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| Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale | 
 enlarge | Author: Frederick Buechner
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (17 reviews)
Sales Rank: 18255
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.7 x 0.4
ISBN: 0060611561
Dewey Decimal Number: 251
EAN: 9780060611569
ASIN: 0060611561
Publication Date: October 26, 1977
Release Date: October 26, 1977
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A fresh, creative look at the underlying meaning of the Gospels that stresses the many dimensions of God's relationship to humanity.
Amazon.com Review
A sermon arises out of silence, preacher and writer Frederick Buechner reminds us, and that silence is both an opportunity and a warning. An audience sits in the pews waiting, and each of those who sit there bring with them a long and complicated history. How will you reach them? How will you awaken them? "Tell them the truth," Buechner says in this brief and powerful book. The Gospel begins here, out of this silence: "It is life with the sound turned off so that for a moment or two you can experience it not in terms of the words you make it bearable by but for the unutterable mystery that it is." Out of this silence, he writes, the "real news comes, which is sad news before it is glad news and that is fairy tale last of all." This series of lectures explores these three ways of seeing the Gospel: first as tragedy, as honest sorrow and suffering--this must be faced before anything else becomes possible. From this comes the comedy of new life: a child born to Abraham and Sarah in old age, Lazarus raised from the dead. This is the folly of the Gospel--what Buechner will ultimately call the fairy tale. Drawing deeply from the well of The Wizard of Oz and other stories, he reminds us in this final chapter that "there is a child in all of us," a child in touch with a truth deeper than the logic of tragedy. --Doug Thorpe
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 An arrow toward the truth. May 12, 2008
This book is a very worthy read. While his style is a bit too abstract for my taste, the author has some good points to make. I really like his main theme, that art, literature, and even the Gospels are not truths themselves, they point us to an understanding of the truth. Of course if you apply this to his own book it leads to some odd causality paradoxes, but it is still something worth thinking about.
 Most Excellent September 15, 2007
Frederick Buechner - what else needs to be said. I am currently reading a little bit of this every Sunday morning to my congregation before I begin my sermon. I feel that sometimes the laity doesn't even know the questions to ask the clergy about how they preach the sermon, where it comes from, why that particular slant on a verse or thought.... So far, the readings have been well received. A marvelous book - real, funny, tragic and relavent.
A beautiful presentation of the Gospel July 30, 2007
The title of this book is what caught my attention before I knew anything else about it. I knew that if it offered any defense to its title it would be worth reading. I was not at all disappointed and found its content both rich and colorful and the writing style as excellent as you could ask for. I would highly recommend this book for anyone open to a fuller picture of the gospel and especially to those going into the ministry who will be speaking the gospel--or telling the truth as Buechner presents it.
Written as motivation for preachers, this book is a necessity for all March 28, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale muses, like the title says, that the Gospel is equal parts tragedy, comedy and fairy tale and explains that the best way to understand the gospel is to understand it through the truthful experience of one's life. The Gospel is tragedy, Frederick Buechner, the author, explains, because it is bad before it gets better--Christ dies before he is ressurrected. The Gospel is comedy, he says in the weakest section, because of its unexpectedness, how unpredictable it is. The Gospel is fairy tale, he says in a very moving section, because it is so impossible. Thus, he says, preachers should not try to package or dwindle its Message--it truly is impossible. At the same time, it comes forth in our lives--in the tragedy and the comedy--and it is important to show its reality in that way. Using literary and biblical examples, Buechner crafts a reassuring, remarkable book.
A compelling and beautiful book July 17, 2004
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I still struggle to understand why on earth this author isn't as widely read, valued, commented and acclaimed as he deserves to be... It is perhaps, as he suggested, because he seems to be "too religious for the irreligious and too secular for the religious". Whatever reasons there may be, few other writers equal the quality of thought and writing of Frederick Buechner on "religious" matters (whatever that means!).
In this little book, Buechner tackles in a brilliant way the vital questions of the significance and the meaning of preaching the gospel, considering it as tragedy, comedy and fairy tale. The result is simply superb: an extraordinary convergence of elegance, good quality writing and fresh spirituality. It's the perfect introduction to his work, along with "The Alphabet of Grace". Give him the chance to prove his qualities... he will speak to both irreligious and religious...still more, he will haunt you!
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