Fellow Presbyterian Frederick Buechner is a true wordsmith. About the time I finished college and began seminary, I read his autobiographical works, and was mesmerized by his use of language, and his honest, winsome, soul-searching approach to life and faith. In my own theological development at the time, I was not able to figure out all the theological leanings of Buechner (things were a bit more soupy for me then), but I was grateful for what I found in his work.
Over the years, however, I did not follow Buechner too much, so it was with interest that I recently got my hands on a copy of his Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). This is a collection of many of the sermons that he has preached through the years. Again, Buechner is honest and soul-searching. He draws you in with such force that you can hear his voice in your mind’s ear as you read his words.
Buechner’s sermons are clearly those of a theological liberal (and I do not use the word pejoratively, but honestly). His approach to the Bible is along the lines of what has been called “Reader Response.” Buechner reads the biblical text, and then preaches from (“exegetes,” as it were) his own response to that text. While the text is dearly loved by the preacher (this I do not doubt), the sermon reflects not so much on the text as on the reader and the reader’s response to the text.
In the Introduction to this collection, Buechner says as much:
"It was William James who used the term “the More” to refer to the Mystery beyond space and time in which we all of us live and move and have our being whether we acknowledge its existence or not, and my purpose in these more recent sermons especially has been not to try to describe what is by definition indescribable, but to try to put into words how it seems to me we catch glimpses of it, hear whispers of it, or are sometimes moved to our depths by it as we encounter it now and then in the everydayness of what happens to us. “Listen to your life” might well serve as a distillation of all of them." [xv]
Over the years, however, I did not follow Buechner too much, so it was with interest that I recently got my hands on a copy of his Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). This is a collection of many of the sermons that he has preached through the years. Again, Buechner is honest and soul-searching. He draws you in with such force that you can hear his voice in your mind’s ear as you read his words.
Buechner’s sermons are clearly those of a theological liberal (and I do not use the word pejoratively, but honestly). His approach to the Bible is along the lines of what has been called “Reader Response.” Buechner reads the biblical text, and then preaches from (“exegetes,” as it were) his own response to that text. While the text is dearly loved by the preacher (this I do not doubt), the sermon reflects not so much on the text as on the reader and the reader’s response to the text.
In the Introduction to this collection, Buechner says as much:
"It was William James who used the term “the More” to refer to the Mystery beyond space and time in which we all of us live and move and have our being whether we acknowledge its existence or not, and my purpose in these more recent sermons especially has been not to try to describe what is by definition indescribable, but to try to put into words how it seems to me we catch glimpses of it, hear whispers of it, or are sometimes moved to our depths by it as we encounter it now and then in the everydayness of what happens to us. “Listen to your life” might well serve as a distillation of all of them." [xv]
“Listen to your life.” This is a key thought to understanding Buechner’s sermons, and liberal preaching and theology in general. One’s life, one’s experience, is the thing to be exegeted. Buechner says something very similar just a page later: “In other words, what I have been essentially doing from the pulpit all these more than fifty years is to tell the story of my life” (xvi). The Bible, as important as it is, is essentially a resource for doing this.
What many church people (clergy and lay, at least in the ecclesiastical world I inhabit) do not understand, however, is how radically different this approach to preaching is than an approach that understands the Bible not as a resource for exegeting one’s own life, but as the thing itself (the source) to be exegeted, against which our own lives are then held up and measured. The preaching tradition represented by Buechner, while certainly a “liberal” tradition (given its emphasis on human experience as a source, a locus, of revelation to one degree or another), is catching on in many erstwhile “evangelical” corners (the Forward to Buechner’s book is written by Brian D. McClaren). But it nonetheless remains very different, even incommensurate, with the preaching exemplified by Calvin, James S. Stewart, or in modern times by Alistair Begg or Sinclair Ferguson.
I am grateful, however, to Buechner. He helps to delineate the differences. However, as one who understands that the proclamation of the Christian Church is “Jesus Christ as he is attested in Holy Scripture…” (Barmen Declaration), I cannot go down his road without fearing that the creature has replaced the Creator as the subject and content of preaching. However much people might like to hear it, “the story of my life” cannot compare with the story of Jesus Christ, “the old, old story of Jesus and his love.”
