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9 December 2007 It doesn’t matter if the fairy tale is Enchanted, the current box-office hit, or the older Hollywood flick, Elf. It doesn’t matter if it’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland. Even if they don’t all begin with “Once upon a time…, there’s a pattern to them, a wistfulness that comes with the combination of children and dreams and magic, a recognition that what is and what could be are worlds apart, but not beyond reach. Author and theologian Frederick Buechner reflects on fairy tales in his gem of a book, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. He writes that the stories
Wendy and her Darling brothers simply have to wish happy thoughts—with a little sprinkling of fairy dust for insurance. Alice enters through a mirror; Dorothy is caught up in a cyclone; Lucy crawls into a wardrobe. Children and dreams and magic. The world that is, and the world that could be. Regardless of the culture, the fairy tale takes wing as the carrier of hope. No wonder Beuchner writes of the gospel as fairy tale. He almost sounds like Isaiah...and can be just as irascible. Isaiah is the crusty contemporary of the prophet Amos; both Amos and Isaiah lived in the eighth century before Jesus. In the setting of today’s reading, Isaiah pronounces judgment in a scathingly negative verdict on King Ahaz of Jerusalem, whose public disregard for the poor is condemned as a repudiation of God’s will. We today fuss about negative press, regardless of who is president, but we forget that biblical prophecy virtually always includes assessment and consequences, specifically for those whose responsibility it is to lead the country. Only we miss that radical assessment because we don’t read the assessment portion of the Isaiah story. It’s critical to remind ourselves that today’s achingly beautiful images, images that even twenty-seven hundred years later still inspire artists, are images of hope that are lifted up within the no-holds-barred context of judgment. And this is a part of what biblical scriptures share with fairy tales. Neither fairy tales nor the biblical story shies away from the harsh realities of the human condition: that the powerfully rich frequently are judged beautiful (mirror, mirror on the wall), but cruel and vindictive toward the poor…especially if the poor have even a snowball’s chance of laying claim to the resources that sustain the power of the rich. Fairy tales and biblical story share the perspective that the confrontation between good and evil is not a cakewalk, that this confrontation is not without heartrending casualties on both sides. Isaiah holds its own with the Tales of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. It also holds its own with the tyrannies of Hitler and Stalin, with Britain’s imperial rule in India, with the United States’ accommodation of slavery and Native American genocide. Even in the face of contemporary realities, Isaiah holds his own, with the insidious threat to the nine million children in the United States who have no medical coverage,[2] as well as the reality of suicide bombers and shopping mall gunners. It is within this context, within this reality that Isaiah has the audacity to lift up an alternative vision that pairs the leopard and the goat, the lion and the ox as images of peace. And his images are not a tongue-in-cheek version of the old saw about a congregation’s live nativity, complete with a lion and a lamb—the less-than biblical image of popular art. When a bystander comments as to how remarkable it is that the church can put the two in the same stall, the member replies that it works perfectly—as long as they replace the lamb every hour. With full comprehension of nature’s order, Isaiah voices what Walter Brueggemann claims is the Jewish gift to faith—the practice of hope. The stunning affirmation that with God an alternative world is possible, and even more incredibly, that we in the faith community are called to work in partnership with God to bring that world into being. The practice of hope is no fatalistic que sera, sera, what will be, will be. It’s no denial of present reality with the perspective that everything our senses report to us is illusion. Daring to hope is an act of will and an act of faith...an act of faith we see frequently in the medical arena. Several Sundays ago, we lifted up one of our friends who was diagnosed initially with Stage 4 cancer, and given a very slim chance of surviving it. He could have said his goodbyes and sat around waiting to die. But he didn’t. He chose instead to take a tremendous risk, and treat the cancer as aggressively as possible. The very good news that today he is in full and complete remission. That’s the kind of hope Isaiah writes of: hope that dares to face head-on the realities of the moment and envision a cancer-free body. I hasten to add that the practice of hope does not guarantee a positive outcome. But without hope, an alternative outcome is not even envisioned; without hope, despair, resignation, even rage can be the result. I’m convinced that it is the combination of hopelessness and rage that feeds suicidal behaviors from shopping malls to college campuses and Iraqi markets. These are our realities, along with a host of others. I was reminded of that long list of additional realities this last week, when in the space of less than 24 hours, I was the ‘lucky’ recipient of no less than three telephone polls. All of them promised to be brief, of course. The first sounded as though the questions were framed by the Republican National Committee. The second was from my auto insurance company. The third sounded as though the questions were framed by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The interesting part about the third poll was its attention to two fronts. The first front was handled with a single question: To what degree does religion play a part in your support of a candidate? The second front was a short laundry list of pressing social issues, issues that are as personal as cancer and as universal as the air we breathe: the Iraq War, education, employment and the economy, health care, the environment. Isaiah is no fool; he connects the dots between the faith we proclaim and the issues we address. Isaiah connects the dots, and than has the audacity to dare us to hope within the context these realities. Cancer can be cured. We can have full employment and a healthy environment. We can provide basic health care for every man and woman and child. Because our God calls us into a partnership that transforms reality as we know it. Isaiah is no fool; he dares us to hope that a little child shall lead us, and that is the truth. Buechner is right. The gospel is fairy tale.
The gospel is more than fairy tale. The child leads, not into Neverland, not into Oz, but into life transformed. In this world. In this reality. * * * [1] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, HarperCollins, ©1977. |