Telling the Truth – A fresh, creative look at the underlying meaning of the Gospels that stresses the many dimensions of God’s relationship to humanity.
Gracepoint Church Library
Fostering love of good reading in the children & adults (& college students!) of Gracepoint Berkeley Church and BEYOND!
Gracepoint Church Library 
This novel is deceptively slim. Or perhaps novel is the wrong classification for Frederick Beuchner’s work. Regardless, this book merits a rereading, maybe three, but here is one highlight from the book that deeply moved me.
The encounter between Pilate and Jesus. I was a little shocked by the realistic depiction of Jesus, but this brutal picture and frank description of how Jesus would’ve appeared to someone like Pilate was very helpful. Having grown up in the church and been ingrained with the images of the peaceful baby Jesus in a clean manger, it is easy for me to forget that reality of Jesus as having “no form or comeliness…no beauty that we shall desire,” and that he was “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” (Isaiah 53:2-3).
However, without understanding and looking at the tragedy of what Jesus went through, the ugly and uncomfortable picture of what Jesus experienced, that he not only suffered physical pain but also experienced complete separation from God while dying on the cross, it is impossible to understand how the good news of the gospel. I appreciated Beuchner’s clarification of comedy as the unexpected; something happening contrary to our expectations or what should happen. And that Jesus would come and enter into our dark, broken world, that he would come to forgive us and accept us through his death and resurrection, is unexpected. It gives me reason to have joy and hope, even in the face of our brokenness and the suffering Jesus had to go through.
-Krystal Han, Koinonia, Senior, krystalhan4299@gmail.com
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Astonishing…This book is definitely one that I’m going to keep having to reread as I feel that there’s a lot of hidden meaning that passed over me my first time going through it. For me, it recaptured the pure joy and elation that ought to be accompanied while sharing the Gospel with others. It’s not just any story, but as Mr. Buechner puts it a tragedy, comedy, and fairy-tale (come true!)! This opened my mind up to the beauty of the Gospel of the story as well as just scratched the surface of the complicated yet simply loving relationship God desires with all of us, naked wretches and all 🙂
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This is one of my FAVORITE books of all!! 🙂
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