27 24 1045 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bda6a4b45698b095485abf46aad7b60f.pdf a8d79867171c4da31e368a9f57a883b6 PDF Text Text Memories With a Future Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 1, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon "I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” Genesis 9:13 "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me…This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” I Corinthians 11:24-25 I have a new book. It’s entitled The Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. It is a recent publication and it has made the Best Seller list which, I think, is unusual for a book about the care of the soul. Thomas Moore is not writing necessarily from the Christian perspective. I don't know really where he stands there, but he is writing about the malaise of the 20th-century human person whose soul lacks depth, or who is rather soul-less and, therefore, gets caught up in all kinds of addictions and obsessions, and violence, and has no depth dimension to his or her person. Moore is a psychologist and he says that no longer can we afford the luxury of a bifurcation between psychology as a secular science and spirituality as a religious dimension, that really the health of the human person involves that depth dimension of soul. We must care for our souls. One of the things that he suggests is that we simply must observe, pay attention, attend to our lives, our soul, our moods, to just what's happening in us, our responses, our attitudes, and our spirit. Thomas Moore makes an interesting connection with our celebration this morning, because he speaks of ritual observances. He notes that the word observance has within it serv (s-e-r-v), which in the original from which the word is derived had to do with the tending of sheep. So an observance is really a tending of the dimensions of the soul. Moore says it is important that we engage in ritual observances - that ritual observances have a way of forming us in our depths. When I read that, I recognized that there is a part of me which is so under-developed. I am about 98% head. I am always thinking. And I am always trying to understand. That's a reflection of my tradition, which has nurtured me in biblical story and faith meaning, the Catechism, the structure of the faith. In recent years I have been recognizing that there is a sacramental dimension to Christian experience that was not well developed for me, and I have been groping © Grand Valley State University   �Memories With a Future Richard A. Rhem Page 2   for that, to find that depth dimension that doesn't denigrate the mind, doesn't eliminate the importance of understanding, but is able to get to the heart and to the primal core of our being. That's what ritual does. We have never done ritual very well. My whole tradition, my whole experience has not had an appreciation for the spiritual shaping, the spiritual formation of ritual observances. As I reflected on that I thought, that is what we are about when we come to gather around the table of our Lord. We have tried so hard to understand the relationship of bread to body, and wine to blood, and what actually happens. What is that transaction of bread and wine to us, received in faith and in the spirit? I recognize again my flaw, which is always trying to understand rather than being able somehow or other to turn off my brain, even momentarily and experience , and in that ritual observance to be shaped and formed. Then I came across a phrase that became a window for me - really a wonderful illuminating moment. One would think at this advanced age that one had thought every thought possible, and come across every possible combination of explanation of what this experience is all about. But then I read this phrase from Walter Bruggeman in one of his Old Testament studies: "Memories With A Future." Suddenly that juxtaposition of words just struck fire for me. "Memories With A Future." Sometimes words juxtaposed, put together in unusual fashion can bring flashes of illumination. “Memory” refers usually to the past, to memories of pleasure or of pain. And we think of the future, which we move toward with anticipation, either of desire or of hope, or of dread. But to think of "Memories With A Future," suddenly I said, "That's what happens in the sacrament when Jesus invites us to remember him and in that remembering to experience his presence and to appropriate again that future that he promised us." Suddenly, past and future intersect this present moment in the sacramental participation. "Memories With A Future." Now memory can be employed negatively. In the opening verses of Psalm 137, we certainly can identify with the exile from Jerusalem, a captive in Babylon, his tormenters saying, "Sing us a song of Zion." He says, "My heart is broken. How can I sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Then he vows, "If I forget thee O, Jerusalem…may my right hand be cut off." And then, that triggers a response of vengeance. Were you surprised that I read the Psalm through to the end? Where he would delight in having the little ones dashed against the rock? Certainly a holy, unworthy emotion. Were you amazed perhaps that it should even come to expression in the scripture? Ah, but it is a very human emotion. Very common, and of which we are all capable. Twist the soul, oppress, torment and there is that response - vengeful, hateful, seen all too often in our own world today. Bosnia Herzegovina, those ancient feuds becoming the alignment of religious group against religious group. The Middle East - Israel, Lebanon, Syria - Jew, Muslim. © Grand Valley State University �Memories With a Future Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Psalm 137 causes us to cringe at the image of little ones dashed against the rock, because we recognize that it is a part of us. This is also a self-destructive use of memory. But there is a positive use of memory and that is that to which Jesus pointed when he said, "Take this bread. Remember me. Take this cup. Remember me until I come." The old communion liturgy had all those dimensions in it. A feast of remembrance, of communion in the present, and of hope. A sacrament is the intersection of the past and the future, and the present moment of participation. And the participation, the ritual observance repeated, repeated, repeated. Ah, in my tradition, in my growing up, I was taught that that repetition was merely ritualism. What my tradition and what I never recognized was that it is in that very repetitious observance that I am shaped down here , in the gut, and we become a community shaped around the memory that has a future, a memory of Jesus the way he was, the life he lived, the death he suffered, the resurrection he experienced, and the Shalom to which he calls us. "Memory With A Future." The past event always aimed toward that consummation of all things “when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God." God's people have always been nurtured by signs, by ritual observances. The earliest sign in the biblical narrative was the rainbow. After the flood, a judgment on a perverse world, on creation gone awry, the Creator says, "Never again. Never again." The change was not in human nature. The change was not in the creation. The change was in the Creator. "Never again," God says. "Never again will I destroy it all. Never again. I enter into covenant faithfulness with all the earth and with every living creature." This is the earliest covenant. This covenant is broader than the covenant with Abraham. This is the covenant of God with the whole creation, God saying, "I will never abandon it. I will never let it go, and I will set my bow in the cloud and when you see my bow in the cloud I will see the bow and I will remember, and you will know that I will be faithful." Isaiah 54 references Noah and the bow, and then the prophet sings, "The mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love will not depart from you. The covenant of my peace will not be removed, says the Lord who has mercy upon you." The rainbow triggered in the poet the deep assurance of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God. The rainbow triggered a memory still potent for the future. Some of you know that, a little over a month ago, I conducted the funeral service for a beautiful little angel twenty-one months old. The reason that I conducted the service at the Spring Lake Presbyterian Church was the fact that Reverend Anderson is new there and didn't really know the family, and the grandmother of the little child, whose name was Paige, was a childhood friend of Nancy, and they continue friends to this day and we had become friends as couples. The mother of the little child was a school friend of Lynn, so because of our intimate connection with the family I was asked to do the service. I met with the family the day before the funeral and they manifested remarkable faith and trust in God. They live in © Grand Valley State University �Memories With a Future Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Wisconsin where little twenty-one months old Paige scooted away, as a child will, and got to an open gate of a neighbor's pool and under the solar cover and died. They had a service in their own community, but because of their connections here they wanted a service here in this community. As I sat with them they told me about their trip from Wisconsin to Grand Haven. It was a Saturday night; in fact it was June 26, and on that Saturday evening as they drove in their van with a casket on board, they drove into a rainbow. The rainbow arched the highway. Their little seven year old, Megan, who is a bit of a mystic, who knew long before the doctors knew that her "Mommy" was carrying twins, said, "Look, Paige is painting rainbows." For a moment there was a double rainbow as though a second one for the twin. They told me this story and asked me about the connection with the biblical story, and I said to them, "It is the oldest sign in creation of the faithfulness of God." I used it for the funeral meditation, the sign of God's covenant faithfulness in the midst of their loss and pain, that God would be with them and was with them. The sign of a rainbow, which forever after for them will trigger a "Memory That Has a Future. Last evening I called Ron and Patrice Frantz to tell them that I would tell that story, wanting them to be prepared as they came to worship this morning. Just before Elise Joy died last fall, having been born a twin with her sister Leigh, and having continued complications, but developing into a blooming delightful child of her own person, just before she died with no premonition at the time that she would die, Patrice took the two girls in her arms to the window of their home overlooking Lake Michigan where there was a beautiful rainbow. Patrice said to me, "Is that a sign?" I said, "That is a sign." And I used this scripture for Elise Joy's funeral, where we celebrated the life, however brief, of Elise Joy. Then Patrice said to me, "I cannot believe that you called. We were just talking about you." In a rather emotional weekend after attending an annual conference where Elise had been with them last year, they experienced the loss of her presence this year with people who hadn't known that she had died. And, therefore, all of the freshness of that loss was brought to the surface again. Then on the way home they stopped at the cemetery for the first time to see the gravestone. There was something about the stone that they wanted to ask me about, so they had been talking about calling me. Then I said, "This is why I am calling . . ." Patrice said, "Can I tell you one more thing? Not an hour ago Leigh went to the box that still has Elise's toys and took out a music box and brought it to me and I wound it up, and it began to play "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." Does God send God's angels to sustain and keep us? Does God keep God's promises of steadfast love and faithfulness? Every time Ron and Patrice or Sarah and Morrey, whose twins were born near each other in time, both of which now have one treasure in heaven, every time they see the rainbow they will have a memory that will bring tears, but through the tears will shine a hope that sees beyond the years to that time when we shall be gathered all together in the © Grand Valley State University �Memories With a Future Richard A. Rhem Page 5   presence of the Lord. For Jesus said, "Remember me and know that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am there you may be also. Because I live, you too shall live. The seer on the island of Patmos had a vision in which he saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the dwelling of God with God's people. He said, "Behold I make all things new. I will wipe every tear from your eye and there shall be no more crying or pain, nor death any more. For the former things have passed away." This morning you are invited to take bread and cup, and to remember. But the memory of that one in our past has a future – of a time when we shall be gathered at the banquet table of our Lord. Come then. The Master is here and calls for you. All things are ready. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7efe20ba5718aa083b99ffc833daaf7a.mp3 dbc3a9436e29c226937dab87046d5efb 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 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 Scripture Text Genesis 9:13, I Corinthians 11:24-25 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Thomas Moore, The Care of the Soul, 1994 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930801 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-08-01 Title A name given to the resource Memories With A Future Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 August 1, 1993 entitled "Memories With A Future", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 9:13, I Corinthians 11:24-25. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Ritual Sacrament https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/69159221b3cd3cec67a7b8de45985d2e.pdf 539637c38aa5582542c1dc0c0e8ba5bf PDF Text Text Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 25, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon "…never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom." Amos 7:13 "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Luke 4:21 Within the last couple of years we have had a guest at Christ Community; his name is Niko Terlinda. He is a pastor in Amsterdam. He has an exciting ministry there. He told of his experience of teaching the Bible at the public school. Strangely enough, with the secularizing of that country that was so deeply imbued in the Christian tradition, a minister like Terlinda would go to a public school and tell Bible stories, not in order to evangelize the children, but simply to keep the knowledge of the Biblical tradition alive. He tells about the day he told the story of how God spoke to Amos, when a little nine-year-old raised his hand and said, “Does God still say something?” As Terlinda noted to us, and as we so note this morning, that really is a critical question. Does God still say something? When I came out of seminary in 1960, within a year or two a friend of mine was called to a sister congregation in the area and I was invited to preach the ordination sermon. I took a text from one of the prophets. I am not sure just which one. I can't remember the text, but I remember the sermon very, very well, and I remember the point of the sermon. I said to this person about to assume a ministry of the Word of God that, in the case of Jeremiah, the biblical prophet, Jeremiah could say, “Thus saith the Lord.” But I said to my friend on the threshold of being ordained into the ministry of the Word, “You can't say that. What you must say is, ‘Thus hath the Lord said.’” Do you get the difference? At that time, in the days of my youth, and days of my insecurity and defensiveness, which I didn't really understand, I wanted every word that God had ever spoken to be in this book. I wanted to have between the covers of this book every revealed word, and it would be then from that mind that I would have the Word, it would be given here, I could manage it, and I could proclaim it. I said to my friend, “The biblical prophet said, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ but you will be able to say only, ‘Thus hath the Lord said.’” I was dead wrong. Somebody should have come up and taken me by the ear and brought me home. Someone should have © Grand Valley State University   �Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   said to me, “Do you know what you have just done to this young minister? You have absolutely shackled him. You have ruled out the possibility that God still speaks. You have ruled out the possibility that there could still be today the immediacy of God's address of God's people through the proclaimed word.” Or in answer to the question of the little nine-year-old – "Does God still say something?”