A Pastor's thoughts on Miranda Lambert

Like any good 21st Century girl, I have more than one email account. I happen to check some more than others, and that's how only last night I received the following email. A pastor responded to my post about Miranda Lambert. His email is long, but push through. I promise you will have a richer appreciation for this country artist after reading this pastor's thoughts.

Sept. 1, 2010

Hi, Jodi:

I read your reflections about Miranda Lambert and thought you might like to read my thoughts. I am an ordained pastor but I work part-time for the Navy, hence my e-mail address.

Anyway, here goes:

I am a husband, father, grandfather and semi-retired pastor pushing age 70 (I won't say from which side). My physical health is declining and I often regret how little I have accomplished, despite my wife's love and self-sacrifice and the efforts of some very excellent teachers and pastors.

Recently a young country singer challenged me to reconsider my approach to faith and life and preaching. She taught me to use my own experience as a forgiven sinner to help my congregation to understand what hurting, being hurt, forgiving and being forgiven are all about.

Her name is Miranda Lambert.

Miranda's music contributes much to my understanding of these things and can help many others as well. Miranda's songs are intellectually, emotionally and spiritually challenging. Like Carrie's songs, several of Miranda's, such as "Heart Like Mine," "White Liar" and "Sin for a Sin" on her album REVOLUTION should be studied in any seminary, rabbinical institute or other school which prepares and challenges men and women to minister to today's young people.

Miranda sings tough-girl songs and her theology (for it is indeed theology although Miranda probably wouldn't call it that) is tough as well. "I ain't the kind you take home to mama, I ain't the kind to wear no ring," "Here's a bombshell just for you, Turns out that I've been lying too" and "I need to repent a sin for a sin," Miranda confesses as she sings, respectively, the three songs mentioned above.

But at the end of "Heart Like Mine," Miranda reminds us of something we wishy-washy sinners often forget. She reminds us that Jesus was tough, too. He hung out with sinners like the one Miranda portrays in her songs. "Jesus, He drank wine. And I bet we'd get along just fine. He could calm a storm and heal the blind. And I bet He'd understand a heart like mine."

Miranda trusts that "I'll fly away from it all one day. I'll fly away. These are the days that I will remember when my name's called on the roll. He'll meet me with two long-stemmed glasses and make a toast to me coming home." Sounds like the son who loses his toughness along with his money and comes home to a banquet put on by his father in his honor in the most famous story that Jesus ever told (Luke 15:11-32).

What a superb welcome Jesus will give Miranda because he knows her and loves her! She doesn't need to apologize as she had to when she revisited her childhood home, "The House That Built Me," with all its memories. "Ma'am," she had to say to the house's new owner then, "I know you don't know me from Adam, but . . ." She won't have to say that to Jesus. He knows her from Adam.

"Heart Like Mine" reminds me of the old man who can see God's face at the end of his suffering in Carrie Underwood's "Temporary Home." But that's another side of God, the tender side, the Father. Just as true, but different. Miranda sings about Jesus the Son, tough enough to endure a cross. Two images of the heavenly welcome home. Is either of them (which one?) "only prettier" than the other?

Jesus drank wine just like the lover in the Biblical Song of Songs, the lover whom Jews consider a symbol of God and Christians consider a symbol of Jesus. The lover welcomes his beloved into his garden with wine and sings, "I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. (Song of Songs 5:1)

And didn't Jesus promise to drink wine with his friends in Heaven? At the Last Supper he took a cup of wine, gave thanks to His Father and gave it to his friends, saying "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's Kingdom" (Matthew 26:29)?

Drinking wine in heaven is a common subject in folk poetry and fits perfectly into Miranda's country songs. A medieval German collection of lyrics, Youth's Magic Horn includes a poem called "The Heavenly Life" in which "We lead angelic lives, yet have a merry time of it besides. We dance and we spring, we skip and we sing. Saint Peter in heaven looks on. Wine doesn't cost a penny in the heavenly cellars; and the angels bake the bread." A composer named Gustav Mahler used these words in his Fourth Symphony and I'd bet Miranda could make a chart-topping country song out of them.

Many of the creators of country music descended from Irish, Scots and Welsh immigrants who brought their traditional music to America. A medieval collection called Celtic Songs includes "The Invocation of the Graces," a picture of heavenly life in which "I bathe your palms in showers of wine. The lovely likeness of the Lord is in your pure face, the loveliest likeness that was upon earth. And Jesus Christ the mild has come, And the Spirit of true guidance has come, and the King of kings has come on the helm, to bestow on you affection and love, affection and love."

Christian theologians have spilled a lot of ink trying to develop a theology of marriage that covers all of its spiritual and emotional aspects. Miranda covers the subject in a song as she creates a wonderful exchange of vows:

Minister: Blake: If you come in one morning and find Miranda standing there cryin' in the kitchen, will you wrap your arms around her so that she doesn't even have to say a thing?

Blake: I will.

Minister: Miranda, if Blake comes in, slams the door behind him and can't hide the worry on his face, even though you've got a million things to tell him, will you accept that right now he just needs some space?

Miranda: I will.

Minister: That's what makes it love. That's what makes it a love song. Everybody always sings about it. Now you're never gonna live without it. You don't even have to talk about it 'cause you're living it out. And because you have promised to live it out, I now pronounce you husband and wife.

I wrote above about the banquet in heaven. Jesus loved to compare heaven to growing things like a tiny mustard seed which grew into a tree so large that the birds could make a home in it. If Jesus had lived in Virginia, he might have compared heaven to the tiny Virginia bluebell, which only wants "a sunny place to grow:" "Pretty little thing, sometimes you gotta look up and let the world see all the beauty that you're made of. . . . Even through a stone a flower can bloom. . . . Put a little light in the darkest places. Put a little smile on the saddest faces." The greatest and biggest thoughts are usually expressed in the tiniest images. Otherwise, how could we grasp them?

Congregations today seem to want their pastors and rabbis to entertain them rather than challenge them. What if I should play Miranda's recording of "Heart Like Mine" from the pulpit as a sermon illustration. Would they be entertained or challenged or both?

I hope Miranda continues to enjoy challenging us theologians with her songs. She does it so well.

Pastor Newton

Thank you again, Pastor Newton, for taking the time to share your thoughts with little, ole me. I hope you WILL play "Heart Like Mine" from the pulpit and let me know how the congregation responds. I would love to sit in on that.