Pastoral Care Preaching and Rosie's "number one girl"
I’ve been listening (nearly exclusively) to the new Rosé album, rosie, for almost two weeks and because lists and rankings are so popular at the end of the year, here’s my ranking of the songs on her 12-track album:
12. 3am
11. drinks or coffee
10. gameboy
9. call it in the end
8. two years
7. not the same
6. too bad for us
5. stay a little longer
4. toxic till the end
3. dance all night
2. APT
1. number one girl
One of the reasons why my number one song is “number one girl” is because it contains the ingredients of a ready-made, cookie-cutter sermon about our idolatries and the longings of our hearts. Check out these lyrics:
Tell me that you need me, tell me that I'm loved
Tell me that I'm worth it, and that I'm enough
…
Isn't it lonely?
I'd do anything to make you want me
I'd give it all up if you told me that I'd be
The number one girl in your eyes
We hear these lyrics and, as preachers, we make a simple homiletic connection. We may say something like, “Tim Keller calls an idol ‘anything that is more important to you than God…anything that absorbs your heart or imagination more than God.’
Rosé, in this song, is yearning for fulfillment.
She yearns for validation.
She longs for a kind of justification, from a significant other, that only God can provide. As Christ followers, we must train our hearts to believe that the things we yearn for—and seek to have fulfilled by others—we already have in our possession, fulfilled in God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true-and-better ‘number one girl.’”
We think to ourselves, “That’ll preach!” give ourselves a pat on the back, and go about the rest of our day.
I’ve been preaching some form of this sermon1 for the last fourteen years, ever since my seminary days. Before “number one girl,” it was “Never Enough”2 from The Greatest Showman soundtrack. Before that it was *insert any example of a heart’s primary desire*.
But I’ve been thinking that we, as preachers and trained theologians (and Kellerphiles), get a bigger kick out of these neat gospel-conclusions than the average Sunday church attender. I’ve preached different iterations of this sermon to my congregations in Michigan, Hawaii, and Northern California and there is a growing self-discontent that I cannot ignore. As a rhetorically-trained Presbyterian preacher, I’ll lay out this unsettled feeling in three points: Disjointed. Disabled. Dismissive.3
1. These neat conclusions are incomplete…
2. They're really not helping my congregation, and worse yet…
3. They are somewhat tone-deaf pastoral care responses that short-change the gospel.
Let me explain by using a real-life example. I’ve counseled many adults who struggle with issues of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-acceptance—usually stemming from communication breakdowns that they’ve experienced with one or both of their parents.
The easy sermon that I’ve preached, the easy counseling advice I’ve offered, is some form of this gospel-conclusion. “What you lack in your parents, you already have in Christ. Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit ‘drops this coin’ into your heart and to the extent we can believe this to be true, the more your heart will experience the healing and love of God the Father.”
This is 100% true. But I think it’s also incomplete… While it may expose their idolatries, generically, it simultaneously invalidates their pain, personally. By glossing over it with a simple gospel application, I’m now thinking it might be the pastoral care equivalent to “All Lives Matter,” if that comparison makes sense.
Rare is the occasion when congregants can, through sheer determination, will themselves into accepting this kind of counsel and have it make a lasting impression on their faith and actions. More than likely, it drives them further into their despair and deeper into their idolatrous longings, and in the end, I’m left scratching my head as to why “the gospel” seems to be insufficient. Seems.
But I can’t blame them. I think I’ve presented the gospel as a this-or-that, either-or, if-then proposal. In the most extreme cases, my congregants hear a message that their pain must be redirected to the gospel and to somehow, magically, mystically, find contentment in the cerebral knowledge that God is our Father, Christ is our vicar, and the Holy Spirit binds us to the finished work of Christ.
Lately, I’ve had the privilege (and extreme luxury) of time. I’ve been using this newfound time to think back to my own struggles and I’ve realized that the moments when the gospel has been most effective in my life is when its promises reached me in ways that I needed to experience them. In other words, I’ve most tangibly experienced the grace of God when I’ve received healing through the very avenues that have been the source of my pain. Whether it’s been a new ministry setting, a reconciled relationship, or a renewed experience, God has used the same instrument that had cut me to be the salve that heals. It’s a very tangible, very personal means of grace.
I keep coming back to John 11, the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, and it’s been one of the core passages in my life. Much has been made about Mary and Martha and the dichotomy that is set before us in terms of godliness vs busyness. Mary and Martha have habitually been presented to us as this/that, either/or, if/then choices. Martha lacked, but Mary…
But in John 11, it’s not either/or, it’s both/and. Both sisters, in their grief, approach Jesus with the same response—a pain-riddled mix of desperation, frustration, and a hint of shaded blame (verse 21 for Martha and verse 32 for Mary).
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
But Jesus doesn’t scold Martha and uplift Mary. Nor does he provide the same pastoral care response to both. There is no cookie-cutter care here. Instead, he attends to both as they needed to be attended to. To Martha, he reassures her through a confession and a theological lesson:
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
But for Mary, Jesus does not give her a lesson in theology, nor encourage her toward a confessional decree, but ministers to her through weeping. “Jesus wept.”4 He empathetically enters both sisters’ sorrow and grief as he administers the gospel (himself) to them in ways they both needed to hear and experience. Both/and, not either/or.
How does this, or how should this, shape our preaching?
Maybe the remedy to a complex problem begins with an uncomplicated solution? Before we jump so quickly to a Jesus-as-substitute rhetoric, perhaps we pause and acknowledge a prayer request that God may bring about restoration through the same avenue that brought about destruction?
For the adult child who is haunted by a tumultuous childhood, pastoral care preaching may begin with verbally acknowledging that the best path to healing starts with a reconciled relationship with their parents…and then praying for this to happen. To ask God for a miracle in this manner before jumping straight to a Jesus-true-and-better is a homiletical act of pastoral care as it shepherds our congregation toward an appeal to God for a tangibly personal means of grace.
I know this is rudimentary for many, but for me, a Reformed preacher, this has taken a while to learn. I’m only preaching once a month these days and the pace of this schedule allows me to put a little more effort in my manuscript so I’m taking this advice to heart as I prepare for a sermon this weekend.
It’s getting late and I don’t know how else to end this post other than all this talk of cookie-cutters makes me hungry for some cookies! So in conclusion, here is another year-end list. My top three cookies I’ve eaten this year:
3. plain Oreos - what can I say, I’m a simple man
2. Ube Dulcey Pudge from Batch 22
1. earl grey candied lemon from an anonymous baker (thank you, you know who you are)
Good night.
minus the “true-and-betters”. I dropped that phrase a couple of years out of seminary—when I started to find my own preaching voice and stopped trying to imitate Keller.
“Never Enough” was, not coincidentally, my favorite song on this soundtrack as well. All you “Rewrite the Stars” stans must be triggered.
I spent wayy too much time thinking of these three-D’s.
This was always the easiest pre-meal retreat memory verse. This, or 1 Thess 5:17.