– what I was saying in that message was, "No. God has spoken. God speaks no more!" We have now to proclaim what once came to expression, but there was always that indirectness, this truth at second hand. That was safe, and it was manageable. But it was absolutely wrong. I don't know how long it took me to figure that out. Thank God I realized at some point that God still speaks. While this Word is a record of that encounter of God with God's people in the past, and it becomes still the instrument through which God addresses God's people in the present, it is the address of God's people in the present about which we are concerned. We would hear the Word of God now, here and now, addressed to our lives and our situation. But the moment one would make that claim someone is going to say, "Who Says God Says?" I suppose that could be your question. As I preach, you are responsible people, thinking people, serious people. Sometimes I suppose the question must arise over against what I am proclaiming: "Who Says God Says?" You know really the idea of preaching, the conception of preaching in the Reformed tradition, is a presumptuous idea. Calvin and Luther said that the proclaimed word becomes the Word of God. In our tradition there is the Word of God written, the Word of God in flesh, but also the preached Word. That is why the Word has been so central. The proclaimed Word, the Word of God – that almost smacks of arrogance to me. This Word, the Word of God – did you ever say, "Who Said God Says?" Do you ever challenge that preached word? I suspect you do. I hope you do. I think you ought to, because, as a matter of fact, I stand in the tradition of Amos, and for that matter of Jesus. Amos was a farmer, but he got a call one day and he went to the Northern Kingdom of Israel and to the very royal court itself, and he proclaimed the word of judgment against that Northern Kingdom and against Jeroboam the king to the point at which the royal priest – (because every court also had its cadre of priests because every wise political leader will do his or her best to co-opt the Church, the messenger of God, so that there can be the union of throne and altar) – Uzziah, the court priest, came out to this prickly prophet and said, “Go back home. Earn your bread in Judah, but don't preach here any more.” Well, Amos said, “Don't call me a professional prophet who earns his bread preaching. I'm just a farmer. God took me, called me, and sent me to preach.” But the dilemma. Amos, a man of passion and conviction. Without that no one listens. Nothing happens. But Uzziah, he had his ordination too. He was a priest. Maybe he was in it just for the prestige and the pay, or maybe he was a serious priest of the God of Israel. I don't know, but I know he had a task to do too. As © Grand Valley State University �Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   one who presided at the royal court, he encounters a prophet. This is not the only instance of that conflict in Israel's history where the prophetic word was expressed and the royal response countered it, and I suppose a case could be made for Uzziah. Israel was at the height of its prosperity and who likes to have a dour word, a negative word of judgment and critique spoken in the halls of power where they are trying to keep everything moving positively. Jesus - if you had been in Nazareth that day and Jesus whom you saw grow up went to the pulpit and then came to the stool and sat down and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. God has anointed me to… and to say this word has been fulfilled in your presence.” What would you have thought? You see, it’s not so difficult to look back on Israel's history in the 8th century BCE and to analyze the conflict between Amos and Uzziah and say obviously Amos had a word from God (and as a matter of fact, that word did eventuate). It’s not so difficult for us who are the followers of Jesus to say the people in Jesus' home synagogue in Nazareth were absolutely wrong. Not that they didn't understand; the problem is they didn't like what they understood. So, if you don't like the message, you kill the messenger. But, it wasn't so easy. They didn't really have any basis on which to judge this one except he'd grown up in the corner carpenter shop and they had heard some rumors about what he was doing in Capernaum and neighboring areas. Some of the things he was doing were unsettling. Then he has the audacity to sit in their midst in the synagogue and to say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. I am anointed to preach.” Would you have been ready to hear that word, which would have involved the tumbling of the propositions of one's system of understanding? Or might you have gone to the parlor and had brunch and said, “I don't know. ‘Who Says God Says?’” Who Says God Says? That's not so easy, is it? That's not so easy for you because you have to live with me. You know all the foibles and flaws of this preacher. Then for twenty minutes on a given Sunday I sit on this stool and I say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Well, you're not just subservient puppets that you should just sit there and take it. Discern, test the spirits. But it's not so easy for me either. How do I know? I know this. With the little bit I do know I begin to know how little I know. Then I am supposed to say to you, God's people, “Thus saith the Lord.” That's scary business. That's why I get a headache on Saturday. (Laughter) A headache before and then one on Sunday afternoon after. Someone said to me this week, “If I had your job I'd have a headache too.” Who Says God Says? How in the world do we know? If there isn't passion and conviction on the part of the messenger, the message will not be heeded. But if there is a kind of absolutism and dogmatism, and authoritarianism in the message, the message very naturally is going to be resisted, and rightly so. Who Says God Says? It isn't simple. And I am not going to turn now to the typical preacher’s trick of giving you six easy ways by which to know. My point is: It is not that easy. It is not that simple. © Grand Valley State University �Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   I did talk to a friend of mine yesterday who gave me some help in order that I could say something that maybe you could go out of here thinking about. He was recently in England and Scotland and Ireland, and on the trip back from Ireland to England they came into the harbor of Holy Head in Wales. It reminded him of a story of an old preacher who had come into Holy Head Harbor in the dead of night and the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. This preacher said to the captain, “How in the world do you know that you are going to sail into the harbor?” The captain said to him, “Do you see those three lights on the horizon?” He said, “Yes.” He said, “When those three lights line up as one you will sail into the middle of Holy Head Harbor.” If we apply this, we could say on one hand there is that light of the tradition. We are a people who have been shaped. We have come from a womb that has shaped us and has implanted deeply within us, woven into the fabric of our being, certain perceptions, a certain frame of reference, a sense of being. We do not disparage that rock from which we have been hewn. We have a tradition. We are the recipients of a great heritage, and that tradition has been written of, spoken of as scriptures, and we have two thousand years of church history. We are Christians. We are part of the God of Israel. Going back to the creation, we are a people who believe in that one who created all things and who was revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. We come out of a community that has spoken, that has affirmed some things. So we do have some guidelines. We don't start out from square one, with a blank slate as it were. But that one light isn't enough because it can then simply be an external rule to which one would assent mentally but without inward conviction. That inward conviction must also be there. How does that inward conviction develop? What do you really believe? What do you really believe? What would make you stand on your feet and be counted? What would fill you with rage causing you to move into action? What would break your heart and cause compassion to flow? What do you really believe? I speak of my concrete truth. It’s one thing for me to say I am a part of this grand tradition. It’s another thing for me to say, “This I believe. This I will die for. This I will live for.” How does that come? Out of our experience? I suppose. Out of the ongoing communion of the Spirit? God is not done speaking. God says something still. Jesus said, “The Spirit will lead you into all truth.” Calvin said, “The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit must confirm what the word or the tradition says to us.” Somehow or other those things come together until finally I can take my stand. I can say, “I believe.” So that is a second light. Then, of course, the tradition has not issued to us in our present experience in a vacuum. We live in a cultural context in a specific historical setting. As we said last week, it’s a fascinating time in which to be alive – the knowledge that is exploding all around us, the fantastic knowledge of the physical universe, of the human person, of the movement of history, all of this that becomes accessible to us so that in our own experience tried and true physical theories like that of Newton are blown sky high. And instead we have quantum physics. We live in a © Grand Valley State University �Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   cultural context that is alive with all kinds of knowledge that give us new insight. So I have to take that which shaped me and that tradition in which I was nurtured, and my experience…my experience of grace…of God…of my human experience. Then I have to understand myself in this present time, this ongoing human drama…my time. So our specific time, context, the influence of our culture is a third light. But it is still not simple. The Church historically has majored in absolutes. Some of the greatest problems in the Church are the preachers who want to make it clear and simple, and who need to be right. But there’s a problem in the pew also. The people would like to have it simple and clear and tight. It isn’t simple and clear. It is complex, full of ambiguity, and we cannot know. We cannot know absolutely. To know absolutely is to deny the nature of our historical existence. And I don’t think the Church over the centuries has done a favor to people to try to give that kind of security that will remove all uneasiness and ambiguity from the human situation. In the ongoing movement of the human drama we need to be open and alive and alert and humble, and trusting that the Spirit of God will lead us into all truth, and that underneath are everlasting arms and that God will move and that God's purposes will be in ways beyond our wildest dreams. But the secret of that is not knowing, but trusting. To be able to live with questions, all the time trusting the eternal God who is the foundation, the God who holds the world in God's hand knowing that there are yet more wonders to behold and dreams to dream and insights to gain than have ever entered into the human heart. “We walk,” said Paul, “not by knowledge but by faith.” For he said, “It has not entered into the heart of man to dream the things that God has prepared for those that love God.” When we walk by faith, when we trust God, then we can be open to the continuing surprises of grace and the “aha!” The Church still today, maybe today more than ever, is making all kinds of absolute statements. In order to increase summer attendance we decided to add a Sunday supplement to the bulletin. You've now got a comic strip. I would have mentioned it earlier, but I didn't want to lose your attention. (Laughter) The little comic strip on the last page would be funny if it weren't true. People like me have stood before people like you and have said, “It is abundantly clear that...” and it’s not. And you don't need to have it so clear, and so neat, all tied up in a little package. One thing you need: to trust God. Trust God. People like me have pandered to people like you, succumbed to the seduction of trying to be the font of all knowledge and wisdom. Giving you answers where there were really only questions, when what we should have been saying to you was, “On the one hand, on the other, but nevertheless.” The foundation is solid. God is God, and you can trust that! Well sometime I'll be preaching along and I expect one of you will stand up in the pew and say, “Who Says God Says?” And I'll say, “Time out. You're right,” because dear friends I believe with all my heart and I preach with all the passion of my soul, and I know some things. The thing I know more than all is that I don't © Grand Valley State University �Who Says God Says? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   know very much when it comes to the real mysteries of life. But I know God will take care of you…come what may. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2077f9fdcde92369a03cf483dbfd88aa.mp3 024595722119c65af3db000409e4d3bc 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 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 VIII Scripture Text Amos 7:13, Luke 4:21 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930725 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-07-25 Title A name given to the resource Who Says God Says? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 25, 1993 entitled "Who Says God Says?", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Amos 7:13, Luke 4:21. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Prophecy Revelation Trust Word of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/59a8433ad416f5b1a044f96a682eb0b1.pdf 117a89f6376d709ae80ef17bff5259a3 PDF Text Text Something’s Happening Text: Esther 4:14, Mark 9:40 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 18, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon Who knows whether it is not for such a time as this that you have come to royal estate? Esther 4:14 “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Mark 9:40 The story of Esther is a wonderful story. It might most appropriately be called an historical novel. It probably has a certain historical core around which has grown this marvelous story, full of drama. It has a great plot. I am waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get hold of this story. I think he could really do something with it. I was thinking about the casting as I was preparing this sermon: for Mordecai I would choose Clint Eastwood - kind of grumpy and clever, not showing any emotion, just sort of sitting in the background. You know, kind of organizing all of this stuff. For Esther, how about Whitney Houston? She could tell the king, “I will always love you.” Well, anyway it is a wonderful story. I pull it out about every five years or so. Usually I pull it out when I am dealing with God and providence, and history and some of those themes. I have to admit that when I really got serious yesterday, I thought to myself: “Why in the world did I choose that scripture? What was I thinking about?” I do that in advance, you know. It is kind of like the birthing process, I think. I go through great labor pains and then suddenly there’s illumination, and I am all excited, and I write it down quickly. But at this age those things don’t stay with me as long. So I get down to the real thing and I say: “What in the world was in my mind?” I thought and thought and thought about it, and finally it began to come back again. It’s because “Something’s Happening” in our world. Now something is always happening in the world. But sometimes there’s more happening than other times. What I like about the story of Esther is that it is such a wonderful, dramatic story of the faith of the people of God who believe that God is engaged in the things that happen in our world. It’s that kind of involvement, that kind of engagement of God that you can’t put your finger on. I say God is involved, or God is engaged, and that’s rather ambiguous. I do that intentionally. © Grand Valley State University   �Something’s Happening Richard A. Rhem Page 2   I don’t know how to spell that out. But the biblical people of God have always believed that what is happening in the world has another dimension, and there is more to it than meets the eye. “Something’s Happening,” and God is involved. It’s true in our world today. So many things are happening. There is so much ferment. It’s a very exciting time in which to be alive. Then for some it’s a very frightening time. It’s kind of scary. For some it’s threatening, but for others it’s challenging. But for all of us we live in a spectacular period of the human drama. What I want to say to us as the people of God, as the Church, is that “Something’s Happening.” Will we or will we not be a part of the purposes and programs of God as the agents of reconciliation that are trying to move the world toward community and Shalom? You see, that’s so clearly in the story of Esther - something was happening. The people of God to whom God had pledged God’s faithfulness are threatened. An edict has proclaimed all Jews must die. When Mordecai learns of it, Mordecai says to Esther, “Do something about it.” Something was happening and Mordecai believed that what was happening on the historical plane was not apart from the involvement of the eternal God who had pledged God’s faithfulness to his people. Mordecai also believed that what was happening would eventuate in the effecting of God’s purposes. Mordecai was one of those Jews that believed that God’s purposes would prevail. He wasn’t biting his fingernails. He wasn’t overly anxious. He simply believed that God’s purposes would prevail. He also was one of those people that believed that God’s purposes might be effected through a particular person or a particular movement. He said to Esther, “Who knows but what you have come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?” She had naturally said, “I am scared. I can’t just go in to the king until he calls for me. I risk my life if I do. I am in peril.” Mordecai says, “Esther, just maybe you are where you are for just such a moment.” Thus there is this too in the story: it takes commitment at great risk to be an agent for the effecting of the purposes of God. All of those things are so beautifully narrated in this story. The reason, I think, back sometime in the misty past, when I was thinking about that story and this message is that it is a word to us at Christ Community. It is a word to us who believe that in this exciting, scary day in which we live God is engaged. We live in the aftermath of Pentecost. The Spirit of God moves across the face of the earth. And what is happening in our day is not apart from the engagement of the eternal God. And, more than that, as we think about that at Christ Community, do we really believe that God’s purposes will prevail? So Mordecai’s question comes to us here, in our context: might God have brought us together for such a time as this? Is there something about this strange community called Christ Community that we characterize as an “Alternative to Church as Usual” that might simply be at the right place, at the right time, to be an agent for the