The Gospel as Faerie Tale

Frederich Buechner is increasingly becoming one of my most favorite authors/teachers, and this excerpt below may give you some insight as to why.  Check out his excellent book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale 

"The gospel does have many of the earmarks of a fairy tale. In fairy tales you have the poor boy who becomes rich, the leaden cabinet which turns out to have the treasure in it, the ugly duckling who turns out to be a swan, the frog who becomes a prince. Then we come to the gospel, where it's the Pharisees, the good ones, who turn out to be the villians. It's the whores and tax collectors who turn out to be the good ones. Just as in fairy tales, there is the impossible happy ending when Cinderella does marry the prince, and the ugly duckling is transformed into a swan, so Jesus is not, in the end, defeated. He rises again. In all these ways there is a kind of fairy tale quality to the gospel, with the extraordinary difference, of course, that this is the fairy tale that claims to be true. The difference is that this time it's not just a story being told -- it's an event. It did happen! Here's a fairy tale come true."

- Frederich Buechner, from an interview in The Door magazine