Buechnerisms pt. 2

"So if preachers or lecturers are to say anything that really matters to anyone including themselves, they must say it not just to the public part of us that considers interesting thoughts about the Gospel and how to preach it, but to the private, inner part too, to the part of us all where our dreams come from, both our good dreams and our bad dreams, the inner part where thoughts mean less than images, elucidation less than evocation, where our concern is less with how the Gospel is to be preached than with what the Gospel is and what it is to us. They must address themselves to the fullness of who we are and to the emptiness too, the emptiness where grace and peace belong but mostly are not because terrible as well as wonderful things have happened to us all." Then he quotes Shakespeare's King Lear. "The weight of this sad time we must obey Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." [5.3.324-325] Those words are powerful when looking into the face of death with a loved one. The Apostle's words echo, where o death is your sting? The answer is that it is in the eyes of your children as you tell them that Papa is sick and will soon be in heaven with Jesus. The sting of death is the empty cross on that Friday we call "good" in anticipation of Sunday.