Mon
Mar 30
2009
Pastor Lee Griess
Assistant to the Bishop
Nebraska Synod, ELCA
I’m a country music fan. I don’t admit it too often and not to too many people. There seems to be a certain reaction a lot of people have to that. So I’m opening up to you all by saying this.
Recently, the BMI award for the #1 country single went to Kenny Chesney for his song, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.” Knowing that not all of you follow country music like I do, I’ve included the lyrics for you here. Go to YouTube sometime and watch Chesney’s music video of the song. I think you’ll find it enjoyable.
Like a lot of country songs, the song speaks in honest words, things for us all to consider. (And I’m not just thinking of the lyin’, cheatin’, truck drivin’ songs.) As the title of the song denotes, the song offers the common truth that everybody wants to go to heaven and that’s important for those of us in the church to hear. As church folk, we have a message to proclaim that at its heart “everybody” wants (and needs) to hear. There is a destination we are all bound for. (As Kenny puts it in his song, “Don’t you wanna hear him call your name when you’re standin’ at the pearly gates?”)
We say the same thing in other ways in the church when we talk about a “God-shaped hole” or a “hunger for God” in everyone’s life. What Kenny doesn’t know is that he speaks a truth and a challenge to all of us. Everybody does want to go to heaven and God works through us and our ministries to show the way.
The song also reveals the conventional “country music” understanding of the problem in how to get there. In one of the lines of the song, Kenny sings: “You need to quit the women and whiskey and carrying on all night.” Now I know it’s just a cowboy song, but it is revealing of our culture’s perception of religion. Heaven awaits us if we clean up our act. Quit doing what we know we shouldn’t and we’re sure to get there. In fact the song even speaks of the world’s common wisdom on how to get there if we can’t even do that when Kenny sings: “throw an extra twenty in the plate.” Give a little more in the offering and God will surely let you in to heaven but be careful because “nobody wants to go now!”
How radically different the message we proclaim – of a God who wants to walk with us in life and help us experience “heavenly” joy now and not just someday when I “get my wings and fly about.” The grace missing in the song is present in the church and it is our privilege to share it. I listen to the song as a poignant lament of our world’s deepest hopes and dreams, and I am encouraged. We have a word of grace and hope to proclaim with the world around us. And best yet – it is a word our world hungers to hear. Everybody wants to go to heaven – what they just don’t know is that God has come looking for them in Christ Jesus. The good news for us is that God offers to use us to get the message out. Let us be about this together as the people of the Nebraska Synod, ELCA.
