows. Buechner’s faith carries freight because it has not come easy; it dances and sometimes street-fights with doubt. He calls himself “this skeptical old believer, this believing old skeptic.” The young preachers I know are tired to death of easy answers and simple steps and cozy scenes with serene porch lights and perfect picket fences. They don’t live in that world. They live in a world of thick glasses, gun racks, acne, and cancer. And so do the people they preach to.
Which is the world Buechner celebrates in his sermons. This world is the very one in which he keeps bumping into the living God, or vice versa. Which is why young preachers need to read these sermons.