The Sacred Journey

pp. 108 - 109

Buechner came alive through George Buttrick’s preaching in New York: “It was not just his eloquence that kept me coming back, though he was wonderfully eloquent, literate, imaginative, never letting you guess what he was going to come out with next, but twitching with surprises up there in the pulpit, his spectacles a-glitter in the lectern light.” Two sentences especially got Buechner: ”’Jesus Christ refused the crown Satan offered him in the wilderness,’ Buttrick said, ‘but he is king nonetheless because again and again he is crowned in the heart of people who believe in him. And that inward coronation takes place,’ Buttrick said, ‘among confession, and tears, and great laughter.’” “It was that phrase ‘great laughter’ that did it.”