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Living By Yesterday’s Truths
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Acts 21:21; Mark 2:22
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 3, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
After a month's hiatus I pick up again a series I initiated in the month of August.
That was probably since many of you were not here for the first four messages
and then we left off the series in September, which means those who were here
have very little recollection of what we were attempting to accomplish. So, let me
run through briefly my purpose and what we have pointed to thus far.
The title is GOOD NEWS THEN AND NOW, by which I want to say that the
Gospel or the good news of God's revelation and grace that appeared in Jesus
Christ was Good News in its initial expression and as it has been in every age
since, so it is now Good News. But, in order for that to be true, the formulation of
that Good News has had to develop in ever-new expression. In order for the good
news to be understood as good news, the Church has had to find fresh
formulations in the ever-changing landscape of history's unfolding.
Christ Community is bringing the grace of God to new and fresh expression in an
intentional manner not happening in many places and we are doing it because we
believe we have in the Christian tradition a treasure which it is incumbent upon
us to translate into the idiom of our day so that it can address us and our
generation with its gracious, redeeming truth as it has generations for 2000
years.
We have a very special opportunity in November when Bishop John Shelby
Spong, Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, will be with us for a weekend dealing
with his bold and prophetic claim that Christianity must change or die. Bishop
Spong is controversial; prophets always are. And his book, which I will begin to
discuss Wednesday evening, is a challenging address to the Christian Church, is
criticized widely and rejected by most. But we will hear him because what he is
calling for has been going on here for a long time.
We are on the threshold of Century 21, the third millennium, and we will
remember as we always do at the end of October the Reformation of the Church
in the 16th century. What better time to think seriously about the need for
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Richard A. Rhem
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reformation anew, for at the heart of that significant event in the Church in the
16th century was the conviction that the Church must be re-formed according to
the Word of God and always be being reformed. That word reformed has become
a name, a label, but in its emergence it was a verb, an action word that spoke of
the ongoing necessity of re-forming the Church.
In the 16th century, I suspect the need to ongoing reformation was affirmed in
light of the recognition that the Church becomes stagnant and even decadent in
its institutional life. The thrust of that call to ongoing reformation was thus the
need for inward renewal, the Church's forms and structures to be open to fresh
words of the Spirit and the renewal of spiritual life.
What was probably not in view was the need for reformation, reformulation of
the messages and content of the faith, a fresh translation of the Gospel because
the world would drastically change: the understanding of reality, the physical
universe and a transformation of human consciousness.
That, however, is what faced the Church as it moved into the modern age and the
last two centuries have been a period of great conflict within the Church as it has
tried to come to terms with a transformation in human consciousness and
thinking. My study of the 18th and 19th centuries has focused on Protestantism,
and particularly Protestant Liberalism, but it has been true of the Roman
Catholic Church, as well, that, as has been said, the story of Liberal Protestantism
can be seen as a series of salvage operations, attempts to show how one can still
believe in Jesus Christ and not violate the ideals of intellectual integrity.
The reason the battle has raged especially in the Protestant Church is that there
has not been the hierarchical, authoritarian structures in place to shut down
dissent. And the reason the battle has raged in the Liberal Protestant Church is
that the conservative evangelical Church still adheres to the orthodoxy of the 17th
century; that is, to this day churches in the conservative Protestant tradition
operate, as does the Roman Catholic Church, with a medieval mind-set and with
a faith understanding that has not faced up to and dealt with the questions which
the modern world has put to the orthodox understanding of Christian faith.
Let me review for a moment. This series began by pointing to the severe crisis
that arose in the early Apostolic Church because the expected imminent return of
Jesus Christ to judge the world and bring the present age to an end did not occur.
Rather, as we read in II Peter 3, the mockers who made sport of those early
believers asked, "Where is the day of his appearance? Everything seems to be
going on as it has since Creation."
Rather than the end of the age, history was continuing. Now, how were those,
who saw the last of the Apostles die and Jesus not coming, to understand what
the meaning of the Gospel was?
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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But, as we noted in the second sermon, eventually, after several centuries and
severe conflict, there was established the orthodox faith. Orthodox means right
opinion or right thinking. In the emergence of early Catholic tradition there was
achieved an agreed-upon doctrinal formulation, including the two natures of
Jesus Christ - truly God, truly human – and the doctrine of the Trinity. In the
meantime, the Church moved from persecuted minority to being the established
religion of the Empire.
But for our purposes today, let me simply say that the core content of the faith,
the orthodox faith, was established and maintained through the centuries to the
16th century and the Reformation, which broke the unity of the Western Church
and from which emerged Protestantism. In that renewal movement there was a
fresh return to scripture and a fresh understanding of the grace of God, but really
no break from the orthodox Christian faith. The structure of the Church was
shaken, but orthodoxy remained as did the authoritarian character of the Church.
The authoritarian center of the Roman Catholic Church was the teaching office of
the Church whose head was the Pope, while the fledgling Protestants claimed
their authority in the Bible. But in both cases, the Roman Catholic and Protestant
Churches claimed a divinely revealed faith with, in the case of Rome, infallible
dogma and, in the case of the Reformers, an infallible Bible, guaranteeing the
truth of revelation.
And then the world changed - changed radically, and the modern world was born.
The modern era in Western Civilization began with the scientific revolution in the
17th century. A mere listing of the names: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and
Newton, tell the story. Francis Bacon formulated the scientific method of
empirical investigation and John Locke's philosophical writing on human reason
set the course for the modern understanding of critical thinking. The 18th century
is the century of Enlightenment and the philosopher of the Enlightenment par
excellence was Immanuel Kant, who understood the Enlightenment as the
human movement toward emancipation from the "tutelage" of medieval times; it
was the human coming of age.
It was Friedrich Schleiermacher who, studying Kant, was convinced that, for
there to be a future for religion and for theology, including Christian theology, it
would be necessary to discover a new foundation on which to stand. No longer
would it suffice to cite Church dogma or scripture, for the authoritarian claim of
both had been undercut by the critical thinking that arose with the scientific
revolution.
In Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pioneer of Modern Theology, in the series, The
Making of Modern Theology, Keith W. Clements describes Schleiermacher's
context, The Enlightenment, thus:
Schleiermacher was born into the world of the Enlightenment ..., that
period of European thought and culture occupying roughly the whole of
the eighteenth century and, with the latter half of the preceding century,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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comprising what is often called the "Age of Reason." As the name implies,
it was the period when the innate and universal endowments of human
thought were adjudged to be capable to providing men with whatever
knowledge of nature, morality, and religion was necessary for his welfare.
It marked the beginnings in Europe of the exile of orthodox Christian
theology towards the periphery of intellectual and social life, as both the
credibility of, and necessity for, supernaturally inspired doctrines were
challenged by rational, anti-dogmatic modes of thought. (P. 8f)
Schleiermacher proved to be the greatest Protestant theologian between Calvin
and Barth. He is called the Father of Modern Theology and he set the course for
Protestant Liberal theology for the next century, and still today he is not without
influence. In 1797 in a work entitled On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural
Despisers, he claimed no external authority either in Church or scripture, but
claimed rather that religion was rooted in the human person in the feeling of
absolute dependence. With this understanding of the foundation of religion and,
in his case, Christian faith, Schleiermacher gave new expression to the faith
without claiming any external authority. He established a new ground of
authority in the human experience of dependence, developed a new method for
doing theology, and re-imagined the Christian faith, giving it fresh expression.
For Schleiermacher, the feeling of absolute dependence was the experience of
God, the gracious ground of all being.
But there was a second stage in the movement to modernity, that being the rise of
historical consciousness. A century after Schleiermacher gave his "speeches"
(1797), another German theologian-philosopher-historian, Ernst Troeltsch, came
to grips with the use of historical thinking and its implication for faith – religious
faith in general and Christian faith in particular.
In his History Sacred and Profane (1964), Alan Richardson describes this second
stage in the revolution to the modern:
We should never forget that it was one and the same movement of critical
inquiry which first culminated in the seventeenth-century scientific
achievement and later in the emergence of the fully developed historical
critical method of the nineteenth century. The critical faculty, once
awakened, could not rest satisfied with the successful exploration of the
realm of nature; it was bound to go on from there to the critical
investigation of the more intractable region of human nature, and when
the idea of development was fully understood, to seek to understand
scientifically how, in fact, man and his institutions have come to be what
they are. Since the nineteenth century it has been an axiom of Western
thinking that men and their institutions cannot be understood apart from
their history, or that to know what a thing is, it is necessary to give an
account of its past. This is part, at least, and a very important part, of the
meaning of the statement that we nowadays live in an historically-minded
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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age. The historical revolution in human thinking, which was accomplished
in the nineteenth century, is just as important as the scientific revolution
of two centuries earlier. But they are not two separate revolutions; they are
aspects of the one great transitional movement from medieval to the
modern way of looking at things.
That statement by Richardson points to the movement from the medieval to the
modern world and I cannot stress too emphatically what a revolution that
entailed.
Ernst Troeltsch believed that transition took place in the Enlightenment of the
late 17th and 18th centuries, not in the Reformation. The Reformers were premodern, still medieval in their way of thinking and their approach to the past.
The critical element in the modern period is the rise and dominance of critical
thinking, that is, the use of human reason to ask questions, to probe, to
investigate and not simply to take for granted what appears on the surface or
what some witness claims.
Critical thinking is simply the way we think and act in our everyday life; it is the
common sense view of the world and a common sense understanding of the past.
An important ingredient in historical consciousness is the scientific
understanding of reality, the understanding that nature works by natural laws
and regular processes. The historian now begins to assume that the past is to be
understood as one understands the present.
This is where the rub comes in: Christian doctrine is based on supernatural
intervention, miracles and events that contravene the regularity of nature. The
biblical story conceives of a three-story universe and God dipping into our history
from time to time. Now all of that supernatural framework was being called in
question.
In an excellent portrayal of the crisis of faith and history, Van A. Harvey, in his
work, The Historian and the Believer, begins thus:
Out of the mists of the nineteenth century, there arise again and again
spectral figures that refuse to be exorcised. This is particularly true of
Protestant theology. Schleiermacher, Strauss, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard,
Ritschl - all continue to stalk the present because they identified and
analyzed so profoundly issues that still bedevil us. Yet their presence is
embarrassing because the various solutions they proposed now seem so
patently dated and, in some cases, comic, that we feel justified in
dismissing their work or ignoring them entirely. But just at the most
important junctures of our own intellectual enterprises, we are disturbed
to discover that we are wrestling with the same old issues, that the same
questions have returned again in only a slightly different guise. With that
realization, the possibility suggests itself in the back of our minds that the
answers once proposed may not be so fantastic as we had so smugly
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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assumed. We find ourselves rethinking the thoughts of those whose
conclusions we look upon with disdain. This is always painful.
The writings of Ernst Troeltsch, particularly, evoke this discomfiture. The
issue with which he wrestled throughout the greater part of his life was the
significance of the historical-critical method for traditional Christian belief
and theology. He discerned that the development of this method
constituted one of the great advances in human thought; indeed, that it
presupposed a revolution in the consciousness of Western man. To be
sure, Western culture, in contrast to many others, has always been
characterized by a sense of history. But only in the nineteenth century did
this manifest itself in a sustained and critical attempt to recover the past
by means of the patient analysis of evidence and the insistence on the
impartiality and truthfulness of the historian. The distinctions between
history and nature, fact and myth; expressions like the growth of language
and the development of the state; the tendency to evaluate events in terms
of their origins; the awareness of the relativity of one's own norms of
thought and valuation; all these, Troeltsch saw, are but the by-products of
a change in thought so profound that our period deserves to be put
alongside those of previous cultural epochs as a unique type.
This revolution in consciousness found its formal expression in the
creation of a new science, history. Underlying this new science was an
almost Promethean will-to-truth. The aim of the historian, it was declared,
was to "tell what really happened." The magic noun was "fact," and the
honorific adjective was "scientific." Description, impartiality, and
objectivity were the ideals, and the rhetorical phrase and the value
judgment were looked upon with disdain. This drive to recover "the facts
as they really happened" has, with some justice, been criticized of late, but
it should not be forgotten how revolutionary this will-to-truth was or how
reactionary the forces were that needed to be overcome. Only when the
question "What really happened?" was consistently and radically posed,
did it become clear how much of what was previously accepted as fact was,
in truth, fiction; how so many long-trusted witnesses were actually
credulous spinners of tales and legends. Indeed, it can be argued, all
reliable historiography rests on some such distinction as "whether or not
something actually happened; whether it happened in the way it is told or
in some other way ...," as August Wilhelm Schlegel wrote in his review of
the Grimm brothers' Old German Songs, and it is difficult to quarrel with
him and still account for the concepts of myth, legend, and fairy tale that
constitute so much of the mental furniture of our age.
This will-to-truth became attached to a method, and the presuppositions
of that method, Troeltsch concluded, were basically incompatible with
traditional Christian faith, based as it ultimately is on a supernaturalistic
metaphysics. This incompatibility was most clearly seen, he thought, in the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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realm of Biblical criticism. The problem was not, as so many theologians
then believed, that the Biblical critics emerged from their libraries with
results disturbing to believers, but that the method itself, which led to
those results, was based on assumptions quite irreconcilable with
traditional belief. If the theologian regards the Scriptures as
supernaturally inspired, the historian must assume that the Bible is
intelligible only in terms of its historical context and is subject to the same
principles of interpretation and criticism that are applied to other ancient
literature. If the theologian believes that the events of the Bible are the
results of the supernatural intervention of God, the historian regards such
an explanation as a hindrance to true historical understanding. If the
theologian believes that the events upon which Christendom rests are
unique, the historian assumes that those events, like all events, are
analogous to those in the present and that it is only on this assumption
that statements about them can be assessed at all. If the theologian
believes on faith that certain events occurred, the historian regards all
historical claims as having only a greater or lesser degree of probability,
and he regards the attachment of faith to these claims as a corruption of
historical judgment.
Troeltsch poured scorn on those of his contemporaries who attacked the
historical method as a manifestation of unbelief while employing
something like it to vindicate the truth of their own views. The method, he
claimed, did not grow from an abstract theory, nor could one ignore the
cumulative significance of its extraordinary results. "Whoever lends it a
finger must give it a hand." Nor could the critical method be regarded as a
neutral thing. It could not be appropriated by the church with only a bit of
patchwork here and there on the seamless garment of belief. "Once the
historical method is applied to Biblical science and church history," he
wrote, "it is a leaven that alters everything and, finally, bursts apart the
entire structure of theological methods employed until the present."
Christianity must, therefore, build its religious thought upon it or else be
consigned to the limbo of those countless other antiquated forms of
religious belief that were unable to make their own accommodation to the
Zeitgeist.
Actually, Troeltsch believed the church had no real option, because it is
impossible even to think without the new assumptions. They have already
penetrated to the deepest levels of Western man's consciousness. They are
a part of the furniture of his mind. Therefore, one must be willing to see
the matter through to its final consequences, to let burn what must burn,
hoping that a new synthesis might emerge on the other side, a synthesis all
the stronger for having been purged by the fire. Troeltsch himself tried to
do this and, if his efforts now appear dated and relative to his own time,
that only seems, ironically enough, to vindicate his thesis; namely, that the
expressions of the human spirit - its language, art, philosophy, and
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religion -are intelligible only in terms of their time, that man is immersed
in history like a fish in water, that man's failure to transcend history only
reveals that he is a creature whose thought is something less than
absolute.
The application of the principles of historical criticism to the Bible in the
nineteenth century was a traumatic event in the history of Protestantism.
It is true, as Emanuel Hirsch has pointed out, that Biblical criticism had
been practiced in a modest way since the beginnings of the Reformation.
Luther himself was a shrewd critic. But it was only in the third decade of
the nineteenth century that it was possible to subject the Scriptures to
rigorous analysis without dogmatic presuppositions and limitations. The
attempt to do so naturally aroused the hostility of theologians and the
ecclesiastical authorities. Did not the entire enterprise rest on unbelieving
presuppositions? (Pp. 3-6)
What developed fully as historical consciousness was already anticipated in
Schleiermacher. Troeltsch was a century later and during that 18th century there
was great ferment as theologians struggled to preserve a safe place for faith in
Jesus Christ amidst the rising tide of scepticism about the biblical witness.
Historical critical study of the scripture was now being engaged in with great
vigor. In 1835 David Friedrich Strauss published his Life of Jesus, which was a
bombshell. His treatment of the scriptural source was revolutionary in that he
treated the Bible as any other literary work, asking questions about who wrote,
why, to whom, etc., and he totally undercut the supernatural character of
scripture.
There were sharp reactions and condemnation of his work, but the battle was on
and there was excess on the side of the new critics and defensiveness and fearful
over-reaction on the part of conservative scholars.
By the end of the 19th century, Ernst Troeltsch was the leading dogmatician in
Europe and he took up the struggle, similar to Schleiermacher a hundred years
earlier, but now in a new climate of opinion, one marked by historical thinking.
He wrote,
So I began like Schleiermacher by establishing the peculiar independence
of religion by means of the psychology of religion, by showing that every
attempt to derive religion from other basic activities (of the human
consciousness) has failed. Only I did this on the basis of a psychology
which is different from Schleiermacher's and in the front against different
opponents - not moralists and rationalists, but modern positivists and
those who see religion as an illusion. (Zth K, VIII, p. 28)
Troeltsch recognized the need, as had Schleiermacher, to find a way to continue
to believe and have a genuine religious experience in terms of present human
understanding and experience. He wanted to be both Christian and intellectually
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honest and to this purpose he gave his life. Near the end of his life he wrote of his
deep and vivid realisation of the clash between historical reflection and the
determination of standards of truth and value.
“The problem thus arising presented itself to me at a very early age ... I
was inspired by ... the interest in reaching a vital and effective religious
position, which could alone furnish my life with a center of reference for
all practical questions and could alone give meaning and purpose to
reflection upon the things of this world. This need of mine led me to
theology and philosophy, which I devoured with an equally passionate
interest. I soon discovered, however, that the historical studies, which had
so largely formed me, and the theology and philosophy in which I was now
immersed, stood in sharp opposition, indeed even in conflict, with one
another. I was confronted upon the one hand, with the perpetual flux of
the historian's data, and the distrustful attitude of the historical critic
towards conventional traditions, the real events of the past being, in his
view, discoverable only as a reward of ceaseless toil, and then only with
approximate accuracy. And, upon the other hand, I perceived the impulse
in men towards a definite practical standpoint - the eagerness of the
trusting soul to receive the divine revelation and to obey the divine
commands. It was largely out of this conflict, which was no hypothetical
one, but a fact of my own practical experience, that my entire theoretical
standpoint took its rise. (Christian Thought. London, 1923, pp. 4-6)
There you have the driving force for the large undertaking which would
characterize Troeltsch's life passion and work. His was an authentic struggle to be
intellectually honest, attuned to the best thinking of his time, and to find a place
to stand that would enable a vital religious experience and provide a foundation
for values.
Troeltsch was convinced that theology must always seek to relate itself positively
to the rational knowledge of the day - not uncritically, but in dialogue and
critique. In an introduction to Ernst Troeltsch -Writings on Theology and
Religion, Robert Morgan writes,
The modern intellectual situation determines the form to be taken by
theology. This is characterized by the intellectual revolution effected by
modern science and critical history. Troetlsch's strenuous efforts to
understand this modern intellectual and cultural situation led him into
sustained work in the history of ideas, with special reference to the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ... Troeltsch considered that the
intellectual and cultural revolution of the eighteenth century requires that
theology submit itself to a corresponding revolution in method. He was to
characterize this as the transition from dogmatic to historical method.
What this meant was a break with the old supernaturalism which modern critical
history had rendered impossible and a purely historical approach to the Bible and
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Christian tradition,m combined with a rational defense of the metaphysical basis
of religion. (P. 7) I cannot do more within the confines of this sermon to detail the
tremendous undertaking of the task in which Troeltsch engaged himself; but I
hope to have given at least some sense of crisis of Christian faith as he
understood it brought about by the emergence of human historical
consciousness.
As I reflect on the learning, the passion and the dedication of a scholar like Ernst
Troeltsch, whose motivation was to find a solid basis for the understanding of
religious experience, its legitimacy and the critical role it plays in human life and
community, I marvel that the conservative evangelical Protestant Church and the
Roman Catholic Church have continued to steel themselves against the historical
method which Troeltsch proposed and against the insights which the method has
brought to light - the understanding of religion in general and the Christian
religion in particular.
