The Faces of Jesus

A Life Story
Frederick Buechner

This is one of the more intriguing books I've read recently. As you might imagine from the cover, it's a book about Jesus, and throughout the book, he's giving us a portrait of his "face"--his presence among us. Buechner is a wonderful writer, and his prose is simply filled with beautiful descriptions of certain aspects of his life and ministry for us. For instance, referring to Jesus' statement, "as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me," he writes, "Just as Jesus appeared at his birth as a helpless child that the world was free to care for or destroy, so now he appears in his resurrection as the pauper, the prisoner, the stranger: [he] appears in every form of human need that world is free to serve or ignore" (p. 92). It is pure joy at times just to read his prose and fall in love with the Christ who saved our souls.

Yet at other times, he seems to toss that faith to the winds. He qualifies his statements of faith: "it would take no less than God, if there were a God, to enable men to see God's glory in that shambles of a face" (p. x). A wonderful insight, but why would he have that insight and also question if there is a God? At other times, he leads us needlessly into critical discussions about the reliability of the Gospels, and at times will even pit them against each other. One senses a Barthian sensibility to his trust in the Gospels, and for me, I find it annoying that it is included in such beautiful prose like olives on a pepperoni pizza.

I hate olives. I pick them out of my pizza when someone foolishly thinks they might add to the flavor of the pepperoni. I eat the pizza and enjoy it, but there's always that slight tinge of olive flavor that reminds me of what I had to remove to enjoy it. So it is with this book. I truly enjoyed it, and will likely quote from it from time to time, but there was nothing I could do to fully remove the flavor of his critical allegences from the beauty of his prose.