effecting of the purposes of God and the power © Grand Valley State University �Something’s Happening Richard A. Rhem Page 3   of the Spirit? And, if that might be the case, would we be willing to take the risk and to commit ourselves to such a common mission? Well, no one would deny that “Something’s Happening” in our world. My goodness, it boggles the mind. I picked up a book from a dear friend this week. (Just what I need is one more book.) Really she gave it for the church library, and it will get there eventually, but I opened it up and I began to skim through it. It was full of interesting data. It is called Racing Toward 2001. Do you know that we are less than 90 months away from the 21st century? Now as God counts years, I don’t imagine that the move of a century or the shift of a millennium is any great shakes, but psychologically it’s going to impact us. It’s already beginning to impact us. That’s a significant time shift. We are on the threshold of century 21. This book begins to lay out some of the characteristics of this fantastic world of which we are a part, the discoveries of which, and the technological breakthroughs of which are only beginning to be felt, but will be impacting us and will transform the face of the earth. It blows my mind! Let me just give you an instance. One chapter speaks about century 21 as the “information society.” I read there that the old copper wire that transmits our telephone conversations, an old copper wire can transmit 24 conversations simultaneously. That’s not bad for copper. But we are in the world of fiber optics: filaments of glass that have a super ability to conduct: transforming the energy into image, moving light at lightning speed, so that a single fiber optic can transmit not 24 conversations simultaneously, but 16,000! Isn’t that amazing? And I, who am addicted to books, I learned that on a 3½-inch disk can be recorded 1000 volumes. I looked at my 3,000 plus volume library and thought, “Well, I guess nobody’s going to be able to sell this for anything when I’m gone!” Such a disk - about $10 - a thousand volumes. You could have a hundred thousand-volume library in your desk drawer. On one disk they can record the entire Bible, plus the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now that’s a lot of stuff to be transmitted around the earth in two seconds! Can you even imagine that? Well, that’s just one aspect of this age of which we are a part, the implications of which will continue to increase exponentially and impact our human society. For example, the stuff that we live with every day: the reality of the world religions, the whole situation of pluralism. I mention it every once in a while. Sometimes I think maybe you say, “Well, we’ve heard that.” You’ve heard it, but we have not begun to reckon with it. The globe, as I said last week, has become a grapefruit, and the world’s peoples have become a family. We simply cannot any longer live in indifference to what is going on half a world away. We are fully cognizant of much more than we ever wanted to know. But it’s not a choice. It is a reality. It is a fact. And in a world where the great religions of the world are in an adversarial posture, where the respective fundamentalisms of the world religions are at each other, we have a volatile situation in which it will be incumbent upon people of good will and the faith communities to engage in dialogue and conversation in order that we might share a common goal and dream for building © Grand Valley State University �Something’s Happening Richard A. Rhem Page 4   community rather than living in the awful threat of terrorism and some of the horrible things that have happened in the all too recent past. Multiculturalism. For some on the left, kind of a new “in” word. For some on the right, a term that brings out animosity. But for all of us, simply a reality. The United States of America has always been driven by immigration, as a United Methodist report mentions. But formerly it was from Europe and Africa. Now it’s from Latin America and Asia. There is a rising tide of multiculturalism, which is the reality of the human drama in the society of these United States of America of ours, as well as around the world. There is not a major ethnic group anywhere in the world that is not now being represented here in more and more significant numbers. Multiculturalism is a reality. The old “melting pot” is being challenged by some who are saying we are a “salad bowl.” The uniqueness of all needs to have its own integrity. However that is solved, the point is multiculturalism is simply the state of affairs of the nations, and the world has become a grapefruit, become family. Gays in the military, the present point of discussion for the whole question of sexuality. It’s on the news, on the TV day after day after day. What will we do in the Church about this issue, which has the potential for being so explosive and divisive in our society? We talk about it every other place perhaps, but not in church because it is explosive and divisive. But, I wonder, I wonder if that whole issue would make us say not, “Gee, if they would just go back in the closet,” but might rather call us to acknowledge the diversity of the human situation so that we come to deal with that diversity. It doesn’t happen through argumentation. We only really change through concrete experience. While there are all kinds of shades to that discussion, I know that the impact in my life has come through concrete encounter with people who never had a choice given their orientation. So what does that say to me as a Christian person that would build community and tear down barriers, and remove the acids that eat away at the human family? Pressing ethical questions. Abortion. There are decent civil Christian people on both sides of that question. So, what are we going to do in order that we might not have bombings and threats, and all of the animosity that is so characteristic of the groups that are militant on one side or the other? How can we bring the posture of Jesus Christ and the sense of what true community is to that burning issue of our day? Euthanasia. Dr. Kevorkian. Very difficult issues. Tremendous implications needing to be handled with care. But I have talked with enough of you one-to-one to know that while those broader social issues have to be handled with great care and with great thoughtfulness, I have yet to find someone that does not wish to die with dignity. To recognize that it is really an issue that we must face up to and come to terms with. Maybe the Spirit of God is pushing us, saying to us, “There is a certain measure of responsibility that you must take for your human existence.” © Grand Valley State University �Something’s Happening Richard A. Rhem Page 5   I use these things as illustrations, not to claim that I or anyone else has a simple answer. But these are the kinds of issues that can divide, that can be a catalyst for violence, and that break down human communication, and undercut human community. “Something’s Happening” in our world. It’s not whether or not we want to choose to deal with it. It is there at our doorstep. We will deal with it one way or the other. We will be agents of reconciliation to deal with it or we will be those who will build the wall high in order to stem the floodtide that is as inevitable to break the levy as the old Mississippi. I was reading an excellent thoughtful scholar who says what is needed today is for a people to create a colloquy. Well, I thought I knew what the word meant. I think I’ve been in one or two, but I looked it up. It simply comes from two Latin words meaning to speak with, to have conversation, to have dialogue. This person suggested, I think, a wonderful image. He said, rather than us being in face-toface confrontation, what we need is to be side-by-side confronting the question and the issues. I really like that. So often we are face-to-face in confrontation. How much better to stand with each other confronting the issues. That’s the gift of real deep community. Scott Peck in his book A Different Drummer says that most congregations are “pseudo communities.” I want to deal with that in a couple of weeks. “Pseudo communities.” It means that we act just like my mother taught me to act. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone that’s not nice. And if anybody says anything to you that’s not nice, don’t let them know it. Be polite at all costs, even at the cost of your integrity.’ (She didn’t say the last thing.) But Scott Peck said that’s “pseudo community,” and it really is. What happens to us all too often is that we seek out our own kind so that we can be confirmed in the position with which we started before we even thought about it. Then we get communities of like-minded people over here and communities of like-minded people over there. And the community over here and the community over there face each other in confrontation and mutual excommunication rather than staying side-by-side, honestly facing the issues, raising the tough questions, honoring diversity, granting respect and dignity to each other, and with grace seeking to move the whole thing toward community, toward Shalom. This is a wild time to be alive. “Something’s Happening.” And I think that the thing we have to offer is that marvelous model of Jesus. The gospels were written to specific communities in concrete situations, and the things that are dealt with in the respective gospels are the things that needed to be dealt with in those particular communities, and in this case John comes to Jesus and he says, “Hey, Jesus, there’s this guy down the street casting out demons in your name. And he’s not following us.” Jesus says, “Don’t stop him, John, just because he doesn’t belong to our group. The one who isn’t against us is for us. And in fact, even a cup of water in my name doesn’t go unnoticed.” “Something’s Happening.” The Spirit of God will effect the purposes of God. I wonder if we might be who we are, where we are, when we are for just such a time as this? It is not without risk. But it just may be that God has something © Grand Valley State University �Something’s Happening Richard A. Rhem Page 6   significant for us together, and incidentally, just maybe, just maybe for one of you. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/52230c1593f4b8fb0922b730861b810d.mp3 b9ea2382693be6f04fe025b3b502cde8 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 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 VII Scripture Text Esther 4:14, Mark 9:40 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930718 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-07-18 Title A name given to the resource Something's Happening Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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, 1993 entitled "Something's Happening", on the occasion of Pentecost VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Esther 4:14, Mark 9:40. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Global Community Inclusiveness Pluralism https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8d54ee0f4e4677ca003d3062dc541c59.pdf 8a8860e50bd30961fbfec4fa746edacd PDF Text Text Global Mission in a New Key Text: Isaiah 58:6, Acts 1:4-8 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 11, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “...to loose the bonds of injustice, ...to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.” Isaiah 58:6 “...to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:4-8 It would be difficult to challenge the statement that it is the intention of God that all God’s children live in freedom and human dignity. I don’t think anyone would want to challenge that. Certainly that is the biblical vision. We noted last week in the celebration of our own Declaration of Independence that God has blessed this nation. This political arrangement was founded on the conviction that God has created all people, all people, equal in God’s image. That to live in freedom is to realize the human potential with which God has endowed us, and to live in that freedom as we have for the last two hundred plus years, we’ve also found economic prosperity because there has been, along with political freedom, economic freedom. I suggested last week that perhaps, after some two hundred years living with a Declaration of Independence, it is time for us now to declare our Declaration of Interdependence because history doesn’t stand still. History moves on. While those thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard were knit together by a common vision, they lived not in nearly the proximity to each other that we live with the whole globe today. Through the satellites that go through our sky we are in touch with the whole world, and we know what’s going on everywhere. We have become a global community. That global community calls us to a concern for the whole world, for the freedom and the dignity of all people everywhere. Certainly that is God’s intention. It was the prophetic vision the prophet was most often called to speak to the people of God, to remind them that God’s purposes transcended their own narrow interests. The prophet in Isaiah 65 of last week’s Old Testament lesson spoke of the “new heaven and the new earth,” in the time when people would build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit, living with dignity without exploitation or coercion, where the world © Grand Valley State University   �Global Mission in a New Key Richard A. Rhem Page 2   eventually would become a place where the lion and the lamb could lie down together, and no one would hurt in all God’s holy mountain. The Old Testament lesson this morning from the 58th chapter of Isaiah says the same thing. The people of Judah having returned from the Exile carrying on their religious observances said, “Why doesn’t God heed? Why doesn’t God hear us?” And God says to the prophet, “Look, religious observances are not ends in themselves. If you want to be truly religious, then care one for another. Break off the thongs that bind people. Be done with injustice. Set the captive free. This is God’s intention for humankind, for all people everywhere.” With the globe becoming no larger than a grapefruit, and community becoming world community today, it is incumbent for us to think of global mission “in a new key.” Jesus stood in that prophetic tradition. Jesus sent his disciples into all the world, “to the ends of the earth,” he said. He proclaimed the Gospel, the good news. That good news – Jesus standing in the prophetic tradition – was that God is near. God is present. God is gracious. That God would include and would reconcile all people. Jesus said, “Go tell that good news.” And the Church has become a missionary church. We have noted in past weeks since Pentecost that it was unfortunate that there had to be that break between Judaism and the Jesus Movement, but even so God has used that division. The Christian Church has brought the God of Israel to the nations. But the history of the Christian Church now encompassing the globe is really a mixed affair. On the one hand you can write the story of the spread of the Christian Church in glowing terms. There have been many heroes and heroines in the faith. Christian Mission at its best has been concerned for medicine, and for education, and for agriculture, and for the whole human condition. There have been those who have given their all in order that the light of Christ might illumine the lives of people. But the Christian Movement has a shadow side too. If we would be honest we would have to admit that that movement into all the world to make the world Christian was a movement that was characterized at many periods with coercion. There were the enforced baptisms. There was the development of that anti-Semitism which came to its ugly climax in the Holocaust. There was the Inquisition - the enforcing of faith on people. There was too often a lack of sensitivity to native cultures and native mores. So the history of the Church has been a history of mission movement with a light and a shadow side. The modern missionary movement of the 19th century is the mission movement that most of us are aware of. It was a movement that arose out of a passion to bring all people to knowledge of Christ. What fired that mission was a conviction that outside of Christ there was no salvation. But as that modern missionary movement arose there was also the development of modern atheism. That whole development of atheism in the Western World said that religion is not anything that has any true counterpart here, but rather arises out of the human need itself, © Grand Valley State University �Global Mission in a New Key Richard A. Rhem Page 3   that human beings create religion. And then, encountering atheism, that most serious of all criticisms of religion, there was the counterclaim that human religion doesn’t start with us but starts with one who encounters us from beyond and draws response from us. That’s about where I was in Europe about a couple of decades ago, a quarter of a century ago, wrestling with that one. Recognizing that if human religion is response to the encounter of God from beyond us, which is really the vital claim that we must make, then it became more and more difficult to say of all the human responses in the respective religions, there is only one that is right, and that one is mine. I didn’t have to solve that when I came back here in the early 70s because some of us went out to California to the Institute for Successful Church Leadership, and we learned that you ought to bloom where you are planted and that mission is where you are. So we gave ourselves to creating here a loving community, a compassionate community. The last couple of decades are the story of creating here a Center for Creative Christianity. But time marches on. History moves. The world changes, and it’s time for us to make another move. It’s time for us to come to Global Awareness. I have to credit Peter Theune for bringing to us, as he came to the Christ Community team, a greater sensitivity to the larger world. The Task Force on Global Awareness in our midst has been a catalyst to get us to think outward. I think