I have been immersed in the rise of modern thought and theological development
of the 18th and 19th centuries over the past three months and I am beginning to
get some sense of how we got to where we are. I have set before you two Christian
theologians, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ernst Troeltsch, both brilliant
scholars and passionate believers, one writing 200 years ago and the other 100
years ago. Both were convinced the Church must find a basis for its faith and an
understanding and expression of its faith in terms of the best intellectual
understanding of its time. They have not been without impact, but primarily in
the Liberal Protestant tradition.
In the Roman Catholic tradition those thinkers who sought to apply the historical
method to dogma and scripture were silenced and in several instances removed
from leadership and even excommunicated.
In the conservative Protestant tradition, which is my background and the
background of many of you, Schleiermacher and Troeltsch might as well never
have lived. Conservative Protestantism, and that includes not just the
fundamentalist Church and Pentecostal churches, but much of the mainline
Church as well, still resist what both Schleiermacher and Troeltsch believed to be
necessary 200 and 100 years ago, respectively.
When I consider this, I understand why there has been a mass exodus of
intelligent people from the Church and why the Church has little standing in the
centers of learning in the world. I understand, too, why religious scholarship has
moved out of Church-related institutions and seminaries and is finding place in
secular institutions of the state and, even there, one is not always totally free to
pursue disinterested scholarship.
Perhaps I should not be surprised. Jesus pleaded for the recognition that new
wine demands new wineskins. That forms, structures, language and conceptuality
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need to be open to change and transformation. The religious-political institutions
had him killed.
Paul had a vision - a new insight that revolutionizes everything - the grace of God
available to Jew and Gentile through faith in Jesus Christ – and arriving in
Jerusalem he was warned by James that the Jewish Jesus people were disturbed
by reports from the mission field that he was advocating dropping the Mosaic
tradition. His life was in danger and finally, tried in Rome, he died a martyr.
There must be something about the human creature that resists the new and
especially in the area of religion. I am learning that it is not really an intellectual
understanding of religious truth that is desired, but a gut level experience, a
stirring of the emotions, a confirmation of absolute truths received uncritically
even though that is not how we live our lives generally or what we expect from
our doctors when our health fails.
And so, I see congregations growing through praise music and worship as
entertainment. I see Pentecostalism growing through the provision of deeply
emotional experience. And I realize that there is a slim minority who value and
seek religious experience which is congruent with thinking and critical
understanding.
But I believe that slim minority is a critical piece of the puzzle for, historically,
prior to the modern period, the Church was the womb of the arts and theology
was the Queen of the Sciences. I wonder if we have not sold our birthright for a
mess of pottage because we have failed to engage in the hard work of holding
together faith and reason. That, as I see it, is the challenge before this
community.
References:
Keith W. Clements. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pioneer of Modern Theology, Vol.
I of The Making of Modern Theology. Fortress Press, 1987.
Van A. Harvey. The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical
Knowledge and Christian Belief. University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Robert Morgan. Ernst Troeltsch, Writings on Theology and Religion.
Westminster John Knox Press, 1990.
Alan Richardson. History Sacred and Profane. SCM Press, First Edition, 1964.
Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923). Christian Thought: Its History and Application.
Hyperion Press, 1979.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XX
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Acts 21:21, Mark 2:22
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Keith Clements, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pioneer of Modern Theology, Vol. I, 1987
Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer, 1996
Robert Morgan, Ernst Troeltsch, Writings on Theology and Religion, 1999
Alan Richardson, History Sacred and Profane, 1964
Ernst Troeltsch, Christian Thought, 1979
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KII-01_RA-0-19991003
Date
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1999-10-03
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Living By Yesterday's Truths
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 3, 1999 entitled "Living By Yesterday's Truths", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 21:21, Mark 2:22.
History of Religion
Re-imagining the Faith
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58f5bdc29cec175d03e30e6ddb40f684
PDF Text
Text
Scheduled to Death With Good Things
Text: Joshua 4:6; 24:15; Psalm 78:4-7; Matthew 18:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 12, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
There has been a long debate about when life begins. There are those who say
that life begins at the moment of conception. I think John Calvin argued that the
soul was invested in the fetus at 40 days. (On most things he was smarter than
that.) Others say that life begins at actual birth. It is an ancient debate and it
continues into our contemporary situation. But, I tend to agree with the person
who said life begins when the last kid is out of the house and the dog dies... (Your
laughter is all too revealing.)
Raising children is a very, very great task and responsibility. It takes the very best
that we have of our time and our energy and our resources, and it is not easy, and
it’s not getting any easier. I think that it becomes more difficult. As I have the
luxury of being in the position of a grandparent, I can now from safe distance
watch my own children raise their children, and I honestly believe that they are
much better parents than I was. I don’t even think I knew that I was supposed to
be a parent. After all, I was in the Lord’s work, you know. But, I have the privilege
of watching my children in those marvelous years when they have adolescents,
and I have a couple who are dealing with two-year-olds. So that whole spectrum
is rather interesting to me to observe. I think that it is much more difficult than
when I grew up and when I was raising my children, not only because there are
more perils and pitfalls available, but also because there are more wonderful
options and opportunities available, and I recognize the possibility of being
scheduled to death with good things.
I knew that I would probably be preaching in September on opening Sunday, and
it was already in June when Time magazine came out with a cover that caught my
eye and gave me today’s sermon. I knew in June this is what I would deal with.
The June 12 issue has a cover with a Little Leaguer on it, in his helmet, swinging a
bat, his tongue out, Michael Jordan style, and the cover says Sports crazed kids:
Year ‘round play, summer clinics, pushy parents - is this too much of a good
thing? Well, it’s a typical media type of presentation; not everybody is like the
people who are described here and there are some pretty extreme cases in terms
of the time invested and the money invested and the obsessional level with which
it is pursued. But, nonetheless, I knew from my own observation that there are
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Richard A. Rhem
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many wonderful things that are available to children and young people today and
I sense that it is not so easy to know how to set the priorities and determine the
agendas in order that there might be balance and in order that that which is done
would be life-enhancing and not, on the other hand, life-defeating.
In the article there is one paragraph that I thought I would share with you. After
recounting all of this tremendous outlay of money and time and energy and
commitment, the writers say,
So, what are parents to do? We do what Americans have always done. This
is, after all, a country that systematizes. We create seminars on how to
make friends, teach classes in grieving, and make pet-walking a
profession. In that light, Greg Heintzman’s praise of unstructured play
seems almost un-American. Any activity, no matter how innocent or trivial
or spontaneous, can become specialized in America. So, if our children are
to have sports, we will make leagues and teams, write schedules and rule
books, publish box scores and rankings, hire coaches and refs, buy
uniforms and equipment to the limit of our means. We will kiss our
weekends goodbye and maybe more than our weekends.
That is a voice from the broader culture and, as I said when I saw it last June, I
thought there is a word there for the people of God, because we have not only the
ongoing responsibility to do what we can to protect our children and ourselves
from the perils and pitfalls that are open, but also from the multitude, the
plethora of good things hereby we can be scheduled to death, and find that we are
being determined by all of those things that play upon us rather than determining
our own lives, the course of our lives, the way we spend our days, our time, and
our resources. And so, this morning I simply want to engage in some
consciousness-raising with you. I don’t have any special wisdom. I just think that
together we need to be very self-aware and self-conscious about that to which we
give our lives, and how we structure, to the extent that it is possible, the lives of
our children and our youth. And I want to say, first of all, that we should be
intentional about it. We should be self-aware and self-conscious; we ought to
have thought about it in order that we are doing that which we intend to do, that
which we really want to do, that which is reflective of the things that we believe
most deeply and value most highly. We should be conscious; we ought to live
consciously.
There’s a story told of Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas, that he saw a man
gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, and gathering sticks on the Sabbath day
could get one stoned. But Jesus, in typical fashion, said to him, "If you
understand what you’re doing, blessed are you. But, if you don’t understand what
you’re doing, you are cursed," for Jesus knew that the law of the Sabbath was not
simply an external legalism to be observed, but it should come out of the inward
motivation of the heart. If you know what you’re doing, even though you are
breaking the law, if there is an intentionality about it for a proper purpose, then
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you’re blessed. But, if you’re just willy-nilly without even thinking about the
Sabbath or knowing what the Sabbath is all about, you’re cursed, and to live
without intention, without self-knowledge and awareness is to be cursed.
So, that’s simply the first thing that I want to say this morning, on a day of new
beginnings, to have us for a moment ask ourselves, "What are our priorities, and
do our activities reflect our values and the things that we really want to be about for ourselves and for our children and our grandchildren?"
Raising that question, I want to put in a word for the programming in of those
things that point to the spiritual dimension, the shaping of the life, the mind and
the heart of ourselves, of our children, and our grandchildren, because in our day,
with our freedoms, with our affluence, and with that plethora of opportunities
that are out there, it is very easy to let slide the things that require a certain
discipline and commitment and I think especially in a place like Christ
Community where no one hounds you to do anything, where we have majored in
an attitude of grace. One of the nicest compliments that we receive here, and it
comes again and again, is the compliment, "Most of my life I went to church
because it was Sunday and I felt that I ought to go, and now I look forward to
Sunday in order that I may go to church." That’s beautiful. That’s I want it to be.
That’s the way it should be.
I met a friend this week whom I hadn’t seen for a while; he’d been traveling,
stopping at a child’s home in another part of the country and the son-in-law said
to him, "Do you want to go to church with us Sunday?" And he said, "What is it?
How is it?" The son-in-law said, "I don’t think you’d like it. I can hardly stand it,
but I go for little Johnny."
I don’t want you here for Johnny’s sake. If you can’t be here because this place is
reflective of who you are and what you believe and what you feel, then you ought
not to be here for the sake of your child, because your child will pick it up in a
minute. Your child will know.
I always think of a friend of some years ago. I remember how angry she was as
she spouted out the fact that she went to church every Sunday, every morning
and every evening, and she had a bad back, to boot, and she had to sit on a
straight chair back of the choir, but she said, "I went every Sunday, every service,
to set an example for my children and as soon as they grew up and got out of the
house, I don’t think any of them has ever been to an evening service, and they
hardly make morning." She was so angry, not really because they weren’t going,
but because she had put in all that effort going when she didn’t want to go, so
finally when they got out of the house, they simply did what she always wanted to
do because they knew what she really wanted to do! Of course.
This place is not a place to come for the sake of your children unless it reflects
your heart and your passion. Then, your children will find this to be a fine place
© Grand Valley State University
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that will be positive, that will give them good experiences. So, a place like Christ
Community, a place of grace, where you’re not hounded, where you’re welcomed
whenever you show up and never questioned when you don’t, is a place where
you really need to be mature enough and responsible enough to make those
decisions and to make them in such fashion that there will be the spiritual
formation of your children as well as your own lives.
I think it’s so important that we are authentic and consistent in the exercise of
our spiritual discipline. I want to tell you a little story. I was a Professor of
Preaching at one time, a very short time, and the textbooks say never to make any
personal references, but then I don’t do anything else I was taught in the
seminary, either, so I’ll tell you a little of my own story.
Growing up as a kid, my home was so devout and so serious about it all that, for
me, I absolutely was saved by going to the public school. Christian education
advocates say that it shapes a Christian, biblical world and life view, and if you
send your child to the public school, they won’t get that. Well, in my case, I
needed enough fresh air to breathe and a little light because I was so shaped in
my home and in my church that it was in the public school that I had any kind of
exposure to anything else. For me, it was saving. But, as a kid, all I wanted to do
was play ball. Now, my parents were so devout and so consistent in my spiritual
nurture. There wasn’t anything of church life I didn’t ever attend. They did make
one little sortie into the cultural field when they tried to give me music lessons,
piano lessons. I sat there and I doodled, and I would go week after week and I
made no progress and finally, thank God, the teacher was a Christian, who called
my mother and said, "In good conscience, I can’t take your money anymore."
My mother said, "Dicky, you’re going to be sorry," and I said, "I really believe
you," and I am, but I just didn’t want ... I wanted to play ball.
In the ninth grade, the superintendent of the schools, a very rather austere man
who intimidated the daylights out of us, pulled me out of class. Now what? Well,
it so happened the week before it was the opening day of baseball practice, but it
was also the tryouts for the spring play which he directed for the junior high,
every spring. Big deal. And I didn’t show up. I went to baseball practice. He
pulled me aside because, as a matter of fact, he was trying to say to me, "You need
to be broadened, Boy. I’m going to talk to you about values." He asked me who
were the heroes of the Kalamazoo Maroon Giants a year or two or three ago. Well,
I did know some of them. But, he was saying to me, "You’re not cultivating a
broad enough spectrum." It was an honest attempt. It was good. But, I still went
out for baseball.
There was one time in the ninth grade when I just made the starting five. Now,
this was a small school and you have to be really poor not to make the team, but I
just made it because I wasn’t a very good athlete. The coach was my salvation. He
was a fallen Catholic, shanty Irish, had a good sense of humor; he liked me very
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much and I liked him very much. He knew I was a good student, he had me in
math, but he would always tease me about my piety and that was so healthy for
me. On Tuesdays I had to go to Catechism. Now, when you’re hanging on by your
fingernails to stay on the first team and you have to miss one practice a week,
that’s tough. We’d take a shower on Monday night and he’d say, "Well, Charlie
(everybody called me Charlie), say a ‘Hail Mary’ for me tomorrow night and I
hope you start Friday."
Well, we could handle that. Then one noon hour at the table I told my mother and
father that next week I couldn’t go to Catechism because we had one game on a
Tuesday night all season and I, of course, had to go to the game. Guess what? I
went to Catechism. It wasn’t a big argument. It wasn’t even an argument!
I tell you that a lot of years later, and I can tell you that I think my parents were
wrong. I think they should have let me play that game. But, I never rebelled and I
honor them to this day because they were simply being consistent. They were
totally authentic, and they never asked of me what they had not first modeled out
for me, and I can say I think they should have let me play ball, but in their good
judgment, I went to Catechism.
I have been very conscious of the fact that I have not been able to replicate with
my children the way I was raised. I didn’t even try. I mean, it wouldn’t have
worked anyway, but I didn’t even try because I knew that what they did was the
reflection of the authenticity of their heart and their passion, and if I would try to
replicate that, my heart wouldn’t be in it. I would be a slave to a particular mode
that wasn’t really mine, even though it had been that to which I was raised. I had
to make my own way with my own children, stammering and stumbling along,
but trying to be at least honest and authentic. And it seems to me that is key, the
spiritual disciplines, and they are disciplines, take discipline, and while in this
place that is left to your own mature judgment to pick and to choose, to engage or
not engage, I want to encourage you to be self-aware, self-conscious, deliberate,
authentic, and then committed to it.
There are fifty-four involved in our Worship Center program for young children
and, again, I use this as an illustration. It is very unusual. I want to say in all my
years of ministry, I have never known a committed group of people who come
back here year after year after year in a beautifully conceived educational
nurturing experience. But, they can only do it if the children are there. And if it is
to be a genuine educational experience, then there has to be consistency, a
regularity. The curriculum is set out in order to shape and to form the child, but
it’s conceived as a whole, and I think, I have to say to you we’ll have probably the
record attendance down there today and then it will drop off.
Now, in my courses, my adult courses, I usually have about 50 the first time, and
25 the second time, but that’s because I’m the kind of teacher I am and deal with
the kind of esoteric stuff I do. But, that’s not an excuse for down there. They are
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teaching and leading the children week after week after week in a well-conceived
program. It does take the kind of discipline that it takes to make the Striker
soccer team. When I saw the Time article I thought I want to call my people to
consciousness about being self-aware, self-conscious, intentional, authentic, and
then committed.
Israel is still a people of God because they continued to tell their story. There’s no
magic in it. They were on the threshold of entering the Promised Land and
Joshua, their leader said to a leader from every tribe, "Take a stone out of the
river bed and make a stack of stones on the other side as a sign so that when your
children say, ‘What do these stones mean?’ you have a story to tell them."
I love Psalm 78. The second verse can be translated, "I will tell you a story with a
meaning." That’s precisely what is happening in the lower level today. A story
with a meaning. Why? So that they may come to set their hope in God. It’s
beautiful. And, of course, we have the image of Jesus who says, "Bring them to
me because the kingdom of God is made up of the likes of them." And as Bob said
to all of you, you are a child of God. So, let me simply invite you today to do as
Joshua did. They got into the Promised Land and they had been pretty slipshod
about everything, but this was the time for covenant renewal and he said to them,
"You choose. But, as for me and my house, we’re going to get into this thing." I
invite you to do the same.
© Grand Valley State University
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595a91bc19be66e8d2b5f8ffafeb86ca
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII
Scripture Text
Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19990912
Date
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1999-09-12
Title
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Scheduled to Death With Good Things,
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 12, 1999 entitled "Scheduled to Death With Good Things,", on the occasion of Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14.
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Intentional
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c163693eaa6d4e74bfa4e331b9a3bb73
PDF Text
Text
Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Jeremiah 7:4; Luke 20:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 29, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We are on a 2000-year journey, a 2000-year survey of the history of Christian
doctrine, or as it is called, the history of dogma, and we are looking at the history
of doctrinal development because I want to demonstrate to you that, if we are
about the re-imagining of the faith for our day, we are only doing what has always
been done, not always voluntarily, but out of necessity, the need to continue to
reinterpret the event of God in Jesus Christ in every new age and historical
context in order that it might make sense, in order that it might be meaningful, in
order that it might be transformative.
We noted three weeks ago that the formation of Christian doctrine arose out of
that first great crisis of the Christian Church, the Jesus movement poised for the
imminent return of Jesus as the Lord of Glory to judge the earth, which didn’t
happen. And that early Church, confident that the end of the age was so near, had
never contemplated having to live in history. What did the event of Jesus Christ
mean, if history was ongoing? What did it mean, then, to be a Christian, a
follower of Jesus in a world that obviously wasn’t ending? Out of that initial crisis
came the formation of the early Catholic tradition, which did not come about
easily. To read those stories of the post-Apostolic Church is to read of
tremendous conflict, tremendous division, great tensions, outstanding leaders on
respective sides of issues trying to hammer out what in the world God had done
in this Jesus. The Church eventually regularized itself. It took some centuries,
and finally it established what it believed about what God had done in Jesus:
thus, the appearance of orthodoxy, that is, proper belief, correct belief. And also,
the possibility of heresy, for now there was a line set down, there were boundaries
drawn, and those who were outside of the pale were marked as heretical to the
established, accepted faith of the Church.
That early Church, we noted a couple of weeks ago, began to take on some stature
and it was greatly enhanced when the Emperor Constantine converted and when
a successor established Christianity as the religion of the empire. The
establishment of Christianity, which I was taught was a great providential act of
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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God, might well have been the point at which the Church began to lose its soul
because, with its establishment, now having the power of the throne behind it, it
grew not only in its faith understanding, but in power, and with power came
eventual degeneration and decay and corruption (you learned about that last
week), an institution that became so insensitive to the needs of people that it
could no longer deal with the human experience of one like Martin Luther, whose
experience was the catalyst for the shattering of the institution and the
emergence of the Protestant tradition. Now we have three major Church families.
In 1054, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Latin tradition came apart;
the Pope excommunicated the Patriarch, the Patriarch returned the favor, and
from that point on, 1054, the 11thcentury, the Christian Church, which until that
time had been one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, became Eastern and
Western. Now in the 16th century, with the shattering of the Western Church and
the emergence of Protestantism, there was born a third major family and we have
it to this day, three major groupings, Protestantism having continued to splinter
until we could sing the song, "It’s a Many-Splintered Thing."
But, while there were differences between those three bodies, they maintained
the core that was arrived at in those early centuries, the doctrine of the Trinity,
the two natures of Jesus Christ, truly God, truly human, and much else they
shared. But, there were differences, as well, and good reason for division, of
course. But, there was one thing in which Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic Church
and Protestantism were totally agreed, and that was that they were institutions
with absolute authority. If you ask an Orthodox Patriarch, he would say the
authority is in the ongoing tradition of the Church. If you would ask the Pope in
Rome, he would say the authority is in the teaching office of the Church which he
embodies. If you would ask John Calvin or Martin Luther, they would have said
the authority lies in the written word of God.
Whether it was tradition or Church or Bible, the whole Christian Church in the
16th century was a Church that was marked by authoritarian claim, the claim that
the content of its faith was the consequence of a supernatural revelation from
heaven, and what the Church taught was to be accepted on the basis of authority,
believed, and obeyed, not questioned. You did not need to think; you only needed
to understand what was already given, what was proclaimed, what was declared,
the dogmatic foundation of the Church.
