Featured Ministry Africa Youth Ministries is an international Christian NGO that uses, among other things, sports evangelism and medical missions in its outreaches.  More Current Articles in Christ & Culture: • Juvenile (In)Justice by various authors • Good News Is Contagious by Kristyn Komarnicki • Sleazonomics: A review of Steven E. Landsburgs MORE SEX IS SAFER SEX by Bruce Wydick • The DNA of Hope  by Kristyn Komarnicki

It isn't his birthday, and he didn't just die, so why the tribute to novelist/theological muser/pastor Frederick Buechner? Because he writes things like this:

"If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully—the life you save may be your own—and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get, and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion" (from The Faces of Jesus, originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1974, rereleased by Paraclete Press in 2006).

Buechner's gut-level honesty—both about his own spiritual failings and doubts and about Christ's attractive/repulsive call on our lives—has gained him a loyal following among the warts-and-all crowd. I just started rereading The Book of Bebb (Harper & Row, 1979; reissued in 2001), Buechner's delightfully earthy yet heaven-gazing tetralogy about a couple of con artists (a preacher and his alleged apprentice) who bumble into faith and grace. And it fills me with hope for the state of "Christian" art and with joy over the way Christ's salvation can sneak into the tiniest cracks in our armor and seep into our souls, sometimes without us even realizing it, until it's too late, and we wake up saved, wondering how we got here.

He's not for every taste, I'm sure, but if you want to know more, check out the following links and pick up one of his books. I predict you'll soon be hooked.

Interviews

by Bob Abernethy for Religion & Ethics (4.5.06)

by Mike Yaconelli for The Door (Jan/Feb 1995)

Documentary

Buechner from New Life films (2003). You can watch an excerpt here.

Articles

"Frederick Buechner's Sacred Journey: How one writer and minister has made a career of telling others about moments of holy insight" by Timothy K. Jones for Christianity Today (3.1.03)

"Preaching on Hope" by Frederick Buechner at Pulpit.org

"Jesus Who Was and Who Is" by Frederick Buechner at Pulpit.org

Bibliography

You can find Buechner's bibliography at Wikipedia.

Some favorite quotes from Buechner's writings

According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it... Be importunate, Jesus says—not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door.

Something terrible happens, and you might say, "God help us!" or "Jesus Christ!"—the poor, crippled prayers that are hidden in the minor blasphemies of people for whom in every sense God is dead, except that they still have to speak to him, if only through clenched teeth.

In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep need meet.

One life on this earth is all that we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst.

In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.

Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.