The Magnificent Defeat (1966)
Book Description
In his debut sermon collection, Frederick Buechner explores an array of fascinating topics, from reflections on the incarnation, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, to examinations of what it means to be childlike, saintlike, and a disciple.
Written and delivered while Buechner was chaplain at the Phillips Exeter Academy, many of the sermons are an apologia for Christianity: ‘My job’, he writes of that time in Now and Then (1983), ‘was to defend the Christian faith against its “cultured despisers”, […] to present the faith as appealingly, honestly, relevantly, and skillfully as I could.’ In sermons such as ‘The Triumph of Love’, the reader catches glimpses of the themes that would become central to Buechner’s life and work:
[T]he storyteller's claim, I believe, is that life has meaning – that the things that happen to people happen not just by accident like leaves being blown off a tree by the wind but that there is order and purpose deep down behind them or inside them and that they are leading us not just anywhere but somewhere. The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds up somehow, that life itself is like a story. And this grips us and fascinates us because of the feeling it gives us that if there is meaning in any life – in Hamlet's, in Mary's, in Christ's – then there is meaning also in our lives. And if this is true, it is of enormous significance in itself, and it makes us listen to the storyteller with great intensity because in this way all his stories are about us and because it is always possible that he may give us some clue as to what the meaning of our lives is.
Reviews
"One of today’s most powerful writers on religious themes here offers meditations on key passages of the Old and New Testaments that fuse “rhythmic style, rich imagery, forthright biblical exegesis [and] bring to mind the meditative work of J. B. Phillips and C. S. Lewis."
— Presbyterian Life
"Here is prose so beautifully written that it verges on poetry. Yet The Magnificent Defeat wrestles with sweaty contemporary problems, including the problem of those who want to believe and can’t."
— United Press International
"These are powerful sermons, designed for the skeptical and inquiring, no less than for the devout."
— Choice
"Combines high writing skill with a profound understanding of Christian essentials."
— New York Times Book Review