Then the modern era dawned. Whenever one does a periodization of history,
there will be fuzzy boundaries and some disagreement, but I think that we can
say without too much fear of refutation that the modern era of which we are still a
part, although people talk about the post-modern phase we’re in, nonetheless, we
are modern people and the modern era began about 1650, the middle point of the
17th century to the present, and the modern period was marked by the throwing
off of all forms of authoritarian claim and the insistence on the empirical
observation and investigation of all truth claims. While that modern movement
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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began with the advent of the natural sciences, and Francis Bacon formulated the
scientific method in the early stages, those scientific investigations did not seem
to challenge Church doctrine, but what happened immediately was a new way of
thinking, a new way of knowing, and the movement from the medieval world to
the modern world represents a seismic shift in human history and human
culture. Modernity, of which we are a part, is marked by critical thinking. We
don’t take statements, dogmatic statements or claims just because they are
uttered on the basis of some authority, be it tradition or Church or Bible. We
investigate; we experiment; we think critically about the question, and this is so
much a part of us that we don’t even think about it. It is that which marks the
whole modern period and it marks you and me in all the rest of our lives, except
not always in our religious experience. But that seismic shift in culture, in the way
of knowing and what could be known, marked the beginning of a serious
challenge to the Christian tradition.
Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher of great fame, demolished the proofs for
the existence of God, the philosophical proofs for the existence of God. His
purpose was positive; he was not anti-religious, but he wanted to show that that
way of thinking, thinking then that we had proved God’s existence, was a dead
end. He said, “I have destroyed knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
There was a young preacher in Berlin at that time who read Kant, imbibed Kant,
and recognized that the nub of the problem for the Christian tradition, now that
the modern age had dawned, was the question of authority. Friedrich
Schleiermacher was a brilliant, witty, socially desirable kind of an individual who
was assigned to be the preacher in a great hospital in Berlin, and was invited into
the social circles of that great city. He was a preacher, he was a Christian, he was
brilliant (sounds like an oxymoron, but in this case, that was true), and the
cultured, educated, sophisticated society of Berlin invited him to be a part of their
circles. They enjoyed him, and he ran with them very well. But he was a Christian,
he was a preacher, and on his 29th birthday they surprised him with a party and
they gave him a challenge and said, "Write an account of how you can still be
religious, Christian, a preacher."
He accepted the challenge and at the age of 31 published what is now a classic, On
Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers. He knew his friends. He knew what
they thought of him; he knew they thought religion was passé, and he took the
challenge right to them. He began in the first speech, of which there are five, by
saying to them, "Look, relax. I’m not going to quote the Bible; I’m not going to
quote the Church; I’m not going to quote the tradition. I am going to speak to you
as a human being; I am going to speak out of my experience, and what I am going
to say to you is rooted in my own being, in my own experience." Then he took off,
and in so doing, what Schleiermacher did was to turn the whole tradition of the
Christian Church 180 degrees for, up until that time, until the modern era, and
even at his time and even to the present, the Church, by and large across the
board, has operated on the basis of authoritarian claims, some divine revelation
that has come out of heaven embodied in a tradition, in a Church, in a book.
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Schleiermacher gave all of that up, stood, as it were, naked before his friends, and
claimed his faith and his religion as the authentic and deepest expression of his
humanity. Schleiermacher recognized that Kant had blocked the road to
dogmatic speculation and therefore if one was going to be religious after Kant,
the ground of that religious experience would have to rest in the believing
individual. And in very brilliant and sophisticated fashion, he argued for the
rooting of religion in the human subject. His claim was that to be human is to
have the feeling of absolute dependence. We didn’t create ourselves; we can’t
sustain ourselves; we are totally dependent, totally dependent on some gracious
ground that has given us life and supports and keeps us, and it was
Schleiermacher’s contention that, in those moments when that sense of
dependence comes into focus, one knows oneself to be in communion with God.
God is that foundation, that infinite mystery that upholds all, the origin and
foundation of all that is and, in the moments of our human dependency, almost
mystical moments of awareness, one knows oneself dependent which,
Schleiermacher says, is to know oneself to be in communion with God.
That synopsis hardly does justice to what Schleiermacher did in a very profound
fashion, but what he had done was radical, for he had moved from an
authoritarian claim for religious truth to a personal testimony to its reality in his
own experience. He is called the Father of Modern Theology because, in that
significant shift, he made the whole game new, and he paved the way for the
theological development of the last 200 years. You can cite all of the great names
of the theologians who have spoken and written and you will find traces of
Schleiermacher; he was the initiator. Of course, there was a counter to him; he
was rejected by many. There was a reaction, a conservative reaction and an
orthodox, confessional Church reaction against him, but nonetheless, he had
sounded a new note and he had put his finger on the problem of modernity, an
era in which we, as naturally as breathing, think, use our heads, use common
sense, and he said that goes not only when you are sending a rocket to the moon
or structuring a community education program, but that goes, as well, when you
are seeking the communion of God. He would have agreed with the statement we
used here a few weeks ago, that the heart cannot finally find true what the mind
finds false.
I find it fascinating, as I in my 64th year visit Schleiermacher seriously, that no
one ever told me that the long and tortuous pilgrimage that has been my own to
try to be a true believer with my mind engaged, was engaged and set forth
powerfully and eloquently 200 years ago. There has been in the Eastern
Orthodox tradition, the Roman Catholic tradition, and the Protestant tradition,
and all of its forms, mainline and fundamental (this is my contention now), there
has been a continuing within a medieval mind set never yet facing the acids of
modernity. I do not think the institutional Church as a whole has ever come to
terms with the modern era marked by critical thinking, even though it was done
beautifully 200 years ago.
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Why didn’t Schleiermacher carry the day totally across the board? A question well
worth contemplating. I really don’t know, but I know this matter of authority is
absolutely critical and it’s not a new issue. The Hebrew prophets spoke a word
from God, a word that possessed them. Jeremiah stood up on the Temple steps
and said, "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the
Lord, you repeat this like a chant. You think your safety and security lies here. Let
me tell you, God doesn’t need this institution. God doesn’t need your religious
ritual. Go to Shiloh and see its ruins. See what I did there, and I’ll do it to your
temple, too, because of a lack of authenticity in your religious life."
Jesus was in the line of the prophets, and when he was engaged with the leaders
of the religion of his day, they began to cross-examine him. They were lying in
wait to catch him in everything he said. He cried out against the sterile formalism
of that institutional religion and he became a very threatening voice in the midst
of Jerusalem, coming finally to that last prophetic action when he cleansed the
temple and that triggered the religious authorities to come and say just that, "By
what authority do you do this?" And Jesus said, "Well, tell me about John the
Baptist. What was his authority?" They didn’t dare answer because if they said
from heaven, he would have said, "Why didn’t you follow him? Why didn’t you
believe?" And if they said it’s a human authority, they would have been stoned by
the people because John the Baptist also had a voice that had authenticity that
resonated with people’s experience, that spoke to them where they were and they
believed that he was a prophet of God. If you read through the Gospels, you find
more than one reference where Jesus is spoken of as having the people
spellbound because he spoke as one who had authority and not as the scribes and
the Pharisees.
Of course, it’s not an easy question; it’s not an easy problem, my friend. If you
have an institutional church and you are responsible for the institution, then you
can’t let any crackerjack come rolling through who has a vision. Or, at least, you
have to discern whether or not this voice is a voice that rings with authenticity, or
whether it’s just some fanatic. The question of authority is a critical question.
How do you know?
I submit to you that the problem of authority was dealt with in the only way it can
be dealt with in a healthy fashion by Schleiermacher 200 years ago, whose
authority, he said, rested in his own religious experience. Anything other than
that will tend to sterility and rigidity and will end up killing the prophets.
Schleiermacher is a marvelous figure, one of a small handful of truly great spirits
in 2000 years and, as he spoke to his friends, the cultured despisers of religion,
he laid his heart bare, and he said to them "You’ve rejected something, but what
you have rejected is not the real thing. The real thing is that which makes you
human; the real thing is that which gives depth, dimension to life; the real thing
is that which unifies your experience and creates meaning; the real thing is the
verve and the center and the joy of life. Without religion, you are simply an
animal with reason." And he also believed in preaching; he was a great preacher,
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a loved preacher, and he filled the Church in Berlin. He said to his people, "My
preaching is simply my testimony, and that testimony triggers in others who
desire a like kind of experience, and there is formed a community," and that very
positive sense of his Christian experience and the shared experience of the
community for which he was the preacher was so dynamic and so powerful in his
day, and when at the age of 66 he died of a lung infection, there was weeping
throughout the city; 20,000 to 30,000 people lined the streets as his coffin was
moved through the streets, and they wept from every window and every balcony
because this man had spoken to them, not of some hollow religious experience,
but something that touched them in the depths of their being, enabling them, in a
modern age marked by critical thinking, yet to find experience of that intimate
and mysterious ground of all being, full of grace, which for Schleiermacher and
the Christian church was embodied in Jesus.
Why? Why have we not been able in 200 years to do as he did? Why, out of fear
and reaction, do we trundle back into fundamentalism and absolute claims, when
if we would only trust our experience, we would know the touch of grace of the
living God and live with hope and joy?
References:
Friedrich Schleiermacher. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, 1797.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost XV
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Jeremiah 7:4, Luke 20:2
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, 1797.
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KII-01_RA-0-19990829
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1999-08-29
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Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 29, 1999 entitled "Where Do I Stand When the Foundation Gives Way?", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7:4, Luke 20:2.
Authority
Critical Thinking
History of Christian Dogma
Modernity
-
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51a6a7459d9b02b982a0d307c3824872
PDF Text
Text
Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Amos 7:13; Romans 13:1; Matthew 15:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 15, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I initiated last week a series of messages that will bring us down to October 31, if
we survive. That’s Reformation Sunday, and it is the week prior to the first two
weeks in November, which will be special events here. The West Shore
Committee for Jewish Christian Dialogue will bring Amy-Jill Levine, who will
speak here on Sunday morning. Her theme for the weekend is "When and Why
Did Christianity and Judaism Separate?" Amy-Jill teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity
School, New Testament, although she is a Jewish scholar. Then, John Shelby
Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark, will be here the following week to talk about
re-imagining Christian faith and "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Those
two weeks will be the bookends of this series of messages. Amy-Jill will tell us
how it all got started, and Bishop Spong will suggest where it must be going and,
in the meantime, prior to their coming, I hope that I can help you to understand
that change and transformation has been the rule for 2000 years.
Often the Church would like to give the impression that it has a deposit of faith
given once for all, that it is guarded down through the centuries untouched, but
such is not the case. We started last week going back to the Apostolic community
itself, recognizing the expression of that faith in the New Testament documents
that give from beginning to end the impression that the whole of that Jesus
movement was posited on the premise that Jesus would return as the Lord of
glory very soon. The Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Revelation at the end of the
book all give witness to the fact that there was an apocalyptic expectation, that is,
that the heavens would open and that the Son of Man, the Son of God would
appear to judge the living and the dead and bring to consummation all things, the
imminent return of Jesus.
And, of course, it didn’t happen, and it hasn’t happened for 2000 years, and
reflecting back on that, there is a growing awareness and recognition over the last
century or so that it was that disappointed expectation that provided the womb
out of which the whole Church as an institution developed in its organizational
structure, in its liturgical forms, in its creedal formulations. How we are, how we
live, how we believe is the consequence of that disillusion because of the delay of
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the parousia. The fact that Jesus did not return, that imminent expectation was
shattered and, consequently, they found themselves in a world whose history was
going on. They found themselves in a life that they had to learn how to live as
followers of Jesus. It’s all very understandable, all very normal, all very natural.
But, it was a very great crisis, and out of that crisis we have the early emerging
catholic tradition, catholic meaning simply universal, and that tradition in its
early stages was full of conflict and tension, it was all over the board, it was very
chaotic, as you can understand, everyone trying to make sense of that great event
followed by the trauma of disappointment. What in the world is God doing? The
early catholic tradition was the consequence of sorting all that through.
What I want to do this morning, and I can only do it briefly, I have a two-hour
sermon here, but fortunately you only have ten minutes, so I have to give you
huge chunks of stuff and you’ll just have to take my word for it, although I could
read to you all morning here. But I want this morning to suggest to you that, what
appeared to be a very great providence - that this persecuted minority, this band
of followers of Jesus became the established religion of the Roman Empire, and
that establishment brought it great power, position, and prestige, and that which
appeared to be such a blessing, as a matter of fact, was a great seduction which
ended in the wedding of power and religion, so that for nearly 1000 years during
the whole medieval development up to the eve of the Reformation, a Church in
power became a very corrupt institution.
Religious leaders don’t handle power any better than secular leaders. I think it
was the British statesman, Lord Acton, who said, "All power corrupts, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely," and what the Church became in the wake of
that tremendous transformation, was an absolute institution. It was absolute in
the control of salvation. It had the imperial sword to back up its claims and it is a
chapter with dark shadows because the religion of Jesus, the servant, became the
religion of a very dominant, prestigious institutional Church. I can’t possibly
document that for you this morning. Let me simply point to, for example, St.
Augustine, who early on was still looking to the sky for Jesus to return, but then
he lived into the 5th century; he lived long enough to experience the sack of Rome
by the barbarians, the fall of Rome. He wrote the first Christian interpretation of
history called The City of God, and Augustine moved from an expectation of
Jesus to return anytime to an understanding of Church history as being the
millennium for that 1000 years which is referred to in Revelation 20.
Now, I don’t recommend you go home this afternoon and try to understand the
Book of Revelation, nor the 20th chapter, but there’s been a lot of "stuff" that’s
come out of the 20th chapter which would appear to be a thousand years of peace
on earth ruled over by the Messiah who returns. There are some who think he’ll
return and take the Church out of history first. Those are pre-Millennialists. And
there are some who think that he’ll come only at the end of that thousand years,
which was kind of Augustine’s position, so post-Millennialist. The Reformers
didn’t know what in the world to do, so they became a-Millennialists, and of
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course, I’ve tended to become a pan-Millennialist, that is, living with the
confidence that everything will "pan out" in the end. I recommend that.
But, Augustine made a move from expecting Jesus to return to dealing with the
reality of the fact that history was moving, and of course, his idea of that
millennium as the thousand years of Church history created all kinds of
millennial fever as the year 1000 approached. Fully as much, maybe a bit more
than we have today with all the Y2K hysteria. Augustine I point to simply as one
for whom the reality of history, the reality of his human experience, forced him to
adjust his understanding of that biblical story of the return and the reign of Jesus
Christ on earth.
But, what really happened to the Church, and my point this morning, is that it
was brought into a position of domination. I know you’re familiar with the fact
that the Emperor Constantine saw a sign in the sky and he believed it was the
cross, and he heard a voice saying, "By this sign you will conquer," and he won
the battle the next day at the Milvian Bridge in 312, and from that point on he
converted to Christianity, although he wasn’t baptized until near his death; he
was hedging his bets. But, his successors established Christianity as the state
religion and, in so doing, created a powerful institution whose history is not a
nice story.
John Dominic Crossan, who was here in February, in his Jesus, a Revolutionary
Biography, writes,
Finally, about three hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus, ... the
Roman Emperor Constantine, believing that victory over his imperial rival
... near the Milvian Bridge had been obtained by Christ’s power, converted
to Christianity. ...Constantine, wanting a unified Christianity as the
empire’s new religion, ordered the Christian bishops to meet, under
imperial subsidy, in lakeside Nicea...
Obviously, resorts were popular then for conferences, as well. And Constantine
had just one purpose and that was to rule out any theological differences. I
imagine he said to the bishops, "Now, look boys, the accommodations are great,
the food is wonderful, Happy Hour overflowing, I have only one concern - come
out of there with a statement on which you can all agree. Eusebius, a historian of
the times, is quoted by Crossan:
Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the
palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God
proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in
which some were the Emperor’s companions at table, while others reclined
on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture
of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than
reality.
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But, Dom Crossan says,
A Christian leader now writes a life of Constantine rather than Jesus. The
meal and the kingdom still come together, but now the participants are the
male bishops alone, and they recline, with the emperor himself, to be
served by others. Dream or reality? Dream or nightmare?
It is, of course, an example of the dialectic just proposed between the historical
Jesus and the confessional Christ, of peasant Jesus grasped now by imperial
faith. Still, as one ponders that progress from open commensality with Jesus to
episcopal banquet with Constantine, is it unfair to regret a progress that
happened so fast and moved so swiftly, that was accepted so readily and criticized
so lightly? Is it time now, or is it already too late, to conduct, religiously and
theologically, ethically and morally, some basic cost accounting with
Constantine?
It was the Constantinian establishment that brought the Church into a
prominence and a dominance which eventuated in a decay and a corruption
which brought about, eventually, a rending again of the body of Christ in the
16th century. The Church became the absolute institute of salvation.
There was total control over the lives of people. Clergy such as Peter and myself
through the authority of the bishops, through the mediation of the pope, who was
the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, would hold you totally in our control. We held
the spigot of grace. We could determine to whom to offer the sacrament, and it
was only with the sacrament received that salvation was possible. Cyprian, the
great bishop and his famous phrase in Latin translated outside the church? No
salvation. It was an absolute institution, infallible and inerrant in all of its
teaching and all its action. It could not be questioned.
Throughout that period there was even a struggle between the throne and the
altar, the princes and the Church. And there was a period in which the Church
dominated the secular powers, as well, until those secular powers eventually
broke free and became dominant. The Church was an absolute institution and it
dominated and it was its death.
The great historian, William Manchester, in his book, A World Lit Only By Fire,
describes the eventuation of that Constantinian establishment and that
absolutizing of the institutional form of religion in the Church at the eve of the
Reformation. He writes,
... The center of the Ptolemaic universe [still the universe where the earth
is the center of everything] was the known world - Europe, with the Holy
Land and North Africa on the fringes. The sun moved round it every day.
Heaven was above the immovable earth, somewhere in the overarching
sky; hell seethed far beneath their feet. Kings rules at the pleasure of the
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Almighty; all others did what they were told to do. Jesus, the son of God,
had been crucified and resurrected, and his reappearance was imminent,
or at any rate inevitable. Every human being adored him (the Jews and the
Muslims being invisible). During the 1,436 years since the death of Saint
Peter the apostle, 211 popes had succeeded him, all chosen by God and all
infallible. The Church was indivisible, the afterlife a certainty; all
knowledge was already known. And nothing would ever change. The
mighty storm was swiftly approaching, but Europeans were not only
unaware of it; they were convinced that such a phenomenon could not
exist. Shackled in ignorance, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in
superstition...
That, my friends, was the state of the Church and the abuses that I cannot begin
to recount here, are legion because the religious institution with human
leadership had power. That, of course, was a total betrayal of the biblical faith. It
was already in Paul’s day a question of how to live in accommodation with the
secular power, the governing power. Romans 13 talks about that. And in the
Gospel of Matthew we have already Matthew writing some 50 years after Jesus
this little scene at Caesarea Philippi where Peter has the keys of the kingdom
given to him, the preeminence of Peter. This was already the dealing of the
authority question within that early Jesus movement. So, we’re dealing with
things here that are part and parcel of anything human.
But, Jesus, after he gives the keys of the kingdom to Peter and would seem to put
such authority in his hands, follows that by saying "If anyone would follow me, he
must take up his cross. If anyone would hold onto his life, he must lose it. If
anybody would lose his life for my sake, he will find it." And when it finally came
down, when the rubber hit the road, Jesus had a banquet quite in contrast to the
one at Nicea in which he took bread and broke it and said, "This is my body," and
he took wine and poured it out and said, "This is my blood," because Jesus was in
the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who spoke truth to power and refused to be
co-opted by power.
Amos was just a farmer, he came to the royal palaces one day and began to
preach and he said God is letting down a plumb line to measure the integrity of
this kingdom, and that began to scare the counselors to the king, and so they
called Amaziah, who was a hired lackey (a good king always hired a priest), and
the priest came out and he said, "Hey, you farmer Amos, what are you doing
here?" And Amos said, "The word of the Lord came to me," and the priest said,
"We don’t need the word of the Lord in the royal palace. Go back and preach to
your sycamore trees and never come here again."
