Apr 28, 2013 ... The book containing his lectures is entitled: Telling the Truth: .... Once upon a
time, in a deep forest, there was a poor woodchopper and his wife ...
Truth Is a Fairy Tale Dr. D. William McIvor April 28, 2013 Presbyterian Church in Sudbury Introduction to the Morning Lesson The Lyman Beecher Lectureship on Preaching at Yale University began in 1871 and, with very few misses, has happened every year since. For more than 140 years the lectures have featured a Who’s Who of the best preachers in the land. The 1976 lectures were given by a Presbyterian preacher named Frederick Buechner. The book containing his lectures is entitled: Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. It’s very much worth reading even if you’re not a preacher, but for many of us in the mid1970s, who were then in the early years of our ministries, Buechner’s book had a profound impact on how we thought about preaching and how we went about the task of preaching. Maybe someday long into retirement, I’ll sit down with Buechner’s book and some of my old sermons and actually try to trace and describe his influence on my life’s work. That will be of interest only to me and Merrie and my kids will probably roll their eyes and wonder if I’ve really gone ‘round the bend. But, hey, I have to do something in my dotage. I mention Buechner this morning, not because of his influence on my preaching, but because the idea of fairy tale, which he discusses so powerfully, is actually a good way to read and understand Revelation, the concluding book of the Bible. My dear mother, faithful saint that she was, was a strong believer in a kind of theology called dispensationalism1 which taught that the book of Revelation and some other portions of the Bible provide a detailed blueprint of when Jesus Christ will return, when true believers will be raptured, and when the end of the world in all its horror will take place. This way of reading the Bible is still very popular with many Christians. In fact, it is the theology of the “Left Behind” books — twenty of them now — written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. They’ve sold millions of copies and I know that some of you have read them and liked them. I loved my mom and she taught me so much about the Bible. But I’ve come to see that the dispensational perspective seriously misreads the Bible. Revelation is a kind of apocalyptic writing — and there are other examples in both Old and New Testaments — not written to predict events but to assure God’s people that God is in control and that God will prevail over all that is evil, hurtful, and wrong. So in the end, Revelation teaches, just like a good fairy tale, we will all live happily ever after. God’s truth is like a fairy tale. Let’s read the tale in today’s text. Revelation 21.1-6 (NRSV) Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the 1 “Dispensationalism … is a scheme of history based on a complex literal interpretation of the prophetic books of
the Bible. … [It was] popularized in the United States by annual Bible and prophetic conferences initiated in 1875, publication of The Scofield Reference Bible (1909), and at such schools as the Moody Bible Institute.” Donald K. McKim, ed., The Westminster Handbook to Reformed Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 60-61.
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throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” If you ask someone where heaven is, what will most people say? They might reply that they don’t know exactly but that it’s somewhere because most people believe they are going to go to heaven when they die. In some fashion, they may think or say that heaven is up there although we all know that up there is the solar system and the galaxy and the universe, and not heaven. But people think of heaven as up there because we don’t want to think about may be down there. And wherever people think heaven is, they think of it as far away and a place we can only go to after we die and somehow leave Earth. Isn’t it interesting that the writer of Revelation doesn’t picture things that way? Heaven and Earth are not far from each other. He sees them together and the new city of Jerusalem comes down from God like a bride coming down the aisle for her husband. And the wedding ceremony begins with the words, “See, the home of God is among mortals.” God is not faraway in this tale. Heaven is really as close as close can be. Which is exactly what we find in fairy tales. As Buechner’s book reminds us: • Once upon a time there was a great wizard who lived in a far country. • Once upon a time, in a deep forest, there was a poor woodchopper and his wife. • Once upon a time a deep sleep fell upon all the inhabitants of the palace …2 Read such words to children and they are instantly moved to time beyond time where a far country, a deep forest, a palace can be real because they don’t dismiss out-of-hand that there are possibilities we cannot see. Why do we think Jesus said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it”? (Mark 10.15) Children believe and because they believe they see truth that all of us sensible grownups often don’t see. It’s not just made-up stuff. It’s a deeper reality that we need the eyes and hearts of a child to see in fairy tales and in the book of Revelation. We need childlike hearts to see that there is something much deeper going on than just made-up stuff. We need this because sadly so many things these days just tell us that nothing deeper and more important is going 2 Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977) 73.