in the recent past, for the past two or three years, our whole world has exploded to such an extent that we know that we are part of a global community whether we want to be or not, and we have to decide whether we will put our resources and our efforts in trying to maintain things as they are - building walls and developing a fortress mentality, or whether we will cast ourselves on the side of the agents of change to bring about reconciliation, to remove the barriers and the divisions, and to bind the human family together, which it seems to me is reflective of the biblical vision of God’s intention. The God of all compassion who loves people, who would mediate grace to all, who would gather all in his bosom in order to build the family of God. Let me challenge this community of faith this morning to a new engagement with concrete mission. We’ve begun already. For a number of summers now some of you have gone to Staten Island, Project Hospitality, where The Rev. Terry Troia works with the alienated and the outcast of society. Your lives have been touched and changed by that encounter. We are sending today a group of young people to Chicago to an urban ministry to encounter the realities of the city. Later this summer we will send a group to Wales to be with Bob and Kris Kleinheksel in that urban ministry in the city of Cardiff. Concretely this morning you have before you Jeanne Farrer who will be going from us to be our presence in Africa, in Gambia, to teach, to serve, to be there as the presence of the love of God that she has come to know in Jesus Christ. Let me challenge all of us this morning to a new commitment to Global Mission. © Grand Valley State University �Global Mission in a New Key Richard A. Rhem Page 4   But that commitment to Global Mission needs to be in a new key. I hinted a moment ago that when I came back here in the 70s I could not rouse you to passionate action in order to bring Christ to the world as though that was the world’s only hope. That was the theological problem I was struggling with. Now let me simply say boldly, having not solved all those problems, this I know the world is a hurting, bleeding, wounded place. We cannot deny it any more. It comes into our living rooms and our kitchens and our dens day after day after day. The anguish on the faces of the adults who bury their dead, who look into the eyes of the starving children. The knowledge that in Zambia sixty cents per child per year goes for their education. The knowledge that our world is being torn apart most decisively by religious fundamentalisms. The knowledge that, with the umbrella of oppression that held the world at bay for some decades now evaporating, there is a new uprising of ethnic feuds and national pride and arrogance. Our world is bleeding. Our world is wounded. The God of biblical vision is a God who cares, a God full of compassion, a God who calls God’s people not to the exercise of religious observances - the fasts and the rituals, and the worship that ends there, but rather the God who calls God’s people to true religion which is to be concerned for the poor and the homeless and the naked. To break off all injustice and take away the yoke and set the captive free. Jesus in his inaugural sermon in his hometown quoted Isaiah 61 saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim liberty to the captive.” Jesus, standing in that prophetic tradition with all of the compassion of God moving through him, crying out to a world to break off the bonds and to set the prisoner free. Jesus would call us to his way; Jesus gave us the promise of Pentecost, which was not a commission to found a church and a religion, but to move into the era of the Spirit of God who transcends all human forms, the God of all mercy and compassion who calls us to love the world as God loves the world. A new commitment to Global Mission but in a new key. Not in order to found Christian churches all over the globe, but in the name of Jesus to love, to heal, to bind up the wounds, to teach, and to create a world in which it is possible for every person not to become Christian, but to become human - for God’s sake. To realize God’s purpose for human kind so that people might live in justice, peace - dancing before the God of creation who dances in our midst, whose light shines upon us when we catch the vision and allow our passion to be unleashed. To bring salvation, salve, healing to the world. That is our calling. That will be our joy. Together. We can’t do everything, but we can do something. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ec061812bf32614060e0e536e0dc425.mp3 f80480ef2361f13cb33bfe6c91a22fc5 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 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 VI Scripture Text Isaiah 58: 6, Acts 1:4-8 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930711 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-07-11 Title A name given to the resource Global Mission In a New Key Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 11, 1993 entitled "Global Mission In a New Key", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 58: 6, Acts 1:4-8. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Divine Intention Global Community Inclusive Interdependence Shalom https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/646dd9182bc1493d439250ad2db9b4ad.pdf 007c57d2e02729a80c96d321d55514c1 PDF Text Text The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Text: Isaiah 65:23, 25; Romans 11:32, 36 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost V, July 4, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.” Isaiah 65:23 “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mansion,” says the Lord. Isaiah 65:25 “… that he may have mercy upon all.” Romans 11:32 “For from God and through God and to God are all things. To God be glory for ever.” Romans 11:36 This is a wonderful and exciting day in which to be alive in our fast-moving world. Since this Lord's Day is also the anniversary of this nation and our Declaration of Independence, I want to reflect just a little bit about the world in which we live and the movements of history of which we are a part, the tides of history that move back and forth. Sometimes in the midst of our own human experience we get so overwhelmed with the immediate and the present circumstance we fail to get that broader picture. At the beginning of this century, after World War I, the great English poet Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, the best have no conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Although that was written decades ago, it could be written as well today from some perspectives. The poets often see more deeply and see farther than most of us. But it is an interesting and fascinating time in which to be alive for, in the broader picture, we can see that we stand at the end of a long historical development. This nation was born at the dawn of the modern period. The periodization of history is somewhat arbitrary, I suppose, but most scholars would agree that the 18th century was the dawn—it had some beginnings before that during the Age of the Enlightenment—and in this 18th century, The Age of Reason. That whole period of the ascendancy of the human was the context in which this nation was born. The human spirit began to come to flower in the fifteenth century, and in the Italian Renaissance there was a great flowering of art, of sculpture, and of © Grand Valley State University   �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 2   architecture. It was like after that long period of medievalism when the Church was so dominant and so oppressive, when there was a linkage between throne and altar. And finally, in the fifteenth century there was this breaking out, this blossoming of the human spirit. I think perhaps the sixteenth century of which we are the children—children of the Reformation and the counter-reformation– the sixteenth century was perhaps a detour. Maybe for a time the authoritarian structures of society once again asserted themselves. But inevitably the human person was going to break out. Our nation was born in that context of history when all forms of authoritarianism were overthrown. There was the assertion of the human spirit. There was the conviction that there was dignity in every human person and that freedom and liberty were the God-given and God-intended virtues with which the human being and society was to live. So our nation was born at a point of newness. That's really the first thing that I want to say to you this morning: that in the midst of history there is development. There is newness. Sometimes we get so depressed by the present. It seems as though things don't go anywhere and we get all enmeshed, and in a situation of no movement, of gridlock. We throw up our hands and we wonder if there's any hope, and if anyone can make any difference, if anyone can change things, if anybody can get things moving again. What I want to say to you is “Yes. Yes. Yes, in the long run there is movement. There is development.” This nation was born at a point of newness. There was a new understanding of human government. There was a new understanding of the human person. There was an appreciation for the necessity of liberty and freedom in which the human individual could develop potential, God-given purpose. There was recognition that the finest form of human government was the government that governed least, that was a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in that definition that Lincoln gave to this form of government 100 years later in the crisis of the Civil War. Lincoln really redefined the revolution when he said that this nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal,” and that the test of the Civil War was a test of whether of not this experiment indeed could come to fruition and realization of that high ideal of which it was initiated in the first place. There is newness. We were born in the conception of things and in the understanding of reality and the understanding of history, and understanding of the human person that recognized the necessity of freedom, liberty, and democracy for the full flowering of the human person. For two hundred years plus we have been blessed. We have lived in this grand tradition and we have flourished and prospered as no other people. We come into this 20th century. It has been a tumultuous century. Yeats did not overstate the case early on in the century when he said, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” There was WWI, WWII, and the Cold War when we were locked in ideological conflict over © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 3   all those decades, using all of our resources for armament, escalating the arms race, bringing ourselves to the brink of disaster. Then 1989, that amazing year. The columnist, George Will, says that there has not been such a year since the 16th century; in fact, he says there has never been such a fascinating, interesting, potentially devastating consequential year in all of history as the year 1989, when more people and more societies were thrust into the vortex of change than at any time in previous history, even more than in the tumultuous 16th century. The images of our present world tumble through our minds. The Leipzig prayer meetings, the candle light in the streets, hundreds, thousands of people praying. The Berlin Wall falling. People dancing, singing, hugging each other, celebrating. The removal of that oppressive Iron Curtain, allowing them to breathe, to be, to be free. And, with the disintegrating of that Iron Curtain and that panoply of oppression, in the midst of our euphoria, we find the sparking of ancient feuds and ethnic cleansing. Our television screens are filled with old women in babushkas weeping over the bodies of wounded or dead soldiers: sons or grandsons. People destroying each other. Our world with all of its promise, yet so filled with peril. The fundamentalisms of the world, Judaism, Islam, Christian, the reactionary fearful tides that would turn the clock back, that would tear the world apart. Images of terrorism. The World Trade Center smoldering in the aftermath of the bomb. Time Magazine a week ago addressed the whole question of terrorism. Arrests in our major cities. Fear. A world that has such technology that small bands of committed people can hold the world hostage. Our today, so full of promise, so full of peril. Somalia children starving. South Africa, less than a year away from a popular vote. Latin America. Our cities. In 1989 the walls fell. We sang, we danced. And in the face of that promise we experience all of the peril. But there is newness. We were born in newness, during a major shift in the understanding of the human person and the nature of human government. In 1989 a State House Planner named Fukuyama wrote an essay entitled, “The End of History,” in which he said that western liberal democracy has been proven to be the only reasonable, rational government, and it will prevail. It has prevailed. Well, his essay stimulated counter essays, and there were those who said he was premature and he was far too optimistic. But it was his point that what we realized in 1989 was already signaled in 1806 when Napoleon's troops moved into the German city of Vienna and overcame the czars, the Prussian leader’s forces bringing to fruition the French Revolution slogan of liberty and equality and fraternity. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, all of that simmering and in ferment for a couple of centuries, finally eventuates to where one can look at it and say, “The end of history: This is the way it will be.” Well, whether you agree with that or not, we are in a period full of ferment, full of promise, and full of peril which is always the case in the human situation. Let me suggest that not only is there newness in human history, but I believe that we are © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 4   on the threshold of a new age that holds tremendous promise for those who are not fainthearted. That newness must now not only be our national heritage, but it must be shared with a global community. It is not simply because I would have you be Christian or altruistic, if I appeal to you simply out of your own self-interest, out of our national self-interest. Then I would say that it is time now on this anniversary of our Declaration of Independence that we make a Declaration of Interdependence with the whole global community. Do you realize that the peoples of this entire globe are more closely knit today than the peoples of the thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard in 1776? This is a smaller world. This is a global village and it is incumbent upon us to commit ourselves to the whole world and the whole human family. We cannot live in narrowly nationalistic purposes, looking out only for America, Number One. If we were no more than selfish, it is incumbent upon us today to have a world vision. But of course for us, the people of God, there is no choice, for we are a people of hope who are fired by a vision, who are shaped by a dream. It is a marvelous picture of the poet-prophet in Isaiah 65 of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, aligned with the purposes of the one eternal God, the creator of all. This God says, “Behold I create a new heaven and a new earth. I create Jerusalem anew, a joy. I will restore my people and I will bring my people into a period of peace and justice, such as they have never known. A kind of society where there will not be oppression, where there will not be exploitation, where a person can build a house and live in it, plant a garden and eat the fruit thereof, a society where children will not be raised to calamity, where people would live a long life, where they would call and the Lord would hear, where the wolf and the lamb would lie down together and the lion would eat straw like an ox. Where they would not hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain. That's the biblical vision. There are those who say, “You have to be realistic. You have to be pragmatic. This is the real world. That's a dreamer. That's a poet.” I want to say, that dream, that vision is the only real possibility for a world to be renewed, characterized by justice and peace, and the integrity of creation. It is not in the assertion of power. It is not in the measurements of dominance. It is not in being Number One. It is in seeking justice, being committed to peace, and taking care of the environment that holds the only possibility for the human family. I believe that we may be on the threshold of a new age of which the present chaos is to be the prelude, the disorientation before the new configuration. You can look at it all and wish you could turn the clock back, you can look at it all and long for some golden age behind you, but I'll tell you, you can't go home. There is movement in history. There are hinge-points. This nation was born in newness and this nation stands today urgently in need of joining arms and hands with the peoples of the world in order to find Shalom, which is the purpose and the intention of God. Paul struggled with it. He couldn't figure out why his own © Grand Valley State University �Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Richard A. Rhem Page 5   people were not seeing in Jesus the Way. He tried to put it together and figure it out - what in the world was going on. I don't think he was very successful, but he knew that God had an intention for the world that included not only his people, but also the nations. He knew that finally it was the covenant of grace with Abraham that this specially called people would be the blessing of God to all nations. Paul knew that just as all were disobedient, so God intended mercy for all. Therefore, the Christian who lives in the biblical vision is a dreamer. The biblical Christian is one who will leave no stone unturned to bring people together. Hans Küng said, “There will be no peace among the nations until there is peace among the religions. And there will be no peace among the religions until we can find peace among the churches.” So we sit and diddle and twiddle our thumbs while the world stands more in danger by religious power than any other power in the world. And we recognize that we cannot speak about the political and the economic, and then over here the spiritual. It is all one world. It is one God concerned about the totality of things, about a world in which there is not political oppression, a world in which there is not economic exploitation, and a world in which there is not adversarial relationships among those who are finally the children of one God. The choice is always before us. We can dig in our heels, set our jaw, clench our teeth and try to resurrect yesterday. Or we can be people of the dream. People of the vision casting themselves in with a spirit that would move toward newness, for it is possible also here in the pulse of this new day as the poet Maya Angelou said, “You may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister's eyes and into your brother's face, to your country and say simply, very simply, with hope, ‘Good morning. Good morning.’” © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c716771bed7acae1f4cf2b42d7464b70.mp3 345c62470689d5141da840b1a82b0960 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 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 V Scripture Text Isaiah 65: 23, 25, Romans 11: 32, 36 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930704 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-07-04 Title A name given to the resource The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 4, 1993 entitled "The Promise and Peril of a New Age Aborning", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 65: 23, 25, Romans 11: 32, 36. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Freedom Global Community Interdependence Shalom https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b4816eb5a31cffd7d3aae8caf9b63dfe.pdf 23353b5d41d6c594af63da35277bb51c PDF Text Text Not Converted – Just Amazed by Grace Text: Acts 9:5; Philippians 3:10 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost IV, June 27, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “Tell me, Lord, he said, who you are… I am Jesus…” Acts 9:5 “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.” Philippians 3:10 Conversion is a term that is used frequently in Christian language and Christian thinking. It is an integral part of our whole understanding of how one turns in faith to God. The word itself means to turn around, to turn from something. The dictionary definition is to turn from one doctrine or opinion or from one religion to another. So we speak of people being “converted.” In the Christian Gospel we call people to conversion, to repentance and faith. We have noted in this post-Pentecost series that there are those stories Luke recounts to show how the telling of the story of Jesus in the wake of crucifixion and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit was effected in that early community. There was a movement—there was a Jesus Movement. They were called the Followers of The Way. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached and thousands believed that this Jesus was indeed God’s anointed one. Then we have the story of Peter who had a vision. He went to a Roman centurion, to his house. There he told the story of Jesus, and the Spirit of God fell, and the Gentiles in that house believed that Jesus indeed was God’s special emissary, God’s anointed one. Then there was Philip who went to Samaria with great response to the story of Jesus, until the Spirit whisked him away to the road to Gaza where he encountered an Ethiopian eunuch, who also heard the story of Jesus and wanted to be included and was baptized. And then there was Stephen, who had understood maybe more clearly than any of them the breaking forth of the Spirit—of the Spirit of God beyond those narrow constrictive bounds of national and ethnic identity. And he paid for it with his life. The account of his martyr’s death speaks of one who was standing there witnessing that, assenting to his death. That one was a Jew named Saul. Luke © Grand Valley State University   �Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 2   goes on to tell us in the 3rd verse of the 8th chapter of the book of Acts that Saul was ravishing the Christian movement, the church. Then he drops Saul for a while to tell us about Philip. But now in the 9th chapter he comes back to this individual and we find that Saul is still breathing out threatenings and murder to the church. He even gets authority to move out of Jerusalem to go to Damascus to imprison and persecute Followers of The Way. But he is stopped dead in his tracks. Flannery O’Connor says, “The Lord must have reckoned in order to make a Christian out of that one, He’d have to knock him off his horse!” Well, we don’t know if Paul was afoot or on horseback, but when it happened to him, he didn’t know either. It was one of those sudden, dramatic, traumatic experiences, cataclysmic in its effect. Paul was conquered, and surrendered. The voice said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Why?” I wonder if that was the question that was the catalyst of the surrender? Luke doesn’t give us a lot of psychologizing about the interior life of Saul and the things that had been going on in him, but that little question “Why? Why Saul? Why are you doing this?” It’s a good question. Saul surrenders. He rises blind and helpless and is led into the city of his destination, but now in a totally different state. After three days a Christian disciple whom he had come to arrest comes to him and says, “Brother Saul.” That is the story of Saul’s conversion, his turning around. It doesn’t always happen so dramatically. Luke gives us a number of stories so that we can see that there’s not one stereotypical manner in which this has to happen, but this turning in the case of Saul was so dramatic. It lifts up some elements that are really a part of the conversion process through which we all go in a number of areas in our life, a number of times. Someone has said that the first thing that’s true of a genuine conversion is that one is detached from familiar patterns of identity. Detachment is a painful process. We don’t like to be detached. We all want a sense of identity, a kind of comfort zone, knowing who we are, where we are, what we are about, what the meaning and purpose of it all is. Then something happens and we are suddenly wrenched loose from that. We are detached from that. And, that’s very threatening. Often times – and now I am psychologizing for Paul a little bit, but I don’t think apart from the stuff that Luke gives us – often time it happens that when one senses that one is about to be ripped loose, wrenched out of something familiar and comfortable, one grows very angry. I don’t think it was by chance that Luke gave us that little snapshot of Paul standing there while they were stoning Stephen. He didn’t pick up a stone, but he held their garments, and was assenting to what was happening. He saw Stephen pray, “Oh God, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” It must have impacted him. In order to suppress that, to repress that, to keep that down, those doubts that must have been rising within him, Luke tells us that he increased his hostile violence against the Followers of The Way. We don’t want to be detached from our familiar patterns of identity. © Grand Valley State University �Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 3   I have made no secret of the fact that I think that the Reformed Church in America ought to die—and the Christian Reformed Church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church. I think those denominations ought to die. Once they arose very naturally, to be explained geographically, ethnically. And they have been the agents of the grace of God and the sharing of the Gospel, but they are not so any more. They are now barriers. They are anachronistic structures that suck up energy and time and resources. Where once they were the instruments of the Spirit, they have become barriers to the Spirit. That’s what I think. This crotchety, parochial, dull-witted, stubborn, obstinate, old Dutch Reformed Church is my family. I don’t want to be without a family! I imbibed that culture with my mother’s milk! Who am I then? Where will I go? Detachment - detachment is painful; it’s wrenching. We don’t do that easily because what we anticipate is the second step in a conversion process. That is a period of rootlessness, disorientation. Everything is changed. We don’t have any place to plant our feet. We don’t know who we are or where we are going, what the purpose of it all is. It is a very uncomfortable period of time. And we resist that, but when we don’t have any options left and we are pushed into it, eventually the ground begins to solidify again and we find a new configuration. We suddenly see things in a whole new design, and actually it can be characterized as a bright light. It comes together again. Then, finally, because this doesn’t happen in splendid isolation as though we are all individuals off on our own, finally once again we are ushered into a new community. Invited to a new table. We experience table fellowship. Everything is changed. Everything is new. Once again we can breathe with some ease and some comfort. That was the experience of Paul. And that, I think, to a greater or lesser degree is the kind of experience we all go through in a conversion process. Now I think we have been sold a bad bill of goods by much of the evangelical movement of the last century or two, which makes conversion a kind of once-forall momentary experience of transformation from darkness to light, from error to truth, from reprobation to salvation. That rather modern understanding of conversion has seeped into our conservative evangelical churches as well. But I don’t think it was true to the story of Paul, because Paul didn’t move from darkness to light. Paul didn’t move from godlessness to God. Paul didn’t move from reckless unrighteousness to righteousness. Because if we read his own statement in the 3rd chapter of Philippians he tells about his Jewish heritage. If we read that as a denigration of that heritage, we misread it. There is not a word of denigration about Paul’s Jewish experience. Paul says, quite the contrary, that all of that was gain. He says, “You want to talk about credentials, let me tell you about myself: circumcised on the eighth day, a Hebrew, born of Hebrew parents, from the Tribe of Benjamin. In terms of my own particular religious conviction, a Pharisee, a follower of the strictest sect. In terms of my status: top of the line. And if you want to talk about accomplishment: I was zealous. I persecuted the Church. As to the law: I was blameless.” Paul is not saying that that was something apart from his experience as a Child of God. Paul was not brought into © Grand Valley State University �Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 4   the covenant of grace. Paul stood in the middle of the covenant of grace. Paul was a recipient of that gracious election of God who chose that people to be God’s special instrument. Paul did not move from godlessness to God. Paul moved from God to God, from Light to Greater Light. Suddenly. This is why I call it Not Converted - simply Amazed by Grace, to point out that Paul didn’t suddenly come to know the true God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of Israel. That God Paul knew. That God Paul served. That God Paul loved. But all of that which was gain for him suddenly paled in the light of this new understanding of God in the face of Jesus, the Jew. So he says, “For the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord…I’ve lost everything and I count it as nothing.” But that is not a statement about the value of his tradition. It is a statement about the surpassing worth of that new understanding that he had of the same God that he’d always known. That’s what conversion is. We’ve been sold a bad bill of goods to think about conversion as bringing people from outside in. I think sometimes what we are really doing in our evangelism is to bring people in to make them like us, to confirm our own convictions and to shore up our own faith. Conversion is for the Church. That was the Reformation insight. In the Heidelberg Catechism the definition of conversion is not once-forall being born again and sailing on from there. In the Heidelberg Catechism conversion is the daily dying of the old person and the daily rising of the new. It is a daily reorientation because we are a pilgrim people. We are on pilgrimage passing through ever-new landscapes. And with every turn of the corner there is potentially some surprise of grace. The Christian life is a life of growing in understanding and insight. Sometimes there are those crises periods and it is dramatic. More often it is a quiet, “Oh, I see.” The Reformation heritage that is ours understood it perfectly in its inception, because what happened in the sixteenth century was not the Reformed Church. It was the Church of God Re-formed according to the Word of God. If I could give you the Latin phrase, the Latin would be translated this way: A church re-formed according to the Word of God and always being re-formed. And the moment the church became The Reformed Church it became a blot to the Spirit of God. What we want to do in our humanness is to nail it down. To make it simple. To make it clear. To be able to get a handle on it. To have it as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. So we can’t live very long, we can’t live beyond the first generation of those that were able to live with the Church re-forming according to the Word of God and always being re-formed. We want The Reformed Church! And we become an ideology. We become a cult, we become sect, and we deny the Spirit of God whose freedom must continue to break down all those forms and structures that would imprison us. Ah, it would make us feel secure, but they bind our soul and deny the liberty of the children of God. © Grand Valley State University �Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 5   “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” Paul said, “there is liberty.” The Christian experience is one of ongoing, continual conversion. Ongoing. Turning. Twisting. To gain new insight into the greatness and wonder of the God of all grace. That is the exciting adventure—the pilgrimage to which we are called, to which we are invited. I would ask you: Have you been converted? When is the last time you were converted? When is the last time that something that seemed so clear and simple suddenly slipped through your fingers and you felt yourself spinning, twisting in the wind until finally your feet came to stand in another place and you said, “Wow!” J.B. Phillips wrote long ago Your God is Too Small. Has your God grown lately? Have you been alive and excited with the marvel of the wonder of the grace of God that would continue to beckon us into ever-wider vistas and everricher experience? We as a community have celebrated with gratitude the retirement of John Gregory Bryson from his teaching in the public schools. We know him for his music, but generations of students know him for his geography. If you think he’s a taskmaster in front of the choir, you should have had him for geography. You see, I had a couple of boys that went through that process. He was unrelenting in his demands, and Greg made students color within the lines. (Laughter) John is neat as a pin — takes after his mother— “a place for everything, everything in its place.” That’s the regime I live under. (Laughter) I am able to sustain that because that’s the way I was raised too, but my genes are different. So if you’ve got a teacher that gives you a set of colored pencils and a blank white map with all the lines and you have to get it all right, that can be persecution. Now Greg has retired. Generations of students have gone through, probably still scarred in their psyche (Laughter), but with Greg’s retirement the whole world changes. The map doesn’t work. It’s obsolete. All the lines have to be withdrawn. But the world’s still here. The world is still here. So, let yourself go. Breathe deeply. Trust the Spirit of God who takes it all away and gives it back better than you ever dreamed of. If you want a place still to nail it down, then take the bread, take the cup, remember and be full of hope. For Jesus said, “Do this…‘til I come.” © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/799b5a44e53b236a94d3183bc5a836d7.mp3 7c3fda83a463ff5fdd2dea16874c198e 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 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 IV Scripture Text Acts 9:5, Philippians 3:10 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930627 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-06-27 Title A name given to the resource Not Converted - Just Amazed By Grace Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 June 27, 1993 entitled "Not Converted - Just Amazed By Grace", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 9:5, Philippians 3:10. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Conversion Pentecost IV Reformation Spiritual Growth https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f3b9baec9f0d1edfd13dd1a0eae1a05b.pdf 6d7b37ff437f88d8b694c2e721f7caef PDF Text Text Can I Be Included? Text: Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost III, June 20, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “The eunuch shall not be permitted to the assembly of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 23:1 “…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7 “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Acts 8:37 Jesus had promised that if the disciples would wait in Jerusalem they would be empowered from on high. He charged them to begin at Jerusalem and go through Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth, and to tell the good news of God's wonderful grace. It would have seemed that on Pentecost when indeed the Spirit was poured out that Peter, at least, got the message. For he said, “This is what the prophet Joel was speaking about when God promised through that prophet. He said the days would come when old men would see visions, and young women would have dreams, and young people would prophecy.” He preached a great sermon. He got all caught up in his own rhetoric, and concluded with that wonderful promise “that the promise was to you and to your children, your seed after you, and to all those that are afar off.” Stephen definitely got the message. He understood what Jesus had shared with that woman at the well of Samaria, “that neither in Mount Gerizim, nor at Jerusalem, but the day was coming and now was when the true worshiper would worship in Spirit and in truth, that the Spirit would push the true worshiper beyond all of the concrete forms of human religion.” But though Peter seemed to have gotten the message on Pentecost, when it came to the implementation—that was another thing. It’s one thing to preach and it’s another thing to do anything about it. It took a vision. Finally the Spirit of God had to say to Peter, “Go. Go to the house of Cornelius.” So Peter went—and told the story of Jesus. To his amazement the Spirit of God fell while he was preaching. The message of the fire of Pentecost seemed irrepressible. Philip, who had been appointed with Stephen to administer the community that was growing, heads to © Grand Valley State University   �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Samaria. He is preaching in Samaria, and there is tremendous response. The Samaritans are turning to Jesus, hearing the Gospel, believing it, and responding to it. And the Apostle Paul is spreading the Good News as well. Well, of course, to get through to Paul, God had to knock him off his horse. But once he got the message, Paul went everywhere, as far as Rome itself bringing the Good News of Jesus. Before long that Christian movement had spread far beyond Jerusalem, beyond Judea, beyond Samaria, up to Antioch, and indeed was sweeping the ancient world, the Roman Empire like a spreading flame. Ah, and nothing succeeds like success, you know. Yet the very success of that mission created the great crisis for the early church. It was THE crisis of the early church, and it was a crisis of major proportions. It was crisis created by the key question: What Does It Take To Belong? As long as it was this Jesus Movement within the Jewish temple there was no problem. Even though there might be hundreds and thousands of Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah there was no problem. Because this was not the Christian Church, this was the Jesus Movement within Israel. This was just the people who believed in the God of Israel and worshiped in the temple. They simply believed that God had indeed, fully invested Jesus, that Jesus was the anointed one, the Messiah. They shared common heritage, common tradition, common background, common comfort levels, common language, common everything with their Jewish sisters and brothers. But now you move that out. You get to Samaria and you have already got some tension. Then you get to Gentile Antioch and you've got a real problem. You have Paul going all over the Ancient World preaching the Gospel and saying to the people, “Repent. Believe and be baptized in the name of Jesus and you are one of us.” There were others back in Jerusalem who said, “That's not enough.” Finally the crisis was so severe that they had to call a council. We call it the Jerusalem Council. You can read about it in the 15th chapter of Acts. Probably the premier preacher today in this country is a man named Fred Craddick, who has a great sense of humor, and who pictures the Jerusalem Council as a typical church synodical meeting. He says, “Church meetings can be the most incendiary of them all, you know.” He envisions the people coming with great fear and trepidation knowing that this was going to be a hot session. He says, “You know you knew you were in for trouble when you came into the assembly hall and there was a forest of microphones. So the meeting was called to order and someone stood up at microphone #2.” All over the country in the synods and general assemblies of the various denominations you will see all these microphones, and suddenly somebody was recognizing the speaker at microphone #2. He said, “As far as this issue about who can be included is concerned, I just wanted to say that back home in our congregation we've been studying Ezra. Ezra made it very clear, ‘Get the foreigner out, even if you are married to one, divorce her. Get rid of her. No foreigners in the assembly of God's people.’ Thank you very much.” © Grand Valley State University �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Then a rather quiet voice from the other side of the room at microphone #5 stood up. Some lady from Berea, who said, “Well, we have this Bible class that meets Tuesday mornings at 9:30 a.m. Wonderful fellowship. We have been studying the Book of Ruth. Ruth was quite a woman. As a matter of fact, did you know she was an ancestress of David and, therefore, of our Lord. She had Moabite blood. She was a Moabitess. So our Lord has Moabite blood, so it would seem that the first speaker is out of line to make the limit so narrow.” Then there was somebody up in the balcony who couldn't stand for that who stood up at Microphone #9. He said, “If you read Amos it says, you of all the people of the earth, you alone, you the Jews, you alone. Not you alone, etc., etc. You alone. That's all I want to say.” Then someone else with a kind of tremor in their voice stood up and said, “I can remember back in Sunday School I memorized a verse, I can't quite remember it right now, but it went something like, ‘The mountain of the house of the Lord will be exalted above all the mountains and all the nations. All the nations will flow into it.’” Obviously they weren't going to settle it in this session. They were going to have an extended session. It was pretty tense. Tempers were about to explode. There was a lot of electric in the air. They broke for lunch, and over lunch somebody at one of the tables said, “Whose fault is this anyway?” Somebody said, “I know whose fault it is: Stephen’s. After all he made that speech about the temple. He sort of denigrated the temple. That's what started it all.” Someone else said, “No. No. Peter. Peter isn't admitting to it. He's trying to keep it quiet, but do you know the word is out. I've got a sister that lives in Caesarea and she says that Peter actually ate with some Italians.” (Laughter) Somebody else said, “Nah, it’s Philip. What's he doing in Samaria anyway? You know Samaritans have always been irresponsible. You can't count on them. Any time you let the Samaritans in you're in trouble. You know, there goes the neighborhood.” (Laughter) Another one pops up and said, “Ah, come on. That's all child's play. What about Paul? Paul has gone everywhere—Galatia, Ephesus, Rome itself. He just says, ‘You all come. You all come.’ Why, they don't know what circumcision is. They never heard of Moses. They don't know anything about the Law. He just says, ‘Come on in. You can even be baptized. It's okay, just come on in.’ What is this going to come to? We had such a good thing going. There was such unity. There was such power. There was such verve. There was a sense of community. We had such a good thing going and now it’s going to split us wide open.” Well, you may think I am kidding, but I'm not kidding at all! I haven't exaggerated a bit. The tension was that sharp and the issue was that clear-cut. What did it take to be included? Would the promise of Pentecost finally break out beyond those narrow limits or would God's Spirit once again be managed? Somebody at the table who had not spoken and had not gotten into the debate finally said, “You know whose fault it is? It’s not Stephen's or Peter's or Philip's or Paul's. It’s God's fault. The Spirit of God pushing and shoving. The Spirit of God never satisfied with any boundary lines, with any barriers. Look. None of us would be out there except that there was a kind of compulsion, the compelling of © Grand Valley State University �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   the Spirit of God. It’s the Spirit of God. That's why we're in trouble. And that's why we had better take seriously this thing that is before us.” That's what Luke is telling us about the early church. If we think we have got tensions today. If we think we've got issues today—that was an issue that involved the total turning upside down of everything they had ever believed. But Luke knew. As long as you could talk about issues in the abstract, as long as you can talk about theoretical cases, you can all sit around all day and debate, argue…get nowhere. But Luke knew that if you really want to deal with an issue, what you have to do is focus on one concrete individual. So for just a little bit he turned the camera on a strange sort of person, an Ethiopian eunuch. Philip had been carrying on a great evangelistic crusade in Samaria and Samaritans were being saved by the thousands. He had his picture on the front page of the newspaper almost every night, interviewed on the evening news, and suddenly the Spirit of God says, “Philip, go south…the road to Gaza.” Then he finds himself next to an Ethiopian eunuch. An Ethiopian. Well, it’s not the modern day Ethiopia, but there was such a place south of Egypt. On the other hand, in that ancient world in classical discussion and literature, an Ethiopian was somebody who was from beyond the end of the world. Sort of like we sometimes say, or I used to say, “Where's he from? I don't know. Timbuktu.” Or, “She can go to Timbuktu.” That means beyond nowhere—Ethiopia. This Ethiopian was a very powerful person in a great position, and he was a eunuch. A eunuch is a male rendered sexless by accident or by surgery. They were very valuable in the Ancient World and often commanded high posts in the palace. The kings liked them because they created no problems with the harem. The queens liked them because they minded their own business. Everyone liked to hire a eunuch for a key position because the eunuch would stay late at the office every night. The wife never complained, “Dinner's cold again.” The eunuch never got interrupted with his duties by having to take care of the car pool. They were valuable, often commanding powerful, prestigious posts. Deuteronomy 23:1 (Read it tonight after you put the children to bed. It's a little more explicit than I have in the bulletin.) says, speaking about a eunuch through accident, “They have no place in the assembly of God's people.” They are excluded. Now this eunuch had been to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to worship. Maybe he was a proselyte. Maybe he was a God-fearer. We don't really know, but obviously he was serious, searching, longing, yearning, and going to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to worship. But if he had just read Deuteronomy 23:1 he would have known there's no place for a eunuch in the house of the Lord, in the assembly of God's people. So what's he doing anyway, making his way to Jerusalem? What does he want to do? Does he simply want to make himself feel more miserable? Does he want to feel more sharply his exclusion? Or maybe, does he want to start a civil rights movement or a sacred rites movement as the case may be? In any case, he goes to Jerusalem to worship even though Deuteronomy 23:1 clearly excludes him. I wonder why people go where the door is closed? I wonder why people bloody their knuckles rapping on a gate that is locked? © Grand Valley State University �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   He was reading his Bible when Philip caught up with him. Maybe Isaiah 56 caught his eye. “Do not let the foreigner say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people.’” The foreigner not separated. Who is this prophet? Ah, this was Isaiah 2. This was the one who had this magnificent universal vision, this vision of salvation for all people. He says, “Do not let the foreigner say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me….’” This caught his eye, “For thus says the Lord: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant—I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons or daughters.’” That was the problem of the eunuch, no sons and daughters to carry on the family name, which was so important in that day. No one to remember. No generations to follow. But here in book of the prophet Isaiah the Lord says, “I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name…a name. In the house of the Lord, a name better than sons and daughters. I will give an everlasting name.” About the time Philip got to him he was in the 53rd chapter, about the lamb led to the slaughter. “Sheep before its shearers silent.” The one who was cut off with no generation. What's he doing? He's looking for his name. He is trying to find himself. He wants to find himself in the story. He wants to find himself in God's story. He's looking for his name. He reads about this one who is cut off, who leaves no generation. He says to Philip, “Who’s he talking about? Is he talking about himself or some other one?” Philip says to him, “He’s talking about Jesus.” “Well didn't he have any seed?” “No. He was taken up out of the land of the living. He left no heir. But God gave him a name. Like the prophet says in a couple of chapters over—a name better than sons and daughters…an everlasting name…and they shall not be cut off.” Looking for his name. Jesus went up to Jerusalem with a yearning in his heart. The Torah had said he couldn't belong, there was no place. But he went anyway. I wonder why people go where they are not wanted? Why do people try to force their way in where the gate is obviously locked? Blacks? I remember when I came back from Europe after the tumultuous 60s. It must have been the summer of '71. My first gathering with my extended family. I made the mistake of engaging an aunt in conversation, (which is a euphemism) (Laughter) about the whole civil rights thing, African-American ascendancy. This is the aunt, I've talked about her before, she's not always right, but she's always certain. (Laughter) I think she got the sense that I was winning the argument so she cut it off at that point. She said, “You may be right, but I will still say to my dying day, they were better off when they knew their place.” Why do people bloody their knuckles rapping on doors that are locked? Women, trying to get into ministry, scaring the likes of myself, threatened by what that might mean. (Laughter) Let them take care of the kitchen for God's sake! (Laughter) © Grand Valley State University �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Gays in the military! What do they want to get in the military for? Don't they know they are odd? Wonder why people always try to barge in, crash walls, break down barriers? I suppose it’s just like this eunuch. Just looking to find his name. Looking to find if he could belong. I was in Minneapolis this past week for a couple of days with Churches Uniting for Global Mission (CUGM), the kind of thing that Bob Schuller keeps talking about on the Hour of Power. Tuesday evening, after all the festivities were over, Bud Ritter and I were invited to his room for some conversation—just the three of us. He told of his experience in Africa a couple of weeks ago— it must have been an absolutely shattering experience for him—Dr. Leon Sullivan, the AfricanAmerican leader who started the program Teachers for Africa, this outstanding leader from Philadelphia who has a sense that part of the problem in our world today, is that the leaders (in this case African-American and black African leaders) are not talking to each other. So he organized a black summit and he got the leaders from this country, Governor Wilder from Virginia, Jesse Jackson, Lowry, etc. to attend. He chartered two 747s and went over to Africa. It wasn't going to be in New York or L.A. or Chicago, it was going to be in Africa. Got the leaders of the sub-Saharan nations together. They met on the west coast of Africa. He invited one white man and that was Bob Schuller. Bob Schuller with all of these black leaders. Bob told about sitting in his hotel and watching the Atlantic wash the shore of Africa, becoming cognizant of the fact it was his Dutch forbearers that brought their ships there to load up 20,000,000 blacks, enslaving them and bringing them to America. Later he was eating breakfast and the Chief of Protocol, of Lewis Farrakhan, the head of the Black Muslim nation, who are militant in the style of the early Malcolm X., the one who makes the statements that make your blood run cold, he came to Schuller and said, “Lewis would like to speak with you.” The next morning for two hours at breakfast they spoke together and Bob's summary of it all was simply this: He wants in. I had heard that he was seeking to move toward the middle where he might be a part of the genuine dialogue instead of firing from the periphery. Lewis Farrakhan wants in. Schuller was given no duties at this summit, but in one session Dr. Sullivan said, “We'd like to hear from you.” And he stood up and he couldn't speak. He began to weep. On Tuesday evening when he told the story he wept again. He said, “It was the most dramatic experience of my life. In those moments I was ashamed I was white.” As he stood there weeping a black man got up from the audience and came and stood next to him. Just stood there. At one point Schuller looked at him and he smiled. Bob said it was as though he was saying, “I forgive you.” Eventually Bob stammered a few things and sat down. But he said, “You know, it shatters everything I've always thought or believed. The man who stood next to me and gave me forgiveness was a Muslim.” Bob said, “You know all the boundaries are dissolving.” I shared with him what we have been talking about these weeks, that, indeed, I was going to talk about the next morning to the CUGM group, that the © Grand Valley State University �Can I Be Included? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   boundaries are dissolving. That maybe there was the period of the Jewish Church and maybe the period of the Christian Church, and maybe because of the blindness of the Jewish leadership there had to be a Christian Church. Maybe because of the blindness of the Christian Church there needs to be something out here which the Spirit of God will shape and form, because you see it’s really finally God's fault. God's Spirit will not tolerate barriers. God's Spirit will not tolerate walls. God's Spirit, the Spirit that Jesus promised, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the God of Israel, the Spirit of the one true God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth will break down every barrier and will make all God's people one. That's maybe where we are in the world. The eunuch said to Philip, “Look, there's water. Can I be included?” I suspect that's probably everybody's question and heart’s desire. Can I Be Included? Can we say ‘No’ to those to whom God has said ‘Yes’? God forbid! © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/59fbd6a81f263e318e5d5618ca3b25af.mp3 8354b01eb35392a7aafe6addd34e0fe7 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 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 III Scripture Text Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930620 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-06-20 Title A name given to the resource Can I Be Included? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 June 20, 1993 entitled "Can I Be Included?", on the occasion of Pentecost III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Deuteronomy 23:1, Isaiah 56:7, Acts 8:37. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Inclusive Pentecost III Pluralism Spirit of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/73dce6593e0d79003b0f950d02238edb.pdf ff50b5a75862ea9b3913e1472e89c6fe PDF Text Text The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Text: Matthew 23:37; Acts 7:54-55 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost II, June 13, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon …Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! Matthew 23:37 When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Acts 7:54-55 The early chapters of Acts document that beautiful community that the Spirit created. A community of harmony. A community of sharing and caring, of praying and praising. Such an idyllic period. So pregnant with the presence and the power of God. But it didn't last very long because that community of the Spirit was also a community of people. The Spirit doesn't just float ethereally out there somewhere but always indwells God's people. So where there are people, there are problems. The Spirit that creates community is always a Spirit that tends to push and nudge towards newness, eliciting from that same community resistance and conflict. There are sparks that fly. We find that, after the portrait of that initial harmony and wonderful beauty that characterized the apostolic community, we have a serious conflict that centered around Stephen. Stephen was appointed to administer the community, to take care of some of its details, some of the necessary things that had to happen in that growing community. But before long he went to preaching. Stephen was probably the outstanding leader of that early community. We hear of other names, Peter and James and eventually Paul, that are more familiar to us. None of them were earlier and none of them had more insight into the universality of the Gospel and the promise of Pentecost than did Stephen. So before long Stephen became the spokesman of the truth that came to expression in Jesus and he found himself following dead in the tracks of Jesus. He elicited the wrath and the hostility of that Jewish community that had not yet gotten over its reaction to Jesus. The criticisms and the condemnations sounded very much the same. That Stephen and his ministry of the Gospel was © Grand Valley State University   �The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Richard A. Rhem Page 2   undercutting the centrality and the sacredness of the temple, that Stephen was playing fast and loose with the law of Moses and the customs that came through that law. So they called him before the council and asked him whether the charges, (that had been trumped up, and yet that had an element of truth in them) were indeed true. Stephen's defense was most unusual. He took them on a rather lengthy survey of the history of God's people. He was characterized by Luke as a man full of the Spirit, powerful, and full of grace. As he stood before the Sanhedrin Council, the leadership group of Jewish people, they looked upon him and (it is recorded), they saw, as it were, in Stephen the face of an angel. With great persuasiveness and power he reviewed that history which was a history of stubbornness and obstinacy, disobedience and rebellion. Stephen was a Samaritan. We know that from an analysis of the history course that he gave them in that address. He had the Samaritan bias. If you had heard the history of Israel from St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews with blue blood in his veins, you would have heard a different nuance to that history. But Stephen being a Samaritan reflected the Samaritan bias. Interestingly he brings the story to a conclusion by a reference to the building of the temple. You see, the Jews and the Samaritans had this ongoing conflict because the Samaritans never really yielded to the fact that Jerusalem was the city of God. It was the tabernacle, the tent, the moveable sanctuary that accompanied Israel through the wilderness that was brought into the promised land and was placed first at Shechem. Shechem was in the vicinity of Mt. Gerezim. Then David who came to power as the second king of Israel, in order to unite the south and the north, conquered the fortress of the Jebusites and founded Jerusalem as the new capitol, a very clever political move. Of course, David being king, all of the court preachers exalted this wonderful move on David's part as though it was all of God's doing that Mt. Zion should be exalted forever. But the Samaritans, the northern tribes, never really bought that. Remember the woman at the well, the story that we looked at last week? She said to Jesus, “I foresee that you are a prophet. Now where should we worship, here at Mt. Gerezim in Samaria, or there in Jerusalem?” Jesus said to her, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshiper will not worship either here or there, but in Spirit and Truth.” Maybe Stephen was a convert to Jesus through the testimony of that woman. In any case, he had the Samaritan bias that didn't really “buy” Jerusalem as the only site where God dwelled. It probably is true as they charged that he slighted somewhat the temple and all the accouterments of that sacred shrine. He saw before the rest of them what Jesus was really talking about. He understood the promise of Pentecost, the breaking out of those narrow ethnic national limitations and structures and forms, and the universalizing spirit that was now poured out on all flesh. As he concludes his history lesson, he brings it to this © Grand Valley State University �The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Richard A. Rhem Page 3   contrast between the tabernacle that was the moveable tent of meeting, the worship center for pilgrim people, contrasting it with that fixed temple in Jerusalem. His charge, the thrust of his history lesson, the point he's trying to make, he says with conciseness, “You do always resist the Holy Spirit! You like your forbearers do always resist the Holy Spirit. What you really want is a fixed temple, a solid form, when the Spirit prefers the tent and the tabernacle that can be folded down, mobile, free, fluid.” As he brings his point home using that image, they can't miss the point. They are those who have it all wrapped up - in a solid temple, in a thick liturgy, in established priesthood, the last word, the final form. Stephen, from Samaria, through the eyes of Jesus says, “You're doing it again. You are doing what our forbearers have always done. Always resisting the Holy Spirit.” Reflecting the words of Jesus as he addressed the leaders of his own people, confronting them with a paradox, the irony that they bring wreaths to the tombs of the prophets that their forbearers killed, knowing that they will soon kill him as well. He proclaims to them the irony of the religious who lust for certitude and fixed forms and always resist the Spirit that would break the forms, that would create newness, that would move God's people into God's open future. It's a risk to see too soon. Stephen paid for his early vision with his life. He saw as Jesus saw and he died as Jesus died. It is a risk to see too soon. Let me play a little game with you this morning. One of the best ways to hear the word of God in the biblical story is to put oneself in the story, to identify with one or another of the characters. I know when we come to church, we may take for granted, presume that we are a part of the people that wear white hats, the good guys. So you might say to me, “Obviously I can identify with Stephen as I would have identified with Jesus over against those obstinate, blind, stubborn, rebellious Jewish leaders, who were always resisting the Holy Spirit.” But, wait a minute. The story isn't about blind, obstinate, stubborn Jews of a former day. This is our story. I ask you, “With whom do you identify?” Might you image yourself pulling a chair up to the council table as a member of the Sanhedrin, checking this man Stephen out? As a guardian of the tradition and, therefore, examining, interrogating this preacher of strange creed. Or there are a couple of other possibilities. Saul, who was to become Paul, we are told, was standing by, holding their coats as they stoned Stephen. Maybe you sense that you might be one of those, standing on the sidelines, seeing what's going to happen. Or I suppose there might be one or two of you here that might honestly see yourself joining the lynch mob, taking up the stones. Where do you see yourself in the story? Because the story is not an ancient tale of days gone by. It is as fresh as © Grand Valley State University �The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Richard A. Rhem Page 4   today. What Stephen was talking about was simply the phenomena of human religion. You say, “Religion? I thought religion was divine?” Well certainly, in the sense that it is a response to God. I believe that human religion is not generated out of the human person. I believe it is the response of the human person to that encounter from beyond. The response takes a form. The response takes shape. The response takes a certain institutional character. What Stephen was talking about in his review of Israel's history was a review of the people who served the true living God, the creator of heaven and earth. They had true religion, but it was religion constituted by human shapes, and human forms, and human formulations. It was those human shapes and forms that they wanted fixed and final. The whole point of Stephen's speech was: We were better off when we were a pilgrim people in the wilderness than when we got it all together here in the promised land. We were better off when we needed occasionally a charismatic leader to come in and lead us rather than when we got this monarch, this king, this established palace and this established temple, where everything was fixed and final. Oh dear friends, we people love to have it fixed and final. Make it simple. Make it clear. Give it to me easy. Let me get my hand around it. Don’t leave any loose ends. Don't leave me dangling. The human situation is a situation that isn't neat. It's messy. It always has loose ends and dangling participles. Stephen was saying, “The Spirit of God is the Spirit that always pushes us to newness. We who are religious always resist the Spirit of God.” Jesus said, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” (Stephen's image too for that which is solidly fixed) “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft’ would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but she would not.” Jerusalem that kills the prophets. Not Mecca, not some place in the oriental kingdom of the Far East Jerusalem. All the blood from Abel - Genesis, to Zechariah - II Chronicles, the end of the Jewish canon. The whole Jewish canon from beginning to end, from A to Z. You killed the prophet, the one called by God to speak God's word. You resist the Holy Spirit.” So Stephen paid for seeing too soon, for seeing through, seeing the promise of Pentecost which Jesus had pointed to, the era of the Spirit. I was thinking about this this week because I had lunch with a friend of mine, a very dear friend of mine, a friendship that goes back over decades. We were in college together and seminary together, and a pastorate overlapped. We studied in Europe at the same time. But in the last twenty-five years I've only seen him three times. We had lunch this week. We started out together. We manned the same “foxhole” in the theological wars of our youth. He is still faithfully manning © Grand Valley State University �The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Richard A. Rhem Page 5   that post, and I have gone off the charts to the left of him. Now if he didn't love me so much he would never sit down to break bread with me. But the reason we had lunch was because, after a quarter of a century of being separated, he has just accepted a call to pastor a congregation in Grand Rapids - the most conservative congregation in the Reformed Church in America. Intentionally, deliberately so. When he called me for lunch he said, “You aren't thought of very well in my congregation.” (Laughter) I said to him, “I know.” He said, “When we have lunch maybe we should both go in disguise.” (Laughter) But there we sat. Loving each other still. Respecting each other deeply. He, standing where he has always stood, responsibly, passionately. I, with equal passion and seriousness, believing that in order to serve the same cause that he serves so well, I must do it otherwise. Is he right and I am wrong? Am I right and he is wrong? It’s not that simple really. I believe in him. And I know that we worship together the same good and gracious God even though we are poles apart. What is it with this community of faith, which is always being nudged by the Spirit into newness? Where do you take your place? You see, we are in the era of the Spirit trying to realize the promise of Pentecost. Now it seems to me that if we would move toward the Messianic Age, Shalom, and the Kingdom of God that we have to find that form to which the Spirit is inviting us. We call Jesus, Christ. Christ is the Greek word for Messiah. Messiah is the Hebrew word for the anointed. The Messianic Age is the age of anointing. We have identified with Jesus. Jesus Christ. But Jesus was simply the instrument. The instrument. The one who was anointed and promised the anointing of God's people. I wonder if, in the history of human religion in response to the true God, Israel was a stage issuing in Jesus, issuing in the Church. But I am wondering if the Church hasn't gotten locked into Jesus, forgetting that Jesus is the one anointed, promising the anointing of us all, leading us into the next stage whatever shape it may take. I don't know. There is a certain risk of seeing too soon, of getting a sense of something. There is a peril of seeing too soon. But there's a greater peril for the people of God in not seeing soon enough. Where is the Spirit of God leading us? What is the Anointing Age, the Messianic Age, the Age of the Spirit? What form will it take, and what place will we play in it? Would you stand with Stephen? Or do you sense now, pulling a chair up to the council table, feeling called rather to be a guardian of the tradition? Or maybe you are sort of on the periphery with Paul holding the coats of those who are slugging it out. Pray God you're not reaching for a stone. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9ea9fb09f3140ad0091c52bcd7e89b45.mp3 0fa9b69427b77ebddd803535e275ecb4 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 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 II Scripture Text Matthew 23:37, Acts 7: 54-55 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930613 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-06-13 Title A name given to the resource The Risk of Seeing Too Soon Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 June 13, 1993 entitled "The Risk of Seeing Too Soon", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 23:37, Acts 7: 54-55. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Inclusive Pentecost II Spirit of God Universality https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/450520b2517c093633d03e40a2d8b51f.pdf 8c04def5fafd4b7f8d495d2306dfb205 PDF Text Text The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Text: John 4:21-24; Acts 10:34-35 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Trinity Sunday, June 6, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem….The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and Truth.” John 4:21-24 “…I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” Acts 10:34-35 We have traversed the Christian year once again. We have gone through the cycle. Last Sunday was Pentecost, and the Sunday after Pentecost in the calendar of the Church is Trinity Sunday, a time when we focus on the God for whom our hearts long. The one true and eternal God, creator of all, whose heart we have seen in the face of Jesus, and whose presence is with us in the Spirit. As we celebrate Trinity Sunday this year, let me suggest that it is time for us to begin to think about that Trinitarian formulation in terms of our present world, the state of that world, and the relationship of the religions in the world. The trinity was the formulation in the third and fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Church, trying to make some sense out of the experience - the experience of the one true God who obviously was there revealed in Jesus and was present in a powerful way in Spirit, the Spirit that Jesus promised would be given to empower them and to send them out into the world, telling the good news that he had brought, the good news of God. The God who was near. The God who was gracious. The God who was inclusive of all, and who could be trusted. The God of all grace and mercy. The formulation of the doctrine of the trinity in subsequent centuries was an attempt to make some sense of that. Last week I suggested that maybe the whole development of the Christian Church was an unfortunate mistake, that maybe it was contrary even to the intention of Jesus himself. The formulation of the Christian Church that set up a competing religious institution over against Judaism – Jesus, I think, had no intention of © Grand Valley State University   �Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 2   that. There is nothing in his ministry that would seem to indicate that what he was about was the founding of another religious institution. What he was about was mediating the presence of the only God, the one true God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, and promising that God was ready now to move broadly across the face of the earth in a spiritual presence and power. That’s the promise of Pentecost. Jesus was pushing out the walls. He was removing the barriers. They killed him for that. There’s something about us. We want to have the last word. We want to have the only truth, all of the truth, and nothing but the truth. We get an idea; then we build an institution; then we set it up as an idol and we worship it. We claim that somehow or other this is the truth, and it becomes a truth that divides. What Jesus was trying to say, I think, was that there is only one God who is the God of all humankind, a God who would gather all humankind into one world community. Now we are at the point, Jesus was saying, where that Spirit of God will move us out into the world. “Go tell the whole world. Start in Jerusalem. Go to Judea and to Samaria, and the ends of the earth and tell them about the God of grace whose presence I have mediated.” It didn’t take very long, however, and that Christian movement, and the power of the Holy Spirit began to be constituted into a competing religious institution. Now down through the centuries we’ve had Judaism and Christianity claiming to serve and worship the same God, and yet claiming to be the way of truth to that God over against the other. On this Trinity Sunday, 1993, let me suggest a modest proposal. That is that Christ Community become a catalyst for the undoing of the absoluteness of the Christian Church, advocating the undoing of the absoluteness of all of the competing religions, taking down the wall, breaking down the barriers in order that we might realize the intention of Jesus and the promise of Pentecost, that the Spirit of God would be poured out on all flesh. It seems to me that this is what Jesus was about. The reason I am concerned about it more and more, is because religion is such a potent, powerful force. It is the most powerful force in the world. The force of religion in our world in the various divided camps has placed our world in peril. It is time for us to stand up and confess that we have absolutized our own partial vision over against other partial visions, and thus denied the very thing for which Jesus lived, and for which he died, which was for us to see the universal calling of all the children of God into that one world community. Hans Küng, the Catholic theologian, has said that without peace among the religions there will be no peace in the world. He’s right! And then he goes on to say that without peace among the churches there will be no peace among the religions. So there’s a sense in which talking about a dialogue among the religions is already a step removed from where we are. But over twenty years ago, right about this time of year, this congregation changed its name from The First © Grand Valley State University �Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Reformed Church of Spring Lake to Christ Community Church. That was done intentionally in order to create a new image, in order to establish the fact that here we would have an ecumenical community that reflected the whole spectrum of the body of Christ. Here we would honor all of the faith traditions. Here we would blend the traditions into a new mix and a new mold that would be reflective of the breadth of the Christian church. And it has happened. You are a broad spectrum of Christian traditions in your various backgrounds. If this community were a dog it might be considered a healthy mongrel. Nothing pure about this place. It is all mixed up and that’s healthy. But it’s not enough! We have got to take the next step. Somebody has to stand up and say, “For God’s sake, for peace in the world the respective human religions are human constructions that need to be transcended in order to realize the Spirit of Pentecost, because the Spirit of God is beyond any of the particular concretizations of the respective human religions.” It seems to me that this is what Jesus was about. But too soon after the day of Pentecost, as the Christian movement began to sweep across the face of the earth, things went awry. A Christian Church was born. I am not saying that we have to undo two thousand years of history. Nor am I so naive as to believe that the Spirit of God does not work through all of the stuff of history, even through our blindness and our obstinacy; even through our absolutizing of our partial views, the Spirit of God works. Paradoxically, the God of Israel was brought to the nations by the God of the Christian Church. But I am suggesting to you today that the respective absolutizing of human religious institutions must come to an end. It is time for someone to speak for God and for the Spirit of God, and for the promise of Pentecost, bringing all of those who would serve and worship and adore and hunger after the one true God into one community of faith no matter how many faces it might have. It seems to me that the Trinitarian formulations of the Church, which came four hundred, five hundred years after Jesus in their final form, are a block to the dialogue among the religions. It is very interesting that in the year 312 A.D. the Emperor Constantine, the Roman emperor, established the Christian Church. What a tremendous victory that was. What a triumph. From a ragtag bunch of nondescript people with a vision and a passion, a persecuted people, in less than 312 years, the Christian Church becomes the established religion of the empire. Is it a coincidence that the same emperor called a church council nine years later, the Council of Nicea in 321 A.D., the council that formulated the exalted Christology of our creeds and our liturgies, our prayers and our hymns? On page 12 of your hymn book there is the Nicean Creed. The exalted Christology that exalted the conception of Jesus, which is stated there in Greek philosophical concepts, is a far cry from the Gospels. “God of God, Light of Lights. Begotten and not made . . . before all worlds.” And the formulation that © Grand Valley State University �Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 4   came out of that? The Trinitarian God. One God, but three in one, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal, blessed forever. A far cry from the Gospels. As a matter of fact, practically meaningless to us in our everyday experience. We don’t talk that way. That conceptuality is something that we only brush against in church, in a traditional way, without it really penetrating to the depths of our being. The God for whom we long is a far cry from the formulations of Trinitarian Christian doctrine. The God we really long for is a God who embraces all . . . the God heralded by Jesus. Take the story of Jesus in which Jesus has a very engaging conversation with a woman at the well. And the very fact that Jesus was there, in Samaria, is a sign of what he would later call the disciples to do – to go to all nations. The Jews and the Samaritans had nothing to do with each other. They hated each other. Why, they hated each other almost as much as the Reformed Church and the Christian Reformed Church. (Laughter) The closer you are, you see, the greater the rivalry. Jews and Samaritans were cousins, but they couldn’t stand each other. Jesus goes through Samaria because he doesn’t happen to think that the Samaritans are a godless, off scouring of the earth. He talks to a woman. To a woman! Unbelievable! Incredible! No man, no decent man would do that. There he is engaging her in conversation. Then he gets personal and she wants to change the conversation, so she moves to theology. (You can talk a lot of theology without ever getting personal.) She said, “Ah, I see you are a prophet. Now tell me,” (Mount Gerizim looming up before them) We worship here.” (A temple is there.) “You a Jew, you say we must worship in Jerusalem. Who is right?” Jesus, this Jew from Jerusalem, says to this woman from Samaria, “I’ll tell you what, the hour is coming and now is when neither here nor there, neither in the concretization of religious devotion as it came to expression in Samaria, nor the concretization of religious expression as it came to full flower in Jerusalem – neither here nor there, but in Spirit, God’s Spirit, the Spirit of the one true God who was creator in Spirit and in Truth. For such God desires you to worship.” Those who will worship will worship in Spirit and in Truth. Jesus is breaking down barriers against Samaritans. Breaking down the barriers against women. Breaking down the division between Samaritan worship and Jerusalem worship. It seems to me he was trying to say that all of that particularization of religion that came through Israel in which God was involved, dealing with a few in order to reach the many, concentrating on Israel because he loved the world, all of that particularization now needs to be universalized. We have got to break out of Gerizim. We have got to break out of Jerusalem. And ultimately, of course, such talk resulted in his death. So maybe what I would propose sounds radical, but there’s nothing new in it. It is what God has had to do throughout history. Smash the idols. Break down the forms. Smash our structures. Loosen our heads. Open our hearts. Peter, who © Grand Valley State University �Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 5   always suffered from ‘foot in mouth disease,’ hardheaded Peter has a vision on a housetop about noon time and he sees this sheep coming down with a grand smorgasbord and he hears the voice, “Rise and eat.” “Not so Lord. I’ve never touched most of that stuff. Pure kosher diet for me.” Then there comes a voice from heaven, “Peter, don’t call common and unclean what I call clean and pure and right.” Then there was a knock on the door and someone from Cornelius’ house – Cornelius, the Roman officer, a god-eater, a non-Jew, a Gentile – stands there asking Peter to accompany him. Peter was compelled by the Spirit to go, but goes apologizing all the way for walking over the threshold of a Gentile’s house, which flew in the face of everything he had ever been taught. Cornelius says, “I’ve had this vision, tell me about Jesus.” Peter says, “Well, okay. I’ll tell you the story about Jesus.” And as he is telling the story about Jesus, low and behold the Spirit of God came down (Whoosh) and these people break out into ecstatic worship. The circumcised with Peter, that is the good Jewish people who accompanied Peter, were amazed, because it happened to these Gentiles like it happened to them on the day of Pentecost. Peter says, “Oh my goodness, this thing is a lot bigger than I ever thought. Maybe God doesn’t show partiality. Who could withhold water for baptizing these who have received the Spirit just as we did?” This experience scrambled his whole theology, shot to pieces all of the religious prejudices and biases. Shot all of the things that he operated on as the basis of his life. Tough stuff, the Spirit of God! Dis-comforter. “Nudging discomforter,” that will never allow us simply to sit in our comfortable ruts absolutizing our partial views, absolutizing our very human flawed institutions. When will someone stand to say, “Enough?” When will we hear Jesus saying, “Not through Judaism, not through Islam, not through Christianity, not through Catholicism, or Orthodoxy or Protestantism, but those who would worship God must worship in Spirit and in Truth. The Spirit that transcends is the Spirit that is beyond all human religions. There is a wonderful parable that was loved by Carl Jüng, the psychiatrist. It went something like this: The water of life, wishing to making itself known on the face of the earth, bubbled up in an artesian well and flowed without effort or limit. People came to drink of the magic water and were nourished by it since it was so clean and pure and invigorating. But humankind was not content to leave things in this endemic state. Gradually they began to fence the well. Charge admission. Claim ownership of the property around it. Make elaborate laws about who could come to the well. Put locks on the gates. Soon the well was the property of the powerful and the elite. © Grand Valley State University �Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 6   The water was angry and offended. It stopped flowing and began to bubble up in another place. The people who owned the property around the first well were so engrossed in their power systems and ownership that they did not notice that the water had vanished. They continued selling the nonexistent water and the people noticed that the true power was gone, but some dissatisfied people searched with great courage and found the new artesian well. Soon that well was under the control of the property owners and the same fate overtook it. The spring took itself to yet another place. This has been going on since recorded history. On Trinity Sunday 1993, let me suggest that, way back there a couple of thousand years ago, there was one who came as a finger, pointing to God, inviting people to see through him to the one true God. The people got obsessed with the one who was calling them to look beyond him. I think I saw this reality happen last night! I was watching television. Did you ever see those wonderful ads where they have beautiful dogs, full-faced on the screen? Well, we have a dog. I don’t mention her as much as I used to mention Midnight. Midnight was emotionally dysfunctional and gave me a lot of sermon material. (Laughter) Hersey is more normal. I saw this heavy-jowled, droopyeared old basset hound come on the screen. I wanted Hersey to see that dog. So I said, “Hersey, look, look, look. Look!” Dumb dog didn’t look. (Laughter) He licked my finger. (Laughter) He missed the picture because he fastened on the pointer. My point is this. I don’t believe Jesus came to start a Christian church, a church established in the Roman Empire, so the empire could identify with this King of kings and Lord of lords and find its power and identification with this exalted one. Jesus came and said, “For God’s sake. Not here. Not there, but in Spirit and Truth.” God is waiting for the religions to give up in order that God may bless the earth and bring Shalom. At least that’s how it seems to me. I told Nancy when I was leaving what I was going to preach this morning. She said, “Oh, no!” I said, “It’s true!” She said, “It may be true, but you don’t have to say it.” (Laughter) But I just did. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/229dad42613f9e848325572bcb18b787.mp3 743dc091edc2b9fb67eadde3695637b9 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 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 Trinity Sunday Scripture Text John 4: 21-24, Acts 10:34-35 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930606 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-06-06 Title A name given to the resource The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 June 6, 1993 entitled "The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 4: 21-24, Acts 10:34-35. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Global Community God of Grace Trinity https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d330977562ac845c064c88573ff2823e.mp3 c1eaca2b59841e8e4d0f853274823c5f 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 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 Sunday Scripture Text Numbers 11:19, John 14:12, 18, Acts 2:4 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930530 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-05-30 Title A name given to the resource Spirit Embodied Humanly Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 May 30, 1993 entitled "Spirit Embodied Humanly", on the occasion of Pentecost Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Numbers 11:19, John 14:12, 18, Acts 2:4. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives History of Israel Non-exclusive Pentecost Universal Grace https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/522480f194e26ae22f3a0a91bb9e74f4.pdf 1d742dc5c57186ba6c78634438620f63 PDF Text Text All This and Heaven, Too! Ascension Day Sunday Text: Luke, 24:51; Romans 8:31-39 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan May 23, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon …he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. Luke 24:51 If God is for us, who is against us? …Christ Jesus…is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us….nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39 (Selected) This is Ascension Sunday. Some of you may have missed our service on Thursday evening. (Laughter) Well, I used to have to go to Ascension Day service. Someone asked me, “Do you have a service in your congregation on Ascension Day?” I said, “No. I love my wife, but to just preach to her alone wouldn’t turn me on.” (Laughter) You probably did miss the Ascension Day service, so we are going to do it today. We call it Ascension Sunday now, but Thursday was the 40th day after Easter. According to the way that Luke tells the story of Jesus there was resurrection on Easter morning, and then there was a period of time - 40 days – but that’s a period of time in biblical terminology, a period of time in which the risen one from the presence of God made an appearance to his disciples. Then, Luke tells us, those appearances ceased. He puts it on a timeline of 40 days, and then 10 days to Pentecost and the pouring out of the Spirit of God. So we celebrate Ascension Day