When you preach truth to power, you end up in the possibility of being crucified,
but then you are only following the way of the one who even this morning says to
us, in an open table, "This is my body; this is my blood," for the way of the Gospel
is not the way of domination, control, and abuse, but is the way of grace, of
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compassion, offering the accessibility of God to all who are hungry and all who
are thirsty. This is not the table of this congregation. This is not Peter’s table nor
mine, nor these elders. This is the table of our Lord who invited those who would
stand in solidarity with him to take bread and cup and go forth strengthened, not
to dominate, but to die that the world might live.
© Grand Valley State University
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Pentecost XIII
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19990815
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1999-08-15
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Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
Sound
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 15, 1999 entitled "Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18.
Authority
History of Church
truth to power
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/200cee898d3f9ceacd7fc34f0976025f.pdf
060b4d5af548a0f092ba358f54b9d434
PDF Text
Text
When God Fails Our Expectations
From the Series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Isaiah 2:4; Matthew 24:34; II Peter 3:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 8, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I inaugurate a new series of messages today that will take us to the end of October
and Reformation Sunday, the day we remember the major event in Christian
history when the Protestant tradition emerged out of the Roman Catholic
tradition in the 16th century. That Protestant tradition in its Reformed expression
is my background and the tradition in which this congregation was founded in
1870. It is the tradition of a majority of this congregation still, I believe, although
I suspect over the last decade or more we have received in membership more
folks from the Roman Catholic tradition than from any other.
It seems to me that the idea of reformation is an important idea to keep before us
on the threshold of the 21st century and the Third Millennium, and I am hoping
that this Reformation celebration will be our most significant ever because we
will have traced the Christian faith development through 2000 years. On the
heels of Reformation, we will have the Jewish scholar on Christian origins, AmyJill Levine, here for the weekend, speaking here on Sunday, November 7, and
then Bishop John Shelby Spong on November 12-14, speaking on "Why
Christianity Must Change or Die." That should prepare us for an informed and
intelligent movement into the new millennium.
In order to prepare the congregation for this experience, I will in this series go
back not to the 16th century, but to the first and second centuries of the Common
Era and trace the development of the Christian faith story over 2000 years. My
first choice for series title was, "Christian Faith and the Climate of Opinion: A
Two Millennia Retrospective." The Team cried, "No way! No one will come!"
Then I came up with what I thought was really fascinating and even a bit poetic:
"When Symbols Break and Myths Dissolve." The verdict - "Scary."
So, finally, bowing to pressure of those who hope to keep this place alive, I
entitled the series, "Good News Then and Now," meaning thereby what I’ve
meant all along –
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
that the Gospel - the good news - has continued to be proclaimed in every
succeeding age in changing expression reflecting the historical context
into which it is spoken.
My purpose must be obvious; I believe we must find a fresh translation of the
good news for the day in which we are living. We all know this happened in the
16th century when the Western Roman Catholic Church was rent and
Protestantism emerged, but I hope to enable you to see that, although that was
perhaps the most dramatic and certainly the shift that has most impacted us in
Western Christendom, it was but one instance of what has been happening for
2000 years, although not always with such major institutional repercussions.
This is important for this congregation to realize because we are endeavoring to
find the medium and the message that will bring good news to our community
and our world at the turn of the millennium.
The Gospel means good news - good - that is, encouraging, hopeful, life
enhancing. News - that means updated, fresh, for now. Thus, Good News then in the first and fourth and 12th and 16th centuries and all points in between, Good
News now: How do we bring a helpful, hopeful, encouraging word to our
moment on the timeline of history?
It is my sense that if we are going to feel the freedom to re-imagine the faith and
do it with passion and seriousness, we must realize that we stand in a line of
those who have wrestled with the faith, have come into times that called for fresh
insight on the emerging human experience, on the unfolding drama we call
history. As the human situation changes, faith formulations must address new
circumstances and new human experiences. I have hammered away at this until
you perhaps tire of hearing it. But, I am now embarking on a rather ambitious
undertaking: to lay the foundation for the perspectives we share here.
I suppose one might say this is an apology for my ministry and for the posture of
this congregation, providing historical justification for daring boldly to revision
and re-imagine the faith.
One more word - my purpose is not to provide an academic lecture series;
this is worship and the sermon should have practical, spiritual import for the life
of the congregation. In the significant shifts through 2000 years, behind the
shifts have always been existential concern - faith matters that matter for living.
Thus, today my sermon is "When God Fails Our Expectations."
I think that expresses the experience of the early Church as the Apostolic
generation was dying off. The whole Jesus movement was posited on the
expectation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ from heaven. They held to the
conviction that Jesus who was crucified was risen from the dead, ascended into
heaven and was soon to return to judge the living and the dead.
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Imminence was the operative word - Jesus would come a second time soon.
The New Testament references are too numerous to cite. Let me simply remind
you of the final words of the Revelation of Jesus to John just prior to the final
benediction: "Surely I am coming soon."
Paul in I Corinthians 15:51, "We will not all die, but we will all be changed." In
I Thessalonians 4:13f, "... then we who are alive, who are left until the coming of
the Lord ..."
And, of course, from the Gospel reading,"Truly I tell you, this generation will not
pass away until all these things have taken place ..." Matthew 24:34.
Let me say here that some of the Jesus scholars today attribute these apocalyptic
passages to the early Jesus community - not to Jesus himself. That is currently a
rigorous debate. But no matter; my point is that this was the expectation of the
Jesus movement in the wake of his life and death.
And Jesus did not return. That was the first major crisis of faith of the Jesus
movement - or as it came to be known - the Christian Church. It takes little
thought or reflection to realize how traumatic was the delay of the parousia, as
this fact is spoken of. Parousia is a Greek term for coming, advent. The "delay"
points to the early sense that surely he is coming, coming soon, but obviously not
as soon as we expected. There has been a delay.
Now, if this was at the heart and center of the early Church’s hope and
expectation, waiting for the glorious appearance of the Lord from glory, then
non-appearance, at first spoken of as delay, created some urgent questions about loved ones who died in the meantime, for example, would they miss out?
But, for the most part, faith held on. But, when the whole Apostolic generation
died, which was to be the terminal generation, the crisis deepened.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that those who died would be included with
those who are alive at the Lord’s coming, but eventually they all died. Now, widescale defection began and the faith of many was put on the defensive. This is the
situation we find in the Second Letter of Peter which was not written by the
Apostle Peter, but is best dated after 90 CE and perhaps as late as about 150 CE,
that is, 70 to 120 years after the death of Jesus.
That a crisis exists we can read from II Peter 3:3ff, "... in the last days scoffers will
come. They will ask mockingly, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever
since our ancestors died all things continue as they were from the beginning of
creation!’" In other words, the believers were taunted with the fact that it was
"business as usual" in the world. Nothing happened. What, then, of the claims of
the risen, ascended Lord coming in glory and power to judge the world?
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
It is obvious that the delay of the Lord’s appearing must have created an
extremely difficult situation for the early Christian movement. That movement
was composed of two distinct groups - the Jewish Christian community located
largely in Palestine and the Gentile Christian community, the result of Paul’s
mission. These two groups had sharp differences. New Testament study sees
Luke’s writing in Acts as an attempt to show how these two were reconciled, but
there was a sharp division. Yet, both groups held essentially to the apocalyptic
hope that was rooted in Jewish apocalypticism that was anticipating the end of
the age, and both saw the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of
the End, which would be consummated with his return from heaven to judge the
living and the dead.
The imminent return of Jesus did not happen and that significant fact
necessitated a major transformation of Christian understanding.
It was Albert Schweitzer who called biblical scholarship and theological inquiry to
the recognition of the fact that there occurred in the immediate past Apostolic
period a transformation of understanding of the Gospel. The transformation
moved the early Christian movement to what is called early Catholicism. That, in
fact, was a move not only to create a new understanding of the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, but also toward the creation of the Christian Church as an
institution, a regularizing of the faith, mode of worship (liturgy, sacrament)
and structure of the Church. This was the beginning of doctrinal formulation
and the formulation of orthodoxy.
It was not a simple process. There were strenuous battles fought over the right
interpretation of the Gospel and it did not happen smoothly or at all places at the
same time. There were now groups and views designated as heretical and after a
long, tortuous process there emerged what was designated the regula Fidei, the
Order of the Faith. In the process, Jewish Christianity was reduced to a sect and
eventually faded from the scene and St. Paul’s theological understanding was
transformed into the faith of the early Catholic Church.
It is not possible for me in the sermon format to document this or set forth the
conflicting path by which it was accomplished. Perhaps, however, you can sense
what was happening if I describe the whole movement as the eschatology of the
Apostolic faith. This must be plain to see, for the problem was the imminent
return of Jesus which did not happen.
Eschatology is the teaching about the last things, the end of history. It derives
from Eschaton, a Greek word meaning “End.” In sum, the post-Apostolic
movement had to create a new scenario - a scenario which took into account
ongoing history and the living of life in the world which obviously did not pass
away.
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
This was the first and major shift in understanding made imperative for the
Christian movement by the delay of the parousia. In his Formation of Christian
Dogma, Martin Werner, a Swiss historian of dogma, taking his cue from
Schweitzer and others, claims this was the womb out of which all Christian
dogmatics must be understood.
So what?
Remember, my purpose in this series, to demonstrate that the point in history at
which we have arrived as the third millennium dawns calls us to revision and reimagine the faith, in continuity with the tradition but in fresh expression which
takes account of the new world which is our historical context, and that need not
cause fear or anxiety because this kind of development has been going on from
the very beginning.
The second letter of Peter was a plea not to yield to the inevitable. Those who
realized that Jesus’ return was delayed were not all scoffers, although I am sure
some were. There were also those who took up the challenge to try to make sense
of the Gospel in new historical circumstances. The author of our text was an early
fundamentalist, pleading yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.
I find it fascinating that that writer still has voices crying the same thing. Two
thousand years later there are those claiming the days are counting down. In
Grand Rapids, as reported in the Press yesterday, the TV evangelist John Hagee
signed his most recent book. He was pictured with a considerable article. The
new title is From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun, and Hagee
claims he is speaking the Gospel and telling people what the Bible says about the
"terminal generation." That is remarkable. That is precisely what St. Paul thought
he was doing. It was precisely the fact that the Apostolic generation was not the
terminal generation that created the crisis that necessitated the major revisioning
of the faith that led to the development of early Catholic tradition.
This week I viewed a catalogue from Christian Book Distributors. On the back
cover is advertised the novel series Left Behind, by Tim La Haye and Jerry B.
Jenkins. Six volumes out. Millions of copies sold. You can get all six at the
bookstore for $134.92 or discounted from CBD for $88.50. The same catalogue
has a centerfold advertising seven titles on Y2K, titles such as The Road to
Armagedon and Jesus’ Final Warning. And, of course, there are t-shirts
emblazoned with such slogans as "Don’t Be Left Behind," and "Trib Force."
The lack of taste is one thing. The economic exploitation is another. But, the
abysmal ignorance of such guilt-imputing, fear-inciting abuse of the Bible is
simply incredible. My pastoral concern rises from the damage such misuse of the
Bible and ignorance of the development of theological understanding creates. The
biblical story tells of the God Who has created all, sustains all, and embraces all full of grace with the purpose of love. It is Good News. It was Good News then,
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
when Paul was overwhelmed by the grace of God and the hope that appeared in
Jesus. It is Good News now, recognizing Paul’s misconstruing of history, but
recognizing, as well, his marvelous sense of being in Christ, in grace.
If we can see through the limitations of Paul’s knowledge of the created order,
beyond his limited understanding of world history, human development and the
ongoing evolutionary unfolding of reality, we can still hear his witness to the God
Who in Jesus drew near, was embodied, and Who invites us to trust, to rest, and
to continue the 2000-year process of updating the Good News.
It was not easy to realize that Jesus was not imminently returning. It was a curse.
Many lost their grip, gave up, sought another way. That is part of being human. It
felt like God failed their expectations.
That happens to us, too, when we use God as a magic genie to protect us or secure
for us some favor, when we make God too small, a "fix it" person keeping us from
harm’s way, free from the tragedy and suffering that is part of our human lot. But
that is to use God, and such a God sometimes will fail our expectations - our
prayers will be to no avail.
The problem, of course, is not God, but our expectations. God calls us to
maturity, to responsibility, to the way of Jesus, to the life of compassion and
community and, in all of that, God is Emmanuel - God with us, today and
always.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d9cabf84d73ee8d9fb2f9c75de3a210c.mp3
c804448cc56f91f5ee82871da8a8c83c
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XII
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 24:34, II Peter 3:4
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19990808
Date
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1999-08-08
Title
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When God Fails Our Expectations
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 8, 1999 entitled "When God Fails Our Expectations", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 24:34, II Peter 3:4.
History of Church
Re-imagining the Faith
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1d4f143520a043be029200762d159c5f.pdf
e095ab928f4350f93a4ac915ca0f254d
PDF Text
Text
The Church Must Die or Die
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Ezekiel 37:14; John 12:24, 43; 13:5
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 1, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On Thursday, the Grand Haven Tribune called my secretary, Jane, and asked if
she had made a mistake in the newspaper ad. Jane asked, "Why?", and they said,
"Well, the sermon title is listed as, ‘The Church Must Die or Die,’" and Jane said,
"No, unfortunately, that’s what he means."
I think, upon a little reflection, you might understand what I mean. The Church
must die to itself, its institutional forms, its prestige, its power, its selfaggrandizing tendency - must die to all of that, or it will die because it will fail to
fulfill the purpose that God has for the Church.
The death and resurrection image is a very common New Testament image. Paul
says, "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." In the 6th chapter of
Romans, he talks about being buried with Christ in baptism in order that he
might be raised again to newness of life. Dying to self, rising to new life in the
Spirit of God is a very central image, the idea that we do come to the end of our
self, our self project, our self-centeredness, dying to that, we become open to that
which would open us to the eternal, to God, to the sacred, to the Holy.
While I know that the references in the New Testament are personal references, I
don’t think I’m stretching it too far to apply that to the community, the body of
Christ, in our case, to the Church. It is true, just as an individual has to come to
the end of self in order to be filled with that which is beyond, so the Church needs
not just once, but again and again, to die to its forms and its structures and its
formulations and rules and regulations and modus operandi in order that it
might experience the freshness and newness that the Spirit would continue to
create. I want to say that this morning. I was intending to deal with that in the
fourth of my presentations on Tuesday night about "How My Mind Has
Changed," but I never got to that one, so I’m going to take it up this morning,
nonetheless, because I do believe it is so critical to our experience, our experience
of being Christian, our religious life, our spiritual life. It is so important that we
understand that our diverse religious experience and expression is the
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
consequence of the fact that it is a human response, that religion is a human
phenomenon.
My mind has changed about that because I grew up, was nurtured and trained
and began my ministry thinking quite differently about religion. In the first place,
I thought there was only one true religion and I had it. But, more than that, I
thought religion was dictated from God, that it was divinely arranged, and that it
was incumbent upon us to determine, to discern that which was true and absolute
because religion was the product of divine revelation, rather than recognizing
that the vast diversity of human religion is the consequence of the fact that
religion is human response to that initiative from beyond, that sense of the holy
or the sacred. It is our human response to the encounter with God in the mystery
of our existence. Those questions that obtrude themselves upon us, particularly at
those critical moments of life, draw from us questions and lead us on a quest, a
quest for that ultimate mystery that defies our attempts to neatly package and
domesticate it. Human religion is response to the Ultimate Mystery, and the
diversity of religious forms and shapes and creeds and practices reflect the
diversity of humankind and the diversity of human experience, and it is not as
though my response is right and true and yours somewhat questionable, but
rather, that being different people with different experiences, we respond out of
the depths of our being with a wonderful diversity that marks human religion.
That makes a huge difference in how we understand the pursuit of our own
spiritual life and how we relate to others individually and institutionally. The
institutional Church is a necessity. No movement of the Spirit can ever
perpetuate itself without institutional forms. But, the very moment that the
institutional forms take shape, the seeds of death lie in the movement of the
Spirit. That’s just the way it is. I don’t know how it could be any different than
that. But, at least the awareness of that can alert us to the danger of absolutizing
the respective religious forms which cover the face of the earth.
The Church hasn’t taught us that, by and large, for we have claimed divinely
grounded revelation and divinely shaped institutional forms, creedal forms,
liturgical forms, the way the Church is organized and structured. And the Church
has taught us that kind of absolutizing. It was in July of 1049 or so that the
delegates from the Pope in Rome went to Constantinople and stood before the
altar at St. Sophia and excommunicated the Patriarch who was the head of the
Eastern Orthodox wing of the Church. Within a few days, the Patriarch in
Constantinople returned the favor, and we had the first major schism within the
Church. Then it was the western Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic, the Latin
right and the Eastern Orthodox right. And then, of course, in the 16th century the
catalyst, Martin Luther, but other reformers besides, led that movement that we
call the Reformation of the Church and once again we could get language many
places about how they mutually excommunicated each other. With the advent of
Protestantism out of the 16th century, the Church continued to splinter and it
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
splinters still, and I do believe that the problem is that we fail to recognize the
human dimension of our religious experience.
I know there is something endemic in all of us that really wants to have the truth,
the last word, absolute security. There is something human in us that wants our
way, our truth, our institution, our society to be infallible and inerrant and
absolutely trustworthy. As a matter of fact, in the human scene, that doesn’t
happen. And, as a matter of fact, if we demand that that happens or have the
illusion that ours is "it," we’ll be in a situation of constant conflict and mutual
excommunication, and the whole scene will be what it has been over nearly 2000
years. Church history is not a pretty story, and I really think at the core is that
inclination to absolutize my vision, my view, my form, justifying it on the basis
that it is divine rather than simply recognizing that there is this tremendous
diversity of religious expression which points to the universality of the religious
quest, the question deep within, and all of that diversity reflecting the diversity of
humankind and human experience that forms that response in all of the
respective ways that we find. I think it’s a very crucial insight to see that our
religious expression is a human, creative, imaginative construct. It is not sacred,
it is not holy, it is not inerrant or infallible, and it didn’t come from God. It is
because God has come to us, but the varieties of religious experience are reflected
in the varieties of religious institutions, forms, and structures, and if we could
just get there, religion could become a part of the world’s solutions rather than
the volatile fuel to continue to be part of the world’s problems.
This, I think, is what was going on with Jesus. That’s why I read these selected
passages. His movement creates a stir. There’s life; there’s passion; the people
hear him gladly; his words resonate with something deep within them, and in
that climactic sign that makes them call a Council, they say, "What are we going
to do?" and Caiaphas, spokesperson for the established Church, with a bit of
cynicism which is peril for those of us who are in this thing professionally, says,
"Look, don’t be silly. With one man gone, everything stays intact. Simple." Let me
say a word for Caiaphas. There are authorities, leaders within the institution,
necessarily so, and there are concerns for the well-being of the institution, for its
faithful perpetuation and its fruitful life. But, the danger is, and we can see it
here, that that fresh voice will be stifled and that movement be killed.
Jesus comes into the city, they hail him, and the cry is, "Look, we can’t do
anything. The whole world’s going after him." The Greeks want to see him and
that triggers with Jesus the realization of where he is on the calendar of his life.
The hour has come, and now it’s his struggle. Will I be true? Will I be true to that
newness that I see and embody? Or, will I buckle and allow the old to go on
undisturbed? A grain of wheat falls in the ground and dies, yet bears fruit. The
one who grasps unto his life loses it. The one willing to give his life away gains life
eternal, life in a whole other dimension. And John sums up the end of that first
half of the Gospel by saying, "In spite of everything they saw, they didn’t listen."
Even some of the leaders knew it. Even some of the leaders believed. But, for fear
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
of being put out of the synagogue, loving human glory more than the glory of
God, they didn’t join the movement and Jesus was executed. It is a paradigm, a
picture, a model of what has happened over and over again. Because we identify
our forms, our structures, no matter how loved they may be, no matter how
precious they may be, we tend to make them gods which we just happen to
possess rather than our poor stumbling, stammering attempts to respond to the
one who has encountered us.
In a recent issue of Christianity Today, the conservative journal, there were some
130 signatures to a declaration of doctrinal definition straight out of the 16th
century, the evangelical, fundamentalist group who signed that document
declaring once again what has been declared right down the line. And in the
journal of more liberal Christianity, the editorial in The Christian Century, after
discussing that declaration from the fundamental group, says the believers with
such questions about the atonement or about evangelical landmarks such as the
infallibility of scripture and the lost state of non-Christians will not find their
questions addressed or acknowledged by the document, either on biblical or
theological grounds. They will only find the old claims reasserted. Such a
summary of doctrinal claims can be a rather empty gesture, if not accompanied
by a deep engagement with the real questions that are on people’s minds.