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on beyond this sad, old world. We live in a time of evangelical atheism.3 Writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — brilliant men, by the way — are as ardent as any Bible-thumping evangelist ever was.4 With zeal in books and speeches they proclaim there is no god and religious belief is not only ridiculous but in many cases dangerous and even evil. In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins takes nearly 400 pages to point out the blindness of religious belief in general and belief in a personal God in particular. Then on the last page gives a hopeful vision. “Science flings open the narrow window through which we are accustomed to viewing the spectrum of possibilities. We are liberated by calculation and reason to visit regions of possibility that had once seemed out of bounds or inhabited by dragons.” He ends the book saying that he is glad to live in a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. “Even better,” he concludes, “we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”5 So there’s the atheists’ heaven for you — no limits that we may eventually discover. I’ll take the fairy tale of Revelation, thank you. I’ll take Revelation because Dawkins and his brothers assume that humankind will somehow be good while we push against the limits of understanding. That is a very naive assumption shared neither by the Bible in general nor the book of Revelation in particular. It is an assumption not shared by fairy tales which are filled with evil. It is an assumption not shared by children who know in their heart of hearts that there are bad things. That’s why fairy tales speak to children. Fairy tales talk the language of children and so does the Bible when we tell it right. Buechner makes the point that in fairy tales there is mystery and deep darkness and shimmering starlight. Fairy tales describe a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, and order against chaos. Fairy tale worlds are real worlds where there is constant struggle, but in fairy tales, the battle always goes ultimately to the good, who do live happily ever after.6 And that kind of world is exactly the world of the Bible and the book of Revelation. In the end, despite the great struggle, God wins and 3 Among the evangelical tracts are: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006); Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin Books, 2007); Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005); and Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007). 4 “There is, as has often been noted, something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new
atheist movement. The new atheists have their own special interest groups and ad campaigns. They even have their own holiday (International Blasphemy Day). It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism--an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.” Reza Aslan, “Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett: Evangelical atheists?” Web. 25 Apr. 2013. . 5 Dawkins, 374. 6 Buechner, 81.
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we all live happily ever after. Did you see the great struggle in text? It’s easy to miss and is described in more detail elsewhere, but in the text the writer says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” That was the struggle. The sea was no more. What sea was this? It’s the sea in the very first verses of Genesis. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Genesis 1.1-2a) — the primordial sea of chaos and darkness that has always threatened the goodness of God’s creation. In the end, the chaos of life is ended and the sea is no more. All that threatens us is gone. And when, according to the tale of Revelation, will this happen? It already has. It happened when Jesus died on the cross. That’s why in chapter 5 of Revelation, we see the Lamb of God, with the marks of slaughter still upon him. He is the one who holds in his hand the destiny of all. They who gather round the throne of God sing to the Lamb: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.” (Revelation 5.6, 9-10) The Lamb of God holds in his hands the destiny of all that is. It is the sacrifice of Christ that breaks the power of darkness and death. Dawkins’s science, calculation, and reason cannot do that. They will never overcome the limits of darkness and death. God does that and the tale of a new earth and a new heaven and a Holy City come down like a bride adorned for her husband all reveal a truth that science and reason, for all their wondrous powers, cannot ever show us. So the one seated on the throne says, “It is done.” He is the Alpha and Omega, the beforeGenesis one and the after-Revelation one, and “It is done!” In the end, according to the truth of the tale, the waters, which once were the chaos of darkness and death, have become the spring of the water of life. (Revelation 21.6) What was chaos now gives life. I suppose Dr. Dawkins would say, “It’s just make-believe that you’re talking about. New heavens and new earths, a holy city coming down from heaven like a bride. Just make-believe. Even that Jesus stuff. Yes, maybe some guy named Jesus was killed on a cross two millennia ago. So what? To say anything came of that is just make-believe. A lamb holding the key to the universe? What are you talking about, you crazy people?” I’ve heard that in person Richard Dawkins is very polite, but he might say something like that. There’s no proving the truth of fairy tales or the Bible’s tale. And so Buechner warns us preachers that sometimes we are the ones who hang back the most, trying to prove things and, knowing that we can’t, just trying to be reasonable. He reminds preachers, and all of us really, that the apostle Paul tells us to be fools for Christ’s sake (1 Corinthians 4.10, 16) and Jesus himself tells us to be like children if we want to enter into the kingdom. (Mark 10.15) “Let the preacher tell the truth,” says Buechner. Tell the truth of tragedy being overwhelmed by comedy and darkness overwhelmed by light and the ordinary overwhelmed by the extraordinary. It’s a tale too good not to be true and if we dismiss it, we also dismiss that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart, near to or even accompanied by tears, which, in the end is the deepest
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intuition of truth that we have.7 Is this just to happen “In the Sweet By and By” as the old gospel song puts it? No, the intuition of the tale’s truth is right now. I received an email yesterday from Aileen Gardner. She is in Kenya, helping her son and daughter-in-law and others serve people in a place where babies are abandoned, and disease and starvation are ever present. She told about a teenaged girl with three children of her own and one who is not her own, who has to leave them everyday with no one to care for or watch them, while she tries to earn a $1.20 if she manages to fill twenty crates of tea leaves. The sad thing about Dawkins’s science and calculation and reason pushing back the limits of understanding is that we already know enough that on one should have to live like that girl and her children. But science and calculation and reason are not helping. Aileen is helping and others like her and we are helping in a little way with money we give to make such help possible. Those who have already intuited the deep truth of the tale are helping. And there was a catch of my breath and the beat and lifting of my heart when I read what Aileen wrote, “Through it all, working with children suffering the pain and fear of disease, hunger, neglect and abuse, I feel close to God in this place and grateful for the privilege of sharing and helping.” My friends, there’s a glimpse of the new heaven and the new earth, already coming down like a fairy tale too good not to be true.
7 Buechner, 98.