I find it very interesting that, in a time when certainly the Church is in great
difficulty there is this retreat, this attempt to define, to dot the i and cross the t,
and all they can do is assert it, and there is no engagement with our
contemporary situation or the questions that are in the minds and hearts of
people because they are people, not because they are Christian or not or
evangelical or conservative or liberal. And, of course, the mainline
denominations, likewise, are struggling with some critical issues that threaten to
tear apart two or three or four of them and again I think it is because we’re all
knotted up in this problem of authority. If what we have always been is divinely
sanctioned, then I’ll fight for it. But, if we could just come to look at one another
in the eye and understand the authenticity and the passion of one another’s
hearts and believe one another and recognize that, out of diverse human
experience and diverse kinds of people, these diverse responses are made, if we
could live together under the canopy of love, it seems like it would be so simple.
Ezekiel’s wonderful vision - Israel is in tough shape. They said our bones are
dried up; we’re dead. And the voice of the Lord comes to the prophet, "Can these
bones live? O, Lord God, You know." Then there was the coming together of the
bones and the sinews and the muscles and they were a standing army, but they
were still dead until the Spirit of God, the breath of God, blew and brought them
alive, and the promises, "O, House of Israel, you shall live by my spirit," says the
Lord.
I concluded the Gospel readings with those five verses from chapter 13 of John’s
Gospel as the passion story opens with Jesus at supper with his disciples, taking a
© Grand Valley State University
�Church Must Die or Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
basin of water and a towel and washing their feet, because I think there’s a
picture, a symbol, a model of authenticity that is not based on any authoritarian
claims. It won’t work anymore simply to quote a verse, recite a creed, or call the
Church to witness. The authenticity will be demonstrated or the Church will die.
The Church must die to its absolutizing, to its divisions that point to human
diversity that are claimed the consequence of divine revelation. The Church must
die to its vested interests, its power structures, and it must allow the Spirit of God
to blow through it, take a basin and a towel and wash the world’s feet, feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, be a community of compassion, of passion, of love, and
it will not need absolute claims, it will not need an infallible Bible, it will not need
some creed that can never again be touched. It could live! It could be real, it
would be powerful, and the jaw of the world would drop and say, "My God,
behold how they love one another and all God’s world." It’s as simple as that.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/43865dc48d6c2eddfbf735e1aaa6a084.mp3
fdf14723498f3354fc9e539a6c8ec7e3
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XI
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Ezekiel 37:14, John 12:24, 43, 13:5
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1999-08-01
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The Church Must Die or Die
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 1, 1999 entitled "The Church Must Die or Die ", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ezekiel 37:14, John 12:24, 43, 13:5.
Authority
Compassion
Spirit
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a2e38fdb797723284428329263faf3ab.pdf
0e8b34c48b6c6670d8cc2489a6b38f98
PDF Text
Text
The Word That Wounds and Heals
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Hosea 10:12; 11:8; 14:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 25, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This spring I had several messages on the general theme, "The Varieties of
Religious Experience," and, thinking about that, I was reminded again of the fact
that that is precisely true, there is a variety of religious experience. The variety is
determined somewhat by the way one is raised or nurtured, but on the other
hand, there is a certain something in all of us that makes us more attuned to one
approach than another. That is the impossibility of a congregation at worship
because you have all kinds of people who respond differently to different stimuli
and out of different backgrounds with different nurture, and then one tries to
weave that all together. Some of you who have been with me for a long time know
that some years ago it was a very telling moment for me when at a seminar at
McCormick Seminary in Chicago, a Presbyterian school, they brought the
venerable old Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler in as a guest lecturer, and he
was needling the Presbyterians there, thinking that they were all Presbyterians
there, which I suppose most of them were, and he said, "You know, you
Presbyterians always route it through the head, always approach through the
mind, in an intellectualistic approach to faith, whereas the Catholic tradition is
more of an intuitive approach using symbols, sacraments, incense." (We used
incense here once but everyone started coughing; we have to get accustomed to
incense before we can use it full-blown.)
When I came home from that seminar, it was a moment of awareness for me to
realize that there was actually more than one legitimate way to worship and some
people can be approached more fruitfully in one way and some in another, and I
thought to myself, "Why must one choose?" and from that moment on it has been
our intention here to weave a tapestry of worship in such a way that there are
those moments when various people can be approached, where the entré to
different kinds of responses to religious stimuli can be honored, moments when
the word is addressed, as now, which has been the characteristic of our tradition,
but an enrichment of the rest of the service so there are those moments, even
moments of silence. Marcus Borg, when he was here, thought we were a bit
wordy, although he affirmed our worship, but he spoke, perhaps you will
remember, even for a place of silence in worship.
© Grand Valley State University
�Word That Wounds and Heals
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
We have been a wordy people, and it has been the tradition that has shaped me,
and consequently, the tradition that shapes this congregation probably most
forcefully. I want to look at that this morning; I want you to think with me about
the word that wounds and heals, and in so doing, I go to Hosea because the
Hebrew prophets were the ones who majored in this idea of the word of God as a
word of address. In fact, that is that which distinguished Israel from its neighbors
at the time, and the conception of the word of God spoken through the human
voice is a conception that formed and shaped the people of Israel. The eighth
century prophets, particularly, were these marvelous expositors of a word of God
in the midst of the concrete historical situation. The prophetic ministry of the
Church, the address to the world in its time and in its context derives from that
Hebrew prophetic tradition, Hosea, certainly one of the best. I love him because
of the things that I read this morning, a selective reading. I could have gone
anywhere in the prophetic corpus of the Hebrew scriptures, but I read Hosea
because there is so clearly the wounding word and the healing word, and the
word of God ought always to be understood to be wounding and healing, and
wounding in order to heal. There is no purpose in a wounding word of God that
does not bring, finally, the word of grace and healing.
Hosea had to confront the northern kingdom in the last period of their existence
before the Assyrian empire removed them in 722 B.C.E. Hosea prophesied in a
time of public turmoil, social unrest, the exploitation of the poor and the
vulnerable. In that sense, Hosea’s ministry was very much like most of the other
Hebrew prophets. They called Israel to account for its failure to live faithfully in
covenant with God and to have justice mark their social life. And so, he called
Israel to repent. It’s time to break up the fallow ground. It’s time to sow
righteousness and reap the steadfast love of the Lord, and in the 12th chapter
there is a summary, as it were, Hosea being the spokesperson for God, who
speaks about how tenderly God had nurtured Israel when Israel was in Egypt, "I
called my son," and how he picked him up and how he fed him and how he cared
for him and how he nurtured him, and then the statement, "But Israel continues
to turn away." They turn away and so they’re going to go back into exile. Once
again they are going to become the victims of Assyria; they are going to go back to
Egypt. "I’m done with them," God says. Then those very tender words, "How can
I give you up? How can I give you up? I can’t give you up. A human being would
give you up, but I’m not human; I am God."
The closing verses of the 14th chapter speak about Israel flowering as a garden
with the dew of heaven falling upon it, the fragrance of Lebanon’s wines marking
it, a picture of the healing. "I will heal you of your faithlessness."
I use that only illustratively. It is characteristic of the prophetic word. It is a word
that exposes. It is a word that tells the truth. It is a word that calls a spade a
spade. It is a word that makes us uneasy, uncomfortable in our ambiguity and
equivocation of our lives. It is a word that exposes our self-centeredness, our
selfishness. It is a word that calls us to right living, to the practice of justice and to
© Grand Valley State University
�Word That Wounds and Heals
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the ministry of mercy. It is a word that addresses us in our humanness and tells
us in the name of God to clean up our act, to get on with the work, to do the task,
whatever it may be, in whatever concrete situation, wherever there is
compromise, with our accountability to the faithful God. There the word of God
in public address dresses us down, but only for our own good, only in order to say
to us, "I’ll never let you go. The steadfast love of the Lord will never let you go." It
is a word that wounds and heals, and it wounds, not taking any satisfaction in the
wounding, but in order to awaken, in order to break through to the dullness of a
heart of stone, in order to call us up short, in order that we might be consciously
embraced, conscious of that unconditional love that will keep us forever. That is
the prophetic task of the prophetic word of God in the midst of the people of God.
I use Hosea, as I said, simply as an illustration of that which has shaped and
marked our tradition, that which is a big part of our Sunday morning experience.
I have in your liturgies a rather extended excerpt from an address of Karl Barth in
1922. Now, that is Karl Barth. When you look at the bibliographical reference, I
want you to know that Karl is not Carl, but Karl. Karl Barth cannot be with a "C."
And it is Barth, but there’s an "h" on the end, and we knock the h out of Karl
Barth. In the European pronunciation, the h is silent, but when I looked at that,
Carl Bart, I thought, "Oh, my gosh. I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. I don’t
want one of those to go anywhere out of this church." I want you to take them
home and read them several times, but I want you to change it to Karl Barth. I
thought everybody knew about Karl Barth, but my mistake. I should have faxed it
in. I did it on the telephone. It’s correct phonetically, but don’t let anybody know
we did that.
Anyway, Karl Barth was probably the greatest theologian of the 20th century, and
where did his theology come from? Where does this huge production come from?
It came from the task of preaching. Karl Barth, in the early part of this century,
graduated from the finest European institutions of learning. He was deeply
indebted to and steeped in the culture of Europe, and he went to a little Swiss
village to preach. He got into the pulpit, this highly educated, highly cultured
genius and brilliant man, and he had nothing to say, and he began to struggle
with the word of God. His theology, the Bartian theology, was called the theology
of the word because, in his experience of having to preach, he found he had
nothing to say, and when you have nothing to say and you have to preach, you’re
in deep trouble. So, Barth began to study and he studied the Epistle to the
Romans and after ten years of preaching in this village and working with a good
friend, seriously wrestling with the faith, he published The Epistle to the Romans.
It started such a stir that he was asked to come and speak about his theology to a
ministers’ conference. He was embarrassed by the very thought, and he said, "I
don’t have a theology. I have a theology just like it came to me, nurtured through
my teachers until I had to preach, and then I needed something to say, and I
began to study and think biblically and theologically in order for the sermon on
Sunday morning."
© Grand Valley State University
�Word That Wounds and Heals
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
You see, there’s really nothing that is more important than this moment. Now, I
said a moment ago that I recognize a variety of religious experience and more and
more I have come to appreciate the aesthetic and the sacramental and the silence.
That is so terribly important. Maybe God can even touch us more easily then, I
don’t know. Maybe it would be better if I would shut up, but for better or for
worse, this is the moment of the sermon, this is the moment of the address of the
word of God and I want to say to you it is a terribly important moment. Karl
Barth recognized that his people were coming and he needed to have something
to say, and he came to realize that all theology ought to be nothing more than in
service of the sermon in order at this moment we can have something to say.
He speaks about Sunday morning, about the strange architecture of the place, the
furniture, the appointments, and then the expectation. Oh, he recognizes that
maybe someone came lazily, lollygagging in, not really expecting anything, and
yet, he said, the whole situation speaks of expectation. Some event, some event in
the past or perhaps in the future, some event, God is present. And then he says
here is presumption, here is daring - one prays, someone begins to preach, and
it’s done on the conviction that God is present. That is what this moment is about
- that God is present. Barth says the people come with a question, and the
question is, "Is it true?" He says that the preacher had better understand people
better than the people understand themselves. The preacher better know that
down in the depths of the human heart and soul there’s a question that says, "Is it
true?" In other words, can I live with trust?
Can I believe, somehow or other in the midst of the world that has gone crazy
with all of the darkness, where in Kosovo 14 farmers baling hay are shot at close
range, where there continues to be this vengeful cycle of revenge, the violence
where it’s symptomatic of the human condition, where I look into the human
soul, I look into my own heart and I see the darkness there, the compromise
there. I see the ambiguity there. I see the self-centeredness there, I see all of that
which keeps me from fulfilling that calling of God, that beckoning of the spirit.
Is it true? Is anything true? Is God at all here? Is God present? Can God be
trusted? Is God involved at all in the world, in history, in nature, in my life?
Barth says that’s what Sunday morning is all about. That’s what this moment is
all about. The people have come and even when they don’t realize it, even when
they just come because it’s Sunday morning and haven’t even thought about it,
even when they come with very little conscious expectation, down deep in their
heart, he says, there’s a question - Is it true? Can God be trusted? Is God? Is it
true? Karl Barth says Sunday morning is that moment in which all theology
should be focused in order to give the preacher something to say and to be able to
touch that deep place in the human heart where there’s doubt and fear and
anxiety, deep questions, where there’s a cry, "Is it true?" That’s what Sunday
morning is all about.
© Grand Valley State University
�Word That Wounds and Heals
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
I came across this work of Barth when I was in Europe and if I had ever been
tempted at all, following post-graduate study, to go into the academic
community, I think it was this piece plus Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and
Papers From Prison that convinced me that this is the most important place in
the world and this is the most important hour of the week, this hour, preaching.
My God, it’s important, people. Do you realize how important it is?
Presumptuous. Daring. One flawed and failing human being trying to say a word
that is the word of God. That’s what Calvin understood it to be, and Barth, in
following Calvin, clarified very, very nicely the three forms of the word of God,
the center of it all the word made flesh: the word made flesh, the word of God
embodied, and all of Israel’s prophetic word, words of anticipation, and all of the
apostolic witness following the word of recollection or remembrance. So, there’s
the word in flesh and the word written, but then, here’s daring, the preached
word, and the preached word is nothing more or less than the word of God
updated for this place and this time and this people.
Even when we read Hosea’s words, we’re reading an 8th century prophet into
which have been layered some 6th century words because the 8th century prophet
became the text for a 6th century preacher, and the text now that we have in 1999
is the text of the word of God written out of the 8th century Before the Common
Era, and the 6th century Before the Common Era, and here it is 1999 and it
becomes the occasion for the preaching of the word in this place at this time,
because the word preached is the updating of the word written that is spoken on
the word in flesh, because Barth understood so clearly that revelation is always
an event. You don’t have revelation in a book; you don’t have revelation in an
institution; you don’t have revelation in a confessional creed; the word of God
speaks. God reveals God. Never at our disposal. Never to put in our pocket. Never
for us to domesticate and have in a neat little box, packaged. The word of God will
speak when God will speak, and when the human voice is speaking a word of
address based on a written text pointing to the word in flesh, it just might
happen. And it might not. It probably doesn’t happen more often than it happens.
But, that’s why this is such an electric moment. That’s why this could potentially
be a world turning upside down, transforming moment for someone, and who
knows how it will happen, because the Spirit blows where it will. But when the
word made flesh, witnessed to by the word written, becomes the text for a word of
address, it just might happen. Even here and now someone might see a rift in the
sky, someone whose burden is heavy might feel it lift, someone might see a light
in the darkness, someone might feel themselves exposed, laid bare in all their
selfishness compromised and all of the flawedness of their existence, someone
might cry out, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," someone might say, "I heard
the voice today that said, ‘I will heal your faithlessness; I’ll never give you up.’"
I don’t know how it happens, when it happens, but I know that it is absolutely
serious and critical that it happens where we find an honest word today. Will you
find it in the political arena? Why can we not pass campaign reform? Is it not
© Grand Valley State University
�Word That Wounds and Heals
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
because our political system is for sale? Where has the word "spin doctor" come
from? Do we believe anything we hear, or is it always something with a spin, or
an ulterior motive satisfied by an ambition for human acquisition or
aggrandizement, for the undercutting of something or other, for the setting up of
a project or a person? Is there any truth in the land?
There had better be truth here. Do I presume to be one without bias or prejudice?
Of course not. That’s the presumption of preaching. But I had better not speak a
word that I speak not consciously before the face of God. If there is to be truth to
be told in the earth, then it must be told here, where there is nothing to gain,
where there is no ulterior motive but the well-being of humankind and the glory
of God and the mending of creation.
The religious right has joined the political game. Recently Ed Dobson of Calvary
Undenominational, and Cal Thomas, the journalist, wrote a book about Blinded
By Power, because when the Church gets enmeshed in those structures, then it
has another agenda, then it can’t tell the truth. Only the free pulpit and a free
person who has nothing but the concern to speak a word from God is the
salvation of the world. It is here that you can still hear a word of truth, in spite of
the flawed nature of the voice, but the voice is tied to the text and points to the
one, and your deep question, "Is it true?" can be answered from the written word
that pointed to the word in flesh that lived out the fact, "Yes, it’s true. God is love.
A fierce love that will expose you only in order, finally, to heal you." I don’t know
of another stop along your way this week where you have a better chance of
hearing the word of God than in this hour, and that’s why you come, and it’s that
word in which you can trust, and by God, it’s tough. It’s presumptuous. It’s
daring, and it doesn’t get any easier, because I take it so seriously, do you know
that? God have mercy on us.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e91cb8e5f39953b6a135edf8cc9093c2.mp3
86f5b841026b1e528a430f6c561221cb
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost X
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Hosea 10:12, 11:8, 14:4
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19990725
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1999-07-25
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The Word That Wounds and Heals
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 25, 1999 entitled "The Word That Wounds and Heals", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hosea 10:12, 11:8, 14:4.
Justice
Prophetic Voice
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2f5dbeea1e8e116d5a62918554c69200.pdf
11c2508024f7c570f806f2af36093130
PDF Text
Text
Religion: Binding or Setting Free
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Isaiah 46:3-4; Ephesians 1:17-19; Matthew 23:15
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 18, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I hope you got up this morning and said, "Ah, Sunday. We get to go to church." If
you got up and said, "It’s Sunday; we have to go to church," I hope you feel a little
guilty for about five minutes, but not much longer than that.
Religion ought to be an experience of joy and liberation, and Sunday worship
ought to be the crown of it all, the time when we find inspiration and
encouragement and new reason to live zestfully. I find that what I am dealing
with this morning pops up on my chart quite often. The fact that religion ought to
be a source of freedom. I would like to be known as the singer of the song of the
soul set free.
Some Lents ago I preached a rather strange sermon, admittedly; it was a sermon
about the insurrectionist that was crucified with Jesus. Now, not the good one,
you know. Everybody preaches on the good one. After all, the good one pleaded
for mercy in the end and got this wonderful promise from Jesus. But I preached
on the one that remained belligerent, cursing through his teeth to his last breath,
finding therein something I thought rather heroic. I suppose because of my own
Libertarianism and contrariness, perhaps. But I thought it was probably not
biblically accurate, but interesting. However, someone got really angry with me
about that and came in to see me, and said to me, "All you preach is freedom and
grace and in my work, I find out that what people need are rules and guidance
and discipline." And it was a moment of awakening for me. I think I didn’t react
defensively, I just smiled and I said, "Well, they won’t get it from me." And it was
a moment of awakening wherein I recognized that I am not a complete preacher.
No one has ever accused me of balance. I think balance is boring, and balance
ends up in making no point deeply, and I can’t be everything. I have been shaped
in a certain way and had certain kinds of experiences, and that has enabled me to
put my finger on what I discern is a very important niche to be filled - that is to
seek to save people from religion, to set people free, free from religion, especially
religion. And I have been doing that now for a long time and as this morning we
continue in this series, "Moving On To Maturity," I simply want to say what I’ve
said here many times but find that it needs to be said again and again because
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Binding or Setting Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
there is something intrinsic in religion that tends to bind and cripple the human
personality rather than setting a person free. So, this morning, let me say I am
the herald of good religion that releases and sets free, and I would speak a word
against that religion that binds the soul and becomes a burden to be borne,
because there is a lot of religion that way.
We need to recognize how religion arose in the first place. It didn’t just drop
down out of heaven, and it is not something that God gave to us, but it is
something that we have created in our attempt to respond to God in the early
beginnings of what we call the human, the beginnings of consciousness, of selfconsciousness. There was the growing awareness of one’s existence, how fragile it
is, how perilous it is, and inevitably with the emergence of the human come
questions of meaning and of purpose. From whence have we come and whither
are we going, and what is the meaning of it, anyway? Life with its passages and its
perils is not easy to negotiate, and in the early dawning of human consciousness
these deeply existential questions began to be asked, and then someone saw a
bush that burned and wasn’t consumed. Someone entered the temple and it was
filled with smoke and the pillars of the temple were shaking. Someone looked at a
man and said, "The Lamb of God." Someone was going on the road to Damascus
and a bright light encountered him and a voice spoke to him. In our own
tradition, but we could duplicate that in all the great religious traditions, there
was someone sometime who had some kind of experience and, to the extent that
that experience spoke to the reality of his or her situation, and to the extent that
as it was shared, it resonated with the experience of others, there was a gathered
community and then a gathered community that became a tradition, and that
experience was reduced to a teaching and a ritual through which one worshipped
and a way of life. And so, we have the great religions that are based on a founding
experience and have taken on a certain institutional form, and those great
religions continue to serve people as life maps, to give orientation, to answer
those alternate questions of life as we live in the mystery of our existence before
that Ultimate Mystery that bears us. That’s the nature of religion.
If you were here in May when we welcomed our eighth graders into the
continuing pilgrimage of faith, you heard me say to them that all we could give to
them was secondhand religion and that really is what institutional, traditional
religion is - it’s secondhand religion, and I quoted a statement of William James
in his Varieties of Religious Experience, where he said, "Such an ordinary
religious person, his religion has been made for him by others, communicated to
him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit."
And that’s really true, when you think about it. There is the experience that
someone else had. There’s the tradition that conveys it. There is the form by
which it is fixed by imitation or repetition, and continued by habit. So, most of us
are what we were born to be; we are within the tradition and that understanding
with which we were born and nurtured, and our religion secondhand. Now,
hopefully it becomes the occasion for fresh experience, for firsthand experience.
But, institutional religion is, after all, a commodity which inevitably tends, in its
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Binding or Setting Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
institutional forms which are necessary, it tends to become a burden rather than
that which lifts the burden. It tends to become another obligation for which we
feel responsible and it becomes burdensome.
Second Isaiah, with the Jews in exile in Babylon, gives us a marvelous picture of
religion that has become a burden. Baal and Nibo were the chief gods of the
Babylonians and the Jews in exile would see on New Year’s Day the grand
processions of the images of the gods, down from their pedestals, taken on
parade around the walls of the city. The problem with the Jews in exile was that it
seemed to them that these gods must be the chief gods because where was their
God? They were in exile; they were in captivity. So, the prophet has to remind
them that their God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. He has to have
them remember who their God really is, and in drawing this picture with a little
satire and humor, he pictures the images of the gods being taken from their
pedestals and put on beasts of burden and carried out of town, not in a New
Year’s feast, now, but because the enemy is at the gate and what they’re trying to
do is save their gods. Now, if you don’t get a little laugh out of that, you see, their
gods are going into captivity; they’ve got to rescue their gods! For gods’ sake, they
have to take care of their gods! And the prophet says to them, "Look at them,
carrying off their gods in order that they not be taken into captivity and their
images can’t say a word, they can’t save, they become a burden to be borne." And
then, in contrast to that, he sets forth these words from the Lord, "Listen to me, O
house of Jacob and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne
by me from your birth, carried from the womb, even to your old age, I am God.
Even when you turn gray, I will carry you. I have made and I will bear. I will carry
and I will save."
God is not a god that needs to be rescued or a burden to be borne, but a God Who
carries, a God Who lifts, a God Who rescues, and a God Who saves.
Now, we can laugh at the silly Babylonians for putting all that stock in those
images that they put on beasts of burden. Can’t you see the idols sort of tipping
off because the poor, old beast can’t handle it and the idol’s nose is dragged in the
dust as it’s going out of town in order to be rescued. And we can laugh at that,
and the prophet intended this satire to be biting, but our religion so easily
becomes that. Take, for example, the Church. Ask me about the Church. It’s not
so easy to keep the machinery going; it’s not so easy to keep the budget up to
snuff, and then all of the programs of the church - how many pulpit
announcements don’t jerk you just a little bit, add just a pinch of guilt? And if you
didn’t get up this morning and say, "Oh, thank God it’s Sunday; I get to go to
church," maybe you were saying, "Oh, what a beautiful summer day. But, I
suppose we’d better go to church. There was poor old Dick slaving all Saturday
and he’s going to sit on his stool and nobody there, we’d better go." There’s so
many good people who support religion for all the wrong reasons. I’ve known a
lot of good church leaders that way. They remind me of what Mark Twain said, "A
good man in the worst sense of the word." Think about that.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Binding or Setting Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
I do thank God for responsible people and serious people and people who bear
the burden in the heat of the day and who keep it going, but I have to tell you - it
can turn religion into a burden and it misses the intention. It makes religion an
end in itself rather than a means to the end of setting the soul free and finding a
way to sing and shout and dance. Religion is a means to an end, it’s not an end in
itself, and when it becomes organized and institutionalized and established well,
it becomes something that has to be kept up. Just look around us today - all the
stuff about religion in the newspaper, about plastering the Ten Commandments
on every wall in the schools and in the courts. We want to have children pray in
school. Why? Not because we’re so concerned about the spiritual life of people,
but rather because we are afraid the morality of the nation is unraveling and we
have to keep the Ten Commandments up there, and we’ve got to get children
praying and we have to expose them to all this. We have to utilize religion in
order to keep society from disintegrating and that makes religion oppressive; it
uses religion; it makes religion a tool, and it sours us. Religion used for any other
purpose than the worship of God, dancing before God Who sets the soul free, is
bad religion, good for family values, good for community values, good for
maintaining the civilization in the West, and all of that misses the point, and all
of it abuses and misuses religion, and all of it makes religion a burden to be
borne.
In the Church, my philosophy over the years of programming has been do only as
much as you have to. I never try to scratch where people don’t itch. The things
that will meet human need are the things that will be supported, people will be
there. Otherwise, you have an elaborate program and you plead with people to
participate in these good things we have prepared. The whole society today is
organizing all kinds of good things for me to do that I don’t want to do. I don’t
need to do them, and the Church can be as guilty, and maybe more guilty than
any other social organization in providing all sorts of "stuff." It becomes a
burden, and the more serious you are, the more conscientious you are, the more
you are inclined to support this project. It’s like the PTA - everybody ought to
support the PTA, everybody ought to support the United Fund, everyone ought to
support Boy Scouts in America, everybody ought to support the Cancer Drive,
whatever drive there may be, and, for God’s sake, we ought to support the
Church. A community needs a church. It makes for a good community. It just
makes for better people. All such reasoning misses the point completely. We
imitate the Babylonians hoisting their gods off the pedestals onto the beasts of
burden and trying to guide them and keep them from falling, trying to get them
out of town so the gods can be saved. I don’t think anyone here is into that kind of
religion, but if there is, you really need a sabbatical - get cleansed of it or you’ll
never be able to enjoy God. If your religion is heavy with obligation under the
tyranny of ought, the musts, and the shoulds, you are burdened.
Jesus certainly knew that. When I read the 23rd chapter of Matthew, as other
Gospel passages of conflict, I always want to say the controversy is probably
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Binding or Setting Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
between Matthew and those he was in conflict with rather than reflective of Jesus
in his time. However, certainly Matthew was reflective of the spirit of Jesus and
the intention of Jesus, and one of the reasons that Jesus got into such serious
trouble was that he didn’t support that kind of institutional religion that had
become a burden, and in the 23rd chapter of Matthew we read, "You bind heavy
burdens on people that they cannot bear and you don’t yourself." He said the
scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat so when they teach, they are teaching
you Moses, the Mosaic tradition, that’s fine. But, don’t do as they do." And in the
conclusion to that chapter he says, "Woe to you. You go all over the world and
make a proselyte and once you have a proselyte, you’ve made him twice over the
child of Hell, binding heavy burdens on people, trying to make them religious and
all of it turns upside down what it’s really all about, which is setting the soul free."
Jesus was so strong against the conventional wisdom of his day that put people in
their places and through their paces, and he violated all of the taboos in the
interest of people with that sense he had of the graciousness of God.
What we do with bad religion is scandalize God. What kind of a God is it,
anyway? A stern, demanding parent who created us and then keeps us in our
adolescence, treating us as naughty children. The biblical paradigm of paradise
and fall adds to that. We’re guilty sinners. Are we guilty sinners? Well, let’s go to
Kosovo, or let’s look into our own heart. Of course, we are. But, not because we
have fallen from some pristine perfection, but because we are still clawing our
way out of the jungle, and we haven’t made as much progress as we should have
made. But, I will tell you what - that stern, demanding father doesn’t help any.
Rather, it binds us in our rebellion and it keeps us in our immaturity.
God is for us! This is what Paul was trying to say. If I had more time this
morning, I could have read the whole first chapter of Ephesians, those first
fourteen verses fairly soar as Paul talks about the eternal, everlasting grace of
God, His loving us, knowing us before the foundations of the world and working
things out according to his purposes. A grand, grand passage. And then Paul
comes to address his people in Ephesus personally, where he says, "I pray for you
that God will enlighten the eyes of your understanding, that the inner being will
be illumined that you might come to know what is the hope to which he calls you.
What are the riches of the inheritance which is yours, what is the power available
to you, the very power and resurrection." Paul says, "Oh, I hope you’re getting it. I
pray to God that He will help you to see it." You see, Paul was the one who had
that pounding vision; Paul had his soul on fire and he said to these people, "It’s so
grand, the grace of God is so big, so rich, so wonderful! I hope that you have come
to see it."
When religion is used as a means for everything else other than dancing before
God , it becomes a burden to be borne rather than a gift to be celebrated, and it
binds the human soul rather than setting free.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion Binding or Setting Free
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
I want to say this clearly this morning - there are religious observances that are
important and helpful. Talking about religious observances, which I’ve been
rather hard on this morning, C. S. Lewis said, "When we carry out our religious
duties, we are like people digging channels in a waterless land in order that when
at last the water comes, it may find them ready. There are happy moments, even
now, when a trickle creeps along the dry beds, and happy souls for whom this
happens often." Obviously I know that there are certain religious observances
that we go through and sometimes going through them, there’s no electric shock,
no lightning strikes, but we do have a pattern of religious life, and we do that
because we know that, now and again, here and there, there will be a trickle of
water, fresh breath, new insight, deep resting in grace. And so, we keep coming
and we keep opening ourselves, and we keep practicing. But, all the time we know
it’s not to keep the community healthy or the nations sound or our accounts
square with a stern, demanding God, heavenly parent. But, we do it because now
and again we’ve tasted grace. We know the taste of cool, running water, and we
long more and more to be lifted by that experience.
There was once a pastor who had a little boy who used to come down from the
parsonage to the study on the parking lot here every morning to say to his father
who was the preacher, "Daddy, what day is it?" The father would say, "Tuesday."
"Oh, good."
He would come down again, "Daddy, what day is it?"
"Thursday."
"Oh, good."
"Saturday."
"Good."
"Sunday."
"Ahhhh," and he would go into a wailing temper tantrum. Sunday; ugly Sunday.
Well, God has a special grace for preachers’ kids, and the preacher was a stern
father and a demanding heavenly parent type and he broke the child’s will and
the child eventually came to church. But that story always amused me because I
think it reflects the experience of many of us growing up. Sunday. Church.
You don’t have to come, but come when you need to. Come, like digging up
channels in a waterless land, and just maybe, just maybe there will be a trickle of
water. And, if it’s rules and guidance and structure that you need, check down the
street. But, if you need a shot of grace, I’ll see you every Sunday.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b417c72aa6ccfad27784669355fff6bc.mp3
2059f0baa4782ca6c32032d7e3b106fc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost IX
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Isaiah 46:3-4, Ephesians 1:17-19, Matthew 23:15
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19990718
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-07-18
Title
A name given to the resource
Religion: Binding or Setting Free?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 18, 1999 entitled "Religion: Binding or Setting Free?", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 46:3-4, Ephesians 1:17-19, Matthew 23:15.
Presence
Religion as a Human Construct
Ritual
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a282073125ad06716d898081fd9342b9.pdf
c9ef93ce3a4d2744c467cac32b437074
PDF Text
Text
The Heart Cannot Rest Where the Mind Cannot Follow
From the series: Moving On To Maturity
Text: Isaiah 44:18; Ephesians 4:13; Matthew 5:48
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost VIII, July 11, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
As the children leave the sanctuary, the words of the old Spiritual come to me,
"Give me that old time religion; give me that old time religion; it was good
enough for my mother; it was good enough for my sister; it was good enough for
my brother, and it's good enough for me."
Well, we've all sung it and I think we can understand and feel some of the
emotion that is behind that old Spiritual, but I will say this morning quite clearly
and straightforwardly that the old time religion isn't good enough for me. It's not
really that it's not good enough for me; it's just simply that it no longer works for
me. The old time religion can no longer resonate with my knowledge and my
human experience, that manner in which it sought to express the reality of the
living God and the embrace of God, of the cosmic reality of which we are a part. It
no longer tracks with what I understand about myself, about the world, about
history, about God. And so, the old time religion comes up short in my experience
and I want to speak about that this morning as I begin a new series of messages
on "Moving On to Maturity." Moving on to maturity, or growing up as people of
faith.
I have experienced a freedom to address these issues in the last year and a half,
which is a freedom that I didn't know that I didn't have before. When people ask
me, "How are you doing," I say, "Just great," and they say, "Really, how are you
doing?" And if they really want to know, then I use the phrase which many of you
have heard me say, "I have a freedom that I didn't know I didn't have." That's
quite a remarkable experience, because I had always felt free in my thinking and
in my preaching, and you as a congregation had always encouraged and affirmed
that freedom to probe and to wrestle and to question and to wonder. But I now
recognize, in retrospect, that I was not totally free because I was always trying to
express my best understanding and insights within a certain box, within a certain
confessional home. There were certain parameters against which I was always
testing my struggle to understand, and, of course, that's not all bad. In fact, such
freedom as I have now in this independent status in which we find ourselves has
perils that go along with it. There is a real danger in the non-accountability of my
© Grand Valley State University
�The Heart Cannot Rest …
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
present situation. I am aware of that and you need to be aware of that, too. There
is the voice of an old professor always ringing in my mind who used to say,
"Beware of the perils of independency." I have always affirmed the importance of
ecclesiastical connection, but I must say to you, for the time being at least, I am
savoring the freedom and enjoying it very much.
I got a visit from my computer son from Florida who got me the computer against
any indication that I would ever be able to use it. It has sat moribund on my desk
for a couple of years. But, since he was just here, once again he forced me to learn
how to read my mail and, thinking that perhaps having just learned it anew, I
probably ought to practice it a couple of times, last night in order to avoid
working on the sermon, I punched the computer on and I read my mail, and I had
this long letter from Pilgrim out east in Maine, a Congregational minister who
said that you are a marvelous community of people, and he said, "For a year and
a half now I've been taking your sermons off the Internet and while I don't agree
with everything, they're always stimulating and provocative," and he went on to
affirm us and then he went on to say, "And why I am now contacting you is that
we were a congregation who forty years ago as a Congregational Church didn't go
into the union with the Reformed, German Reformed Church to form the United
Church of Christ." And he says the Congregational churches that didn't go into
that merger formed an alliance called the National Association of Congregational
Christian Churches, and he said, "From what I sense on the Internet about Christ
Community, it's a place where you could feel at home. It has great diversity of
theological opinion, and the reason we didn't go into the merger was because we
value congregational autonomy."
Well, it's a very nice letter and I will respond to him. I will say to him, "Thank you
very much, and it sounds as though you have the best offer going. But now, in the
springtime of my senility, sliding toward summer, I am having the time of my life,
and I have no right to determine the future of this congregation forever, but just
for a little while I want to be free."
Now, that's a kind of freedom that I didn't know that I didn't have, and I
acknowledge its perils and its dangers because a person in my position can lead a
people astray, can abuse, can exploit, and without a system of accountability,
where might one go? The only thing that causes me not to worry too much about
this congregation is the fact that nobody's going to lead you blindfolded
anywhere. I wish you could all know all the stories of the people that joined this
faith community today. You are people who are here very intentionally and very
deliberately precisely because you want to think and wrestle and struggle and
come to your own religious experience, your own Christian experience, and you
have thrown off that mantle of authoritarianism that has marked the Church
traditionally. You, I believe, are mature and maturing people, and I think it's time
for us to move on to maturity altogether, and in doing that very deliberately and
very self-consciously, moving on.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Heart Cannot Rest …
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
The title of this first sermon in the series indicates what I want to say and that is
that the heart cannot rest where the mind cannot follow. The heart in terms of the
whole being, our whole being, our intuitive sense of what is and what is true and
what is real - that heart cannot dwell or rest where the mind cannot follow. I put
the title in quite a long time ago and I was remembering the statement that I read
in a book a lot longer time ago and I thought I was quoting the statement
correctly. Last night I pulled the old book off the shelf and paged through to see if
I could find that statement again. I found it and I found out I had misquoted it.
The statement really is, "The heart cannot finally find true what the mind finds
false." That's a better statement; that's sharper and that says precisely what I
want to say to you this morning as we think about moving on to maturity. The
heart, the being, our total being cannot finally find true what our minds find
false. And that's the problem with religion. It's the problem of the Church. It's the
problem of every religious institution and every world religion. It is endemic to
the religious experience, that tension between what the heart finds true and what
the mind knows.
The mind deals with the stuff of everyday reality and there has been an explosion
of knowledge and a cumulative human learning by this time in the cosmic
journey. It is just fantastic and it continues to float all over the place. And the
mind takes all that in, but then, also plays it off against the faith structure, the
creedal condition, the confessional statements, and there is conflict. And what I
want to say to you this morning as an expression of the freedom that I am sensing
is that I delight to address these things, not in some manner in which I would
imply that I have grasped all the facets of truth or that I sort of have a handle on
this thing, but this morning I want to say to you that I will never preach to you
what my heart cannot finally find true. And my heart will not be able, finally, to
find true what my mind finds false.
Now, it's taken me 39 years to say that. All of the past time trying always to
translate that Gospel message within certain parameters and then suddenly to
come to this giddy experience of saying, "What do I really believe?" and daring to
share it, hoping to encourage you, maybe even inspire you, stimulate you, to be
provocative in your own experience, but not as an authority. Ah, you say, "You're
an authority figure and you can't get away from it." I refuse the office. I'm a
pilgrim with you. I will not be your authority. I'm going to think with you; I'm
going to share with you the best insights I have, but you can listen and you can
filter and I hope that you will be stimulated in your own pilgrimage to move from
secondhand religion to firsthand experience.
That's the problem with religion, of course. It begins with an explosion, with a
fire. Someone has a vision. God knocks someone off their horse, prostrate on the
ground, a burning bush, whatever it may be. A word made flesh, and that
explosion, that fire, that flame engulfs and sweeps, but eventually the initial fire
begins to dampen, to be banked, to die down, and then those who have been
caught in the explosion begin to wonder what in the world happened, and the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Heart Cannot Rest …
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
experience, then, begins to be distilled for certain truths that can be stated
rationally, reasonably. So now, we have an experience that cannot really be
communicated, but, having to be communicated, having to be told, shared, and
so we do the best we can to distill what we can from the explosion and say this
and that and so forth. There is a real tension in the beginning, differing opinions,
alternative systems. There's a conflict going on, but eventually, some party or
some person gets the upper hand and the truth is defined. That's what we call
orthodoxy.
You know what orthodoxy is. Well, you know what orthodontists do? They
straighten your teeth. You know what orthopedic surgeons do? They realign a
cracked bone. You know what an orthodox preacher does? He keeps you thinking
right. Ortho - straight or correct. Doxa - from dokein, to think. The orthodox
church is a church in which people are nurtured, trained, schooled and controlled
to think right. Orthodoxy has the truth defined rationally. This explosion, this
experience that burst forth gets domesticated to a creedal statement, a
confessional statement, and there is a right way to believe or to think. That is
orthodoxy, and it is the inevitable movement of every religious movement. It is
the necessity of every institutionalization of a religious movement and, to the
extent that the distilled truth of the experience is clear and concise, to that extent
it can be passed along and it will be successful and it will build a community of
people, followers, and it will be a means for many for the stimulus of fresh
experience. But, it will be the case with many, many more that it will simply be
the second-hand creed that one received, that one inherited that was passed
along to one and which one passes along.
The problem with orthodoxy is the problem with secondhand religious
experience that shuts off the possibility of continuing thought and growth and
new adventure. Oh, there have been instances of movement. For example, the
Genesis stories. If you have an Old King James Bible around, look in the column
between the columns and you will see there 4004 B.C.. Bishop Usher, an English
Bishop, went back and added up all the years of all the genealogies and he
concluded that creation had to be 4004 B.C. And it was really a matter of creedal
conviction for generations, and when Darwin came along in the 19th century and
the whole evolutionary hypothesis was set forth, there was this intense struggle
between science and religion. In fact, orthodoxy has had a tremendous problem
in the whole modern period in the last four to five hundred years because
orthodoxy is a rational statement of what is. It's no longer simply the experience,
the fire, that which is deeper than the rational. It is a rational statement of what
is. Now you have the whole advent of the natural sciences whose principle of
verification is able to determine what is, empirically through experimentation.
Religion and science have been in conflict and science will win every time as long
as you are dealing on the rational basis, as long as you are dealing on
propositional truths, claiming what is, what is reality, what is the human person,
what has happened in history, etc., etc.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Heart Cannot Rest …
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
The Church has made some progress because we have come to see the symbolic
nature of those Genesis creation stories, and the roof hasn't caved in. Yet, here in
1999, there's a whole fundamentalist Christian movement that would have
Creationism taught in the public schools. It seems impossible that that discussion
could still be going on, but it is.
In terms of the apocalypticism of the New Testament in several of its expressions,
expecting the soon return of Jesus Christ - well, we've had to make adjustments
to that because nothing has happened. But, here we are on the threshold of the
third millennium and there are those who are still talking about the second
coming of Christ in terms of this millennial turn. So, we are able to continue, to
perpetuate anachronistic understandings and outmoded manners of faith to a
remarkable degree in a world that is as open as ours where there is as much
information around.
This has been the ongoing problem of the orthodox Church, the orthodox
expression of any religion. Correct thinking. But the world doesn't stop; history
doesn't stop; human experience continues to go on and there is an accumulation
of knowledge and experience, which finally has to shatter that little box of faith
that has been given to us. And when that happens, one either leaves and drops
out, and that's happened en masse, or one shuts off the mind, or one says, as I am
saying to you this morning, my heart cannot dwell and affirm as true that which
my mind finds to be false. But, if my experience, if the reality to which my whole
being is drawn, in which it is grounded, embraced, if that total experience
transcends my rational understanding, then I have to try to find a new way to say
reasonably, understandably what that deeper experience is.
That's my hope for all of us - that we will move on to maturity, that we will come
to a deeper expression of our faith in order that we need not jettison that deep
religious experience of the grace of God, nor live with our heads in the sand,
failing to acknowledge that the old paradigms and stories are simply shot out of
the water with everything that is coming to light in what we know about our
world, about our history, about our person. Maturity, moving on with fresh
experience and fresh faith expression - that's the goal.
There is precedent for doing this. Jesus said, "It has been said, but I say unto you
...," and he called the people in the culminating point to that portion of the
Sermon on the Mount where he calls for the loving even of enemies, saying, "Be
ye therefore perfect..." a terrible translation filled with all the moralism that has
been oppressive throughout all the centuries, "Be ye therefore perfect, as God is
perfect?" No, that's not it. Telios is the Greek word. Be therefore mature, be ye
therefore complete, as God is mature. Jesus is talking about a new being - a
kingdom person in that Sermon on the Mount. He comes to this culminating
point and says, "Be inclusive, not exclusive. No more tribalism, no more drawing
circles around my little people, no more over-againstness, no more 'us and them.'
For God's sake, love your enemies, as God loves all, for the rain falls on the just
© Grand Valley State University
�The Heart Cannot Rest …
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
and the unjust and the sun shines on the good and the evil because there are no
good and evil, just and unjust, but all human beings in various states of disarray
who are embraced by the eternal God who created us." Jesus says love your
enemies, embrace, be inclusive.
Paul uses the same word, Telios. Jesus says be like God, be complete, be mature.
Paul says in the 13th verse of Ephesians 4, "Come to maturity." Grow up. No more
children blown about by every wind of doctrine. Grow up! Think! Because the
passion of Paul, the vision of Paul came to expression in that third chapter, the
14th verse following where he says, "I pray for you that you be rooted and
grounded in love, that you'll come to know the length and the breadth and the
height and the depth of the love of God, that you will come to know all the
fullness of God. That's what I want for you." He recognizes that it is a process, but
he says, "Move on to maturity; be mature in Christ Jesus."
I don't know, but I wonder how long – even with the institutional structures and
the momentum that they create and the power they possess and the control they
have over many – many people can go on. Can the heart find truth where the
mind finds falsehood? Do we not have to enter this world of ours and open our
eyes and take it all in and then know that, beneath it all, above it all, and beyond
it all is the eternal God whose grace is an experience of the heart far beyond a set
of rational propositions?
If I were to put it in sum this morning, I would say, on the basis of what Jesus
says, and what Paul says in our text – "Be open-minded." “It has been said, I say
to you ...” – to make that transition you have to have an open mind. Don't tell me
it was Jesus, the son of God and therefore, it doesn't apply to the rest of us. Jesus,
with all of the limitations of his humanity, had the courage to give expression to
something new. "It has been said, I say unto you ..." Be of broad and liberal spirit,
embrace, do not exclude, love your enemies, be done with tight tribalism, narrow
ethnicism, destructive nationalism. Stop drawing lines unless the circle embraces
the whole human family. And, trust deeply. Trust deeply. Let it wash through
your mind and over your heart that you are rooted and grounded in love, that
love is the ultimate reality.
The French thinker, Pascal, said it better than I can say it. "If one subjects
everything to reason, our religion will lose its mystery. If one offends the
principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. There are two
equally dangerous extremes - to shut reason out and to let nothing else in."
Let us go on to maturity. No more studied ambiguity; no more word games; just
plain-speaking, because the deepest truth of this place, for better or for worse,
because it is the deepest truth of this preacher is that the heart cannot finally find
true what the mind finds false.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/efa3f6cd9f7580faa58c1ffe4278378d.mp3
2140889e936e676e5c7e71bde19602d8
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost VIII
Series
Moving On To Maturity
Scripture Text
Isaish 44:18: Ephesians 4:13, Matthew 5:48
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19990711
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1999-07-11
Title
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The Heart Cannot Rest Where the Mind Cannot Follow
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 11, 1999 entitled "The Heart Cannot Rest Where the Mind Cannot Follow", as part of the series "Moving On To Maturity", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaish 44:18: Ephesians 4:13, Matthew 5:48.
Critical Thinking
Inclusive Grace
Orthodoxy
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/21e0333f8480149ab7da9b8d664ff8c9.pdf
4e18b48e4094c4aee7a752a5ff50c47a
PDF Text
Text
All Are Welcome Here
Scripture: Isaiah 42:1-4; Luke 15:1-2, 25-32
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 27, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
All are welcome here - to this congregation; to our worship; to this Table of our
Lord.
Shouldn’t that be obvious? Isn’t that taken for granted? We are a Christian
Church, after all; of course, all are welcome here, or should be.
But, of course, it cannot be taken for granted and in practice it simply is not true
for the Christian Church at large – All are not welcome, at least not unless they
conform to whatever the prevailing ethos of a given Church may be.
This is what made Jesus’ behavior so revolutionary - he broke the social customs,
overturned the conventional wisdom, embraced all manner of persons and
excluded none. That is old hat at Christ Community. The gracious acceptance of
all has been a hallmark of this place for nearly three decades and the grace we
have purveyed is the grace I personally received when in 1971 this congregation
invited me to return to be their pastor, even though I was at that time going
through a divorce and in a struggle for the custody of our children. In 1971 that
was a daring decision. Divorce was still stigmatized in the Church and clergy
divorce almost unheard of.
I experienced grace tangibly; it changed my life and it became the mark of my
ministry. When we speak of Christ Community as an alternative to Church as
usual, that is what we point to - the grace that we offer to all and any who desire
to be part of this community. For all these years I have been working out a
theology of grace, discovering the implications of grace.
Acceptance, embrace without fear of rejection - that’s what everyone desires and
needs. Whether our lives unfold without a wrinkle or whether we find ourselves
in a situation we never intended or could even conceive of, the one thing we
desperately need, and the only thing that can heal us and move us on toward
wholeness is the unconditional love and gracious acceptance by another and by a
community which enables us to believe in ourselves and know we are valued.
© Grand Valley State University
�All Are Welcome Here
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The Church has been very slow to learn this, act it out and thus mirror the grace
that was lived out by Jesus. The Gospel lesson from Luke 15 portrays a conflict
situation. Jesus’ open table fellowship, which was a hallmark of his ministry,
demonstrating his embrace of all, caused the religious leaders to grumble and
their grumbling triggered perhaps Jesus’ most memorable parable, called the
parable of the prodigal son, although it is really a story of the unconditional love
of God.
The story is familiar; the younger son asks for and receives his portion of the
father’s estate, goes off to a far country, spends all in reckless living and finally,
hitting bottom, returns to the father to plead for mercy to be accepted as a hired
servant. You know the story - the father sees the son coming while he is still afar
off, runs to him, embraces him with tears of joy. No talk of servanthood; rather,
the father orders a great party because his son has come home.
The Gospel lesson then records the reaction of the elder brother who had stayed
home, faithfully worked the farm and done it all right. He comes upon the party
and he is angry, protesting to the father that in all his years of faithful service
there had never been a party for him. And now this wild one returns and there is
joy, music, dancing and a great feast. The elder brother, in spite of the father’s
assurance of love and pleading that he join the party, refuses to go in.
That was Jesus’ response to the religious leaders who grumbled at his open table,
his inclusion of the excluded ones. And that story is the heart of the Gospel of the
grace of God as understood in the Christian faith. It is also the understanding of
God in what I think is one of the most beautiful portions of the Hebrew scripture
- II Isaiah, where we find the Servant Songs, poems describing the mission of
God’s servant. In 42:1-4, the servant is one who will not break a bruised reed or
quench a dimly burning wick. It is not an accident that Jesus found his identity
and the nature of his mission in those Servant Songs.
Why is it that the Church acts more often in the spirit and posture of the elder
brother? Why has the Church so often been marked by a judgmental spirit of
condemnation and exclusion rather than by the gracious inclusivity that marked
the life of Jesus?
Why are we so threatened by those whose race or ethnicity or sexual orientation
differs from ours? Why can we not see the common humanity that transcends
such superficial and accidental differences?
The religious grumblers of Luke 15 criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors
and sinners, but that was not a moral issue; rather, those excluded were ritually
impure according to the religious practice of the day. In other words, they were
different, they didn’t fit the mold.
Why is grace so difficult to come by?
© Grand Valley State University
�All Are Welcome Here
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I mentioned the grace extended to me when I was called here, even though going
through a divorce. A young couple came to me to be married; one from this
congregation, one from another. The one from the other congregation
acknowledged he had asked his pastor about being married by a divorced
minister and he assured me that his pastor said that he could rest easy because in
divorce, I must have been the innocent party. And I knew at that moment that
that was wrong - I knew in that moment that a minister of the Gospel of the grace
of God should have known that in human relationship there are no innocent
parties, but even so, had I been the chief offender, would that have forever after
made me a moral leper, unable to be a servant of Christ?
Some years ago a fine Christian gentleman, a professional, came to me to
acknowledge alcoholism. He sought treatment and was experiencing a solid
recovering mode. He related how hurt he was when a Christian friend, a
professional man, took him aside, assuring him that there was forgiveness.
He didn’t need forgiveness; he needed recovery and, as AA demonstrates so
powerfully, that comes best by the gracious acceptance of others who lay on no
guilt, but give encouragement on the road to sobriety.
I suspect there is no more volatile issue facing the institutional Church in its
respective denominational groupings than the matter of sexual orientation.
Denominations are in turmoil, threatening to split over the issue, clergy are being
put on trial in ecclesiastical assemblies for blessing same-sex unions, and Church
synods become battlegrounds between those who advocate the full recognition
and rights of gay/lesbian people and those who condemn them.
A week ago there was a piece in the Grand Rapids Press about the Christian
Reformed Synod which called the Church to repentance for its failure to minister
to gay/lesbian folk. But, the Synod affirmed a 1973 report on homosexuality that,
for its time, was ahead of its time, but which still held that the expression of one’s
sexuality in a same-sex relationship was sin. And then one of the more
compassionate spokespersons explained the Synod’s counsel to the churches love the sinner, not the sin, and I just shook my head and murmured, "They just
don’t get it." That won’t work. If my sexual orientation is a given and my
expression of it is reflective of my person, you can’t love me but not my
expression of who I am.
What hurt, what pain we have inflicted on persons simply for being who they are.
Professor David Myers of Hope College’s Psychology Department and a deeply
committed Christian, has just written an excellent piece in Perspectives which I
would be happy to pass along to any of you who honestly wonder about this
matter.
© Grand Valley State University
�All Are Welcome Here
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
... Can we, should we, relax and believe that, regardless of our sexual orientation,
God loves us "just as I am"? Can we accept our own and others’ sexual orientation
without excusing promiscuity, exploitation, or self-destructive behavior? Can we
regard bathhouses and brothels, gay bars and strip joints, as similarly degrading?
Can we accept gays who, not given what Catholics call the gift of celibacy, elect
the functional equivalent of marriage (which society denies them) over
promiscuity? To merit our acceptance must they live alone? Can our family values
include love, care, loyalty, and respect for a son or daughter who may be
predisposed to homosexuality? And might we Christians benefit from praying
Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer?
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be
changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the
wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
This is Gay Pride Month. I’m sorry there needs to be such an observance, but
until persons of homosexual orientation are treated as they are, simply human
beings reflecting the diversity of human sexuality, such observances will be
necessary.
We’ve seen that lady of great dignity, Rosa Parks, in the news recently. She
received the highest civilian award from the President for the part she played in
the Civil Rights Movement, being the catalyst for black protest when one day she
refused to go to the back of the bus.
Can we even imagine the indignity of Jim Crow laws today? Look how long we
lived with that horrible injustice inflicted on black people. And while racism is
alive and well, no normal person with a modicum of humanity would think of reinstituting such racist legislation.
And one day I trust it will be the same for people of homosexual orientation.
Until then, the cause must be carried on by all people of good faith.
We didn’t like Civil Rights marches and black power activity in the 60s’. We don’t
like gays/lesbians acting up. We would rather coexist with injustice and
inhumanity. But, the time is long overdue, and until the time comes, I will wear a
ribbon as a sign of my commitment to equal rights for all people, in this case, for
the gay/lesbian community.
Martin Luther said,
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of
the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the
devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however
boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the
loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all battle fronts besides is
mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
© Grand Valley State University
�All Are Welcome Here
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
This is not an optional issue for the Church; it is a test of its authenticity, of its
commitment to justice and the grace of inclusiveness.
Let me tell you honestly - I am sick at heart at the ignorance and arrogance of the
Church. I nearly despair. I am torn, deeply torn. Were it not for this community
and thus my experience of what a powerful influence for good, for human healing
and well-being a faith community can be, I would leave the Church. I am so
blessed to have this ministry. It is who I am; my best gifts are utilized, my passion
given focus. But, were it not for you, I would give up.
Yet, the one we follow would not give up and for that he got executed, But that
was not the end of the story, for those who followed remembered him as he said
and in the center of the Church has been a Table with bread and wine
symbolizing body and blood, body and blood separated which points to execution
- violent death - and we are invited to take bread and cup as sign of our solidarity
with him, with his cause, and in solidarity with all who desire to gather here,
making a renewed commitment to be the body of Christ, a sign of God’s reign, a
community of justice, grace and peace.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3e7c6c082eb591c5377236d1f6df29ad.mp3
9da3f4c5907438bee574c7557a0c886e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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1981-2014
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Pentecost VI
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Isaiah 42:1-4, Luke 15:1-2, 25-32
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1999-06-27
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All Are Welcome Here
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 27, 1999 entitled "All Are Welcome Here", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 42:1-4, Luke 15:1-2, 25-32.
Compassion
Inclusive
Theology of Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d9397a8111f101b8047b544ba8948967.pdf
2383a35c056f5bbaf40e57dfd3ab26ea
PDF Text
Text
Jesus: The Grain of the Universe
From the series: Varieties of Religious Experience
Text: Genesis 1:2, 15-19; John 1:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 20, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We talk a lot about Jesus here. We’ve given a lot of emphasis this year to the
quest for the historical Jesus. We’ve had Jesus scholars, Dominic Crossan and
Marcus Borg, here. We have focused a good deal on the historical Jesus to the
extent that Jesus is recoverable through historical research, not only of the
scriptures, but of the sociological context of his life, cross-cultural studies, and so
forth, and we’ve done that because it is our claim here that, if we get Jesus right,
we’ll get God right, because it is the claim of the Christian tradition that we see
the heart of God in the face of Jesus. We see Jesus as the historical human
embodiment of that which is true of God, deep down. We hear the fourth Gospel,
that witness that says in words given to Jesus, "If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the
father."
And so, we talk about that a lot here because if we would have a proper
understanding of God, if we would have an accurate insight into the nature of
God, and if that comes and is derived from our understanding of Jesus, then
obviously it is important that we do the best we can to learn who Jesus was in his
life, his teaching, his actions, in his death and resurrection. So, we put a lot of
stress on Jesus because we find Jesus as the clue to God - God, that Ultimate
Mystery, that Absolute Mystery, that God beyond our comprehension, that God
Who is the Creative Source of all things in the beginning and throughout, and the
ultimate goal of all things, that God hidden from our eyes beyond our ability to
comprehend, that Mystery we claim has come to expression, embodied in Jesus.
We spend a lot of time with Jesus, and I want to say in this message, which
gathers some of those loose ends up, that in Jesus we see the grain of the
universe.
By the grain of the universe I mean the way it’s all moving. I mean the divine
intention. I mean from its origin to its consummation, that which it is all about
according to the purpose and the intention of God. The grain of the universe.
Where things are tending, where they are going if they are going to realize what
God is all about. That’s what I mean by the grain of the universe, and I want to
say that in Jesus we in the Christian tradition find the grain of the universe.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus the Grain of the Universe
Richard A. Rhem
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That’s the intention of God for its consummation. In Jesus, in the face of Jesus,
we come to an understanding of what everything is all about according to the
intention of God as we believe.
Now, there’s no question that the New Testament points us to Jesus as the clue to
the nature of God. John, in his Gospel, opens up with words that remind us of the
Genesis account, which says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." John says, "In the beginning was the word; the word became flesh and
dwelt among us." The law came through Moses in that historical revelation in
Israel, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God,
but Jesus has revealed God, and Paul, in his letter to the Colossians makes
stupendous claims in that paragraph I read. He said Jesus is the image of the
invisible God. The Greek word behind image is ikon; Jesus is the icon of God. He
says that in Jesus, all of the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. He says that in
all things Jesus is to be preeminent.
Paul believed that, but the way he expressed that in that cosmic terminology, in
that cosmic context, was the consequence of those to whom he was writing
because in that Colossians context they had ideas of God. They had ideas of deity;
they had ideas of what the world was all about, and there obviously was a strong
strain of Gnosticism there, and the gnostic from the Greek word gnosis,
knowledge, had what they claimed was a secret, revealed knowledge, and for the
initiated, this esoteric knowledge gave them insight into the secrets of the
universe.
Paul is bringing to them a counter claim. Paul is trying to use their terminology to
say that all of the stuff that you claim about those various spiritual emanations,
angels, dominions, powers, etc., all of that is wrapped up in Jesus Christ. Jesus is
the icon of the invisible God, and all of the fullness of God. One doesn’t need all
that "stuff" coming down from God and going back to God in order to get God
moved far away from matter which is evil. Paul said that the eternal God who is
light took flesh in Jesus, matter, the "stuff" of the world, the cosmos, and there
this God was revealed. Paul makes stupendous claims for what came to
expression in Jesus of Nazareth.
I was reading a rather liberal, but somewhat old, commentary on this text and the
commentator makes the point that the people to whom Paul was writing claimed
they had a secret revealed knowledge, and Paul says to them, "Look, I’ve got the
truth," and the commentator I don’t think really understood what he was saying,
but he was saying, "... as though those people to whom Paul was writing claimed
to have a secret knowledge of revelation and it didn’t matter what they observed
in their human experience or what they reflected on, they had this secret
revelation," and I thought to myself, "Commentator, what do you think Paul was
saying?" Paul was doing the same thing as the Gnostics to whom he wrote. Paul
said, "I have a revelation. I have a knowledge, and let me tell you that
knowledge." This Christian biblical commentary says of course, this knowledge
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
that Paul had was revealed by God and it’s true and it scattered the darkness of
those who said they also had a revelation.
How does one discriminate? I don’t know. We are so arrogant, aren’t we? We take
for granted that our knowledge is true and everybody else’s knowledge must be in
error. But, be that as it may, what Paul was claiming is right central core
Christian tradition.
You want to know who God is? Look at Jesus. Jesus, the way of Jesus, is the clue
to the nature of God. And my message this morning is that what we see in Jesus
is the clue to the grain of the universe. The way everything is tending, the way
everything is intended, Jesus standing for justice, non-violently, embodying love,
grace, inclusiveness, marked by compassion, this Jesus in concrete humanity, the
Christian tradition claims is an insight into the intention of God.
There are those who would doubt that we can know anything about the intention
of God. In the field of science, the natural sciences, there is a debate. Recently in
April in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. there was a
three-day conference on cosmic questions - was there a beginning? Is there any
purpose? Are we alone? As a part of that conference which was sponsored by the
Association for the Advancement of Scientific Studies and the Templeton
Foundation, there was a debate arranged between John Polkinghorne, a physicist
trained and who has taught at Cambridge who became an Anglican priest, and
Stephen Wineberg, who is a Nobel Prize winning scientist-physicist, and the two
of them debated these questions. Is there any evidence for God? Is there any
evidence in the analysis of reality from what we can do? Is there any evidence for
God’s purpose? Polkinghorne, of course, left the field of science for the ministry.
Strange, but he did. Because he did see something that he wanted, obviously, to
share. Stephen Wineberg says, "I don’t even think about religion enough to be
called an atheist. I don’t see anything." But, there’s a very interesting discussion
going on in the scientific field itself as to whether or not the universe was sort of
planned and engineered so that there would eventually be 15 billion years down
the line creatures like us who could be conscious of the fact and could talk about
the fact that maybe the universe was planned and programmed with us in mind.
The discussion is within science itself.
Even within the Church, though, there are those who wonder whether or not we
can be so cocksure about an ultimate purpose of things. An interesting discussion
in the recent Christian Century by James Gustafson over against William
Placher, James Gustafson saying, "You post-liberals, you think you’ve moved
beyond liberalism, you’re just playing fast and loose with those terms. The old
liberalism, for whatever it lacks, still uses critical rationality and asks the right
questions and some of you are just brushing those questions aside." There’s
discussion not only within the field of science, but within the field of theology
about how much we can discern about an ultimate pattern, that ultimate purpose,
an ultimate intention of all things.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus the Grain of the Universe
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Well, that’s my claim this morning, that Jesus is the clue to the grain of the
universe. Now, that’s been the claim of the Christian tradition. But, I don’t do
that simply because that’s what the tradition claims. I don’t do that, either, just
because Paul thought so and the fourth Gospel says so, because there are a lot of
things in the Bible I don’t believe. They are limited to their particular time and
context and the Bible is not a divine book. The Bible is a human book, people
struggling to give expression to that experience of God, and some of it is still
compelling, and some of it doesn’t touch us anymore. So, I don’t say this this
morning because the Bible says it. I say this morning to you as my message that
Jesus is the reflection of the grain of the universe because I believe it, because as I
learn what I can learn from all the sources that are available, to the extent that
shadowy figure of the past takes on flesh and blood and form, to that extent, that
Jesus is still a compelling figure. That Jesus moves me, motivates me, calls me,
beckons me, and to the extent that I will follow Jesus, to that extent I do believe I
will be in the flow of things, in the intention of God, running according to the
grain of the universe, because what I see in Jesus is what makes humans humans,
and what makes humanity humane. What I see in Jesus is that underscoring of
compassion and mercy and grace and love and truth. What I see in Jesus is that
one who is giving of himself for the sake of the other and the building of
community on behalf of all those who have otherwise been excluded. I see that
inclusive embrace which is embodying the embrace of God, that God Who
includes all and excludes none, I see in Jesus that to which I say, "Yes, that’s true!
Yes, that’s good! Yes, that’s the way it ought to be."
Jesus compels me, motivates me, moves me. I do believe, to the extent that we
would follow Jesus, we would be flowing with the cosmic flow of things. Fifteen
billion years, starting with a big bang and an explosion of elemental matter, the
cooling down, coalescing, coming to inanimate material to animate material to
conscious life to self-consciousness, to human existence, to today. It only took 15
billion years in dimensions of space that I can’t even begin to comprehend, and
then I am saying that in that Jew named Jesus from Nazareth, from his life, his
actions, his words, from what was seen in him, confessed about him, believed
about him, from that I get a clue into this 15 billion year unfolding, evolutionary,
biological, historical trajectory into the future.
That is a stupendous claim and it is a claim of faith and I do it, not because as I
said it says so in the Bible, I do it because when I think about it and I reflect on
my human experience and human community and world history, then I say that’s
where it is - that one, that way, that would lead to a humane existence, a human
community marked by justice, mercy, grace, love and peace. And then I would say
that I believe that that creative source of all things and that creativity that moves
through all and that spirit that enlivens all is that way.
Can I verify that? Of course not. But it does make sense; it feels right. It’s
consistent with my human experience; it resonates with my human experience;
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus the Grain of the Universe
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
that Jesus, that’s where it is, that’s where God wants things to be going, moving,
coming more and more to expression, and finally, to consummation. And if that’s
true, if Jesus is, indeed, the expression of the grain of the universe, no wonder the
Gospel cuts against the grain, because everything in me that got me here, all my
survival instincts, all of that self-centeredness, all of that self-concern, all of that
lust for certainty and security, all of that that would make me all that I can be - all
of that drive to be number one, to be on top, all of that which is so much a part of
this being of mine that has come out of the slime and out of the jungle - all of that
needs to die.
When the time arrived and the Greeks wanted to see Jesus, Andrew and Philip
came and said, "They want to see you," and all at once he went into a funk and he
began to get philosophical and he said, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abides alone." Trying to talk himself into it you see, trying to
convince himself that it really was worthwhile going through with. If I hold on to
my life, I’ll lose it, but if I give my life, I’ll bear fruit unto eternal life.
Ah, Jesus is the grain of the universe. That’s the way God would intend things if I
have any sense at all of what God might be about. But, it cuts against the grain of
everything in me. No wonder Paul also said not only that in him all things hold
together, but also that it was necessary to die with him. You see, Jesus is totally
fascinating, more complex than we’ve yet begun to probe. Jesus, before whom it
is better I should cease speaking, and the choir should begin singing.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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4a945e3ba460956647ee3617b525c527
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost V
Series
Varieties of Religious Experience
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:2, 15-19, John 1:14
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19990620
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1999-06-20
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Jesus: The Grain of the Universe
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 20, 1999 entitled "Jesus: The Grain of the Universe", as part of the series "Varieties of Religious Experience", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, 15-19, John 1:14.
Compassion
Divine Intention
Mystery
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d9a267c353d6ef7061aaf5a3ea3f5ed6.pdf
54e6d912d2492721cab44c8b1ee4928b
PDF Text
Text
Paul: A Larger God and a Grander Vision
From the series: Varieties of Religious Experience
Text: Ephesians 2:14-16; 4:4-6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 13, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In the sermon this morning, I am going to return to Paul and try to redeem him
somewhat. The last time that we thought about Paul, a few weeks ago, I said that
he was simply wrong about history, and he was. I won’t take anything back from
that. Paul had a religious experience in which he not only experienced the
presence and the glory of God, but also was drawn into a kind of apocalyptic
understanding of history whereby he expected the end to occur very soon. And he
was wrong about that. But, what he experienced in that encounter with God, what
he came to understand, gave him a sense of a larger God and a grander vision,
and that is still a tremendously important understanding for us to gain from St.
Paul.
We have recognized that Paul is probably one of the great formative, shaping
persons of mind and spirit in the whole of the Western tradition. Paul impacted
St. Augustine, who probably would rank right there with Paul, and, on the basis
of that experience, Martin Luther’s 16th century experience of the grace of God
has put another filter through which we see Paul. And even in our own century,
Karl Barth gives us a certain perspective of Paul that creates a lens by which we
read him. But I came across a rather interesting source that gives me some fresh
eyes with which to read Paul.
A young Jewish scholar, Alan Segal, in a book, Paul, The Convert, returns to the
first century and reads our New Testament as a source of information about first
century Judaism, which, of course, was not only Paul’s context, but also Jesus’
context, and Alan Segal sees him, not through that Protestant experience of
justification by grace through faith which Luther made to stick and to which
Augustine had pointed; but, rather, Alan Segal as a Jewish interpreter of Paul,
sees Paul’s struggle to create one new community or one new humanity out of the
Jewish community and the Gentile community who Paul saw united in Jesus
Christ. Segal would make the point, along with some others, that justification by
grace through faith, which is so very Lutheran and very Protestant, was not really
the center of Paul’s passion at all. He was saying that salvation is to be received
by faith or by trusting God because God is gracious, and that means that the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
respective religious communities, trusting that grace and receiving it, not through
any ceremony or any particular religious ritual, but rather, that grace received by
faith could be that common entré to God for this diverse community of people in
the first century.
I think that there is some fresh insight that Segal brings us in a perspective on
Paul. It’s understandable that the Jewish community for centuries has not fussed
with Jesus and has not fussed with Paul because Jesus and Paul have been a
source of the Church’s anti-Semitism and triumphalism and, therefore, there was
a block. But, Alan Segal says if you read Paul in the New Testament, it’s the best
source we have of information about first century Judaism which is so critical to
understand if we want to understand both the message of Jesus and the ministry
of Paul. So he begins by pointing to Paul’s authentic religious experience, and I
want to begin there, too, this morning.
There is such a thing as an authentic religious experience, and this spring I’ve
been using William James’ classic text, The Varieties of Religious Experience, in
order to say to all of us just that: that there is a variety of religious experience.
Alan Segal says Paul had an authentic religious experience. He can say that 2000
years later as a Jewish commentator. There was reality, there was honesty, there
was integrity, there was authenticity in Paul’s religious experience.
We had here two or three weeks ago Marcus Borg and if you were here that
Sunday morning and you stayed for the Perspectives hour afterwards, you heard
Marcus Borg share on request a recent spiritual experience that he had which was
a kind of mystical sense of the sacred, of the holy at the presence of God, and I
could see that some of you were saying, "Oh, I feel like such a deadhead," that I
reminded you that I’m a deadhead, too, when I told you, as I say many times, my
little pinky’s never even tingled. Well, Marcus Borg wrote a note commending all
of you as a community and speaking of the good time he had here, and he added
this:
P.S. And I like your theology. You say that you’ve never had so much as a
tingle in your pinky finger, but you know about the sacred. We both know
that religions are imaginative human constructions. [You’ve been hearing
me say that, and one time he wrote me a note about where did that come
from, and I said Gordon Kaufman was the author of that idea that
religions are human imaginative constructions.] We both know that
religions are imaginative human constructions, to sound like
Kaufman/Rhem, and I sense that you know there is the sacred behind all
those constructions. Not all, perhaps not very many "liberal" theologians
know that, but I sense that you do, and I’m happy to be called a liberal
theologian myself.
Now, the nice thing about Marcus is that he not only shared his own experience
in a very gentle way, in a way that really didn’t make anyone who didn’t have that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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particular experience feel that they were sort of outside the tent. He has a very
fine way of communicating that authentic religious experience that he has had.
The nice thing about this little note is that he acknowledged that I can be in the
tent with him, even though my pinky doesn’t tingle.
The point is this, and I think it’s so important that you hear this, that there is a
variety of religious experience, because what we’ve done, particularly in
Protestantism, is we have taken this unusual experience of Paul and we’ve made
it normative so that anybody who didn’t get it like Paul got it might suspect
whether or not they really have it, and that’s just not the point. Authentic
religious experience comes in lots of different forms through a lot of different
experience, and I think that none of us ought to lust after the experience of
another, but perhaps just breathe deeply and relax and trust that we are
embraced by the grace of God. Sometimes there is a Paul who has a vision and it
is so compelling and wedded to such a passionate personality, that that vision
grows legs and begins to walk across the earth, and of course, this is what
happened with Paul. He had an authentic religious experience; he had a vision of
the holy and of the sacred; he saw the glory of God and the glory of God took the
shape of Jesus, and in that experience, he felt himself called, particularly to the
nations or the Gentiles or anyone who was a non-Jew.
Now, the interesting thing is that Paul was a Pharisee, and we’ve gotten such bad
press on the Pharisees from the New Testament which comes out of a conflict
situation, but the Pharisees were the most sincere, the most serious, the most
engaged of Jewish observers. They were careful, observant Jews who were deadly
serious about observance of the ritual, of the ceremony, of the law, and Paul was
one of those. In the wake of Paul’s encounter with this glory of God in the face of
Jesus, he went off for a while simply to assimilate all of this and to put it all
together, and then, sensing himself to be called particularly to the non-Jew, to the
Gentiles, he began to hang out with them, and, as he hung out with them, he
found that here were non-Jewish people who heard the story of Jesus Christ and
the grace of God in Christ who came to the same kind of insight, understanding,
and experience that he, Paul, the former Pharisee, had. I don’t even want to say
"former Pharisee." I want to say Paul, the Jew, who continued to have high regard
for Torah.
In fact, Paul, in his letters, which Alan Segal tells us from a Jewish perspective are
very Jewish in his argumentation and his reasoning – not systematic like John
Calvin made him, but very Jewish in the concrete situation to which he was
addressing Jewish Rabbinic kind of reasoning and so forth – begins to indicate
that God’s intention is for one new humanity, that in Jesus Christ that middle
wall of partition was torn down, that wall of hostility, and I think there is some
basis at least in the Letter to the Ephesians that was read a while ago. But, even in
the other writings of Paul, his biggest concern was to find out how to get people
like him, with all that Jewish background, into community with people from all of
the respective paganisms of the nations, all the non-Jewish religious observances,
© Grand Valley State University
�Paul’s Larger God and Vision
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
how to get those people together, because the Jewish system had certain ways of
preparing food and of eating at table and, of course, there was that sign of the
covenant community, circumcision. How could you get those two groups into a
unity?
In the Letter to the Ephesians, he says this is the purpose of God hidden through
the ages, this mystery of God hidden through all the ages, now coming to
expression through me, through the gospel, through the church. There was an
incipient universalism in the institution of the covenant of grace with Abraham.
In Abraham the word was, the understanding of that calling of Israel, was that in
Abraham, all peoples of the earth would be blessed. The particularity of the call of
the Jew was on behalf of the universality of God’s claim on all. And Paul, now,
begins to hang out with these Gentile Christians, and he sees they have the same
kind of authentic experience that he has. It seems to be the same God, the same
grace, it seems to be the same kind of response in life, and this is what Paul saw:
God is bigger than ever I thought, and all of the religious observances, structures,
forms, all of that is relative and relatively unimportant.
Let’s just take the case of circumcision. A few weeks ago we looked at Acts 15,
which is the Jerusalem Council where this dilemma of Jewish Christians and
Gentile Christians was to be resolved, how they could live together. One of the
people at the Jerusalem Council whom Paul and Barnabas brought along was
Titus, and Titus was a Gentile, and Paul makes a point of the fact that they didn’t
require that Titus be circumcised in order to sit at the table of the Council of
Jerusalem in deciding these matters. But, if you would go to the 16th chapter of
Acts, you would find Paul meeting Timothy and wanting Timothy to go with him
and finding out that Timothy’s mother was a Jew and Timothy had never been
circumcised and so, Paul has Timothy circumcised in order to make him properly
marked as a Jew who now is a believer in Jesus. Now, if you’re thoroughly
confused on all that, let me say what it means. It means that Titus was never
circumcised and it didn’t matter. It didn’t take away anything. And Timothy was
circumcised later on as an adult, and it didn’t add anything. It was purely a
pragmatic matter of sensitivity to the social, religious context in which Titus and
Timothy, respectively, were to minister. And this is what Paul saw. This stuff
doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
We have a baptismal shell there; we put water in it and we baptize infants; we
cross their forehead with the water. We could really drip their big toe in paint
thinner and, pointing to the same reality, it would be as effective.
We have in the 8:30 service the Eucharist, the bread and the cup. We use grape
juice. I’d rather use Gallo. But, it doesn’t matter. All religious observances and
structures, according to Paul’s insight, do not matter. What matters is that the
forms and the words and the structures are freighted with meaning, and are
engaged in with authenticity, and then a community can be shaped in a wide
variety of ways. Jews with Pharisaic background can come to the table of the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Lord, joining with Gentiles with no religious background or some Greek mystery
religious background, coming to the table of the Lord and they can break the
bread and pour the cup and know that they are one humanity because throughout
all ages, God had no other intention, according to the insight of Paul, than to
create one new humanity. And I think to Paul it was a larger God and a grander
vision.
Isn’t it strange how our respective religions crimp God and try to package God?
It’s like having a pail at the seashore. We take our pails to the water and dip our
pails in and the pail is a container for the water, but the pail, the container,
cannot contain the ocean. God is so much more than our respective visions, our
respective manners of worship, our mode of organization, our doctrinal systems.
Paul saw that and, in seeing that, he became this passionate person. Now, if you
read his Letter to the Galatians, an early letter, he got rather testy; he got rather
nasty, because the thing he saw was that all of the things we do that are all
relative are not the things that bring us into the experience of God. His own
experience was that God is given to us by grace, and we simply trust that; we
simply accept that, or we have faith that that is the case. We don’t do anything to
earn or gain or secure that experience. We simply open our lives to whatever
spirit, whatever rift in the sky, whatever manner in which God might come to us.
There is a variety of religious experience, and we ought not to pigeon-hole
anybody or have the sure set of dies by which a Christian can be cast, but the
important thing is that, whatever that immediate experience, we see it as that
which brings us into the community under the one God Who would create one
new humanity, one human community. Paul prays for them powerfully in this
Letter. And then in this third chapter, particularly, he prays in the name of the
God for whom every family on earth is named. You get it? The God for whom
every family on earth is named - this God will give to you an experience of God’s
love that you’ve come to know its breadth and its length and its height and its
depth. To know the love of God which is beyond knowing, you see? That what
God wants is for people to have the experience of an ultimate, absolute love that
is the Mystery of all things.
Paul says, "Now, to God who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above
anything I can ask or think, to God be glory in the church ..." and then he goes on
to a practical application of it all in that fourth chapter, "with all humility and
gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to
maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace" for, he says, "there is one
body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all who is above all, through all, in you all ...."
Almost sounds like Stoicism, almost sounds like Pantheism, or maybe better the
Panentheism of a more contemporary expression, God who is not "out there"
stirring the world with a stick now and then, but a God who is permeating the
whole of reality, that dwells within us and binds us together and makes us one,
© Grand Valley State University
�Paul’s Larger God and Vision
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
because there is no division in the whole of reality, be it cosmic, physical or
human. That’s what Paul saw. That authentic religious experience saw him,
enabled him to transcend the respective religions. The secret, folks, is to be
serious about the religion you pursue without absolutizing it and without fear,
somehow or other, of being threatened that if you don’t dot the i or cross the t,
you’re out of luck, to be able to see the variety of religious experience and the
diversity of religious expression. One must be passionate, following one’s own
experience, knowing the love of God in all of its dimensions, with humility,
gentleness, patience.
We see the critical nature of things in the Balkans right now, as was alluded to in
the prayers. It’s the old human story - the wounded Russian pride that will make
its statement. So, shall we in NATO stand up to it and make it back down? Shall
we put the barrel of the gun to the temple of that wounded giant? If we would do
that, we would only be acting out what has been acted out in the respective
religions, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholic, and Muslim, which fuels that ethnic
division that nurses hurts and grudges and wounds over centuries.
You see, Paul’s vision was not about religion. Paul saw religion, finally by the
grace of God, as simply a means, relatively important, legitimate in diversity, but
just a means to come to the experience of God Who is every dimension of love,
Who calls us to peace. It’s a larger God; it’s a grander vision.
References:
Alan Segal. Paul, the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee.
Yale University Press, 1992.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ac30452f91e2a3996cc4530290801d2c.mp3
3b38cc29e6b14334d2eb1fa187d9c1ea
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost IV
Series
Varieties of Religious Experience
Scripture Text
Ephesians 2:14-16, 4:4-6
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Alan F. Segal. Paul the Convert, 1992
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19990613
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-06-13
Title
A name given to the resource
Paul: A Larger God and a Grander Vision
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 13, 1999 entitled "Paul: A Larger God and a Grander Vision", as part of the series "Varieties of Religious Experience", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ephesians 2:14-16, 4:4-6.
Compassion
Inclusive
Theology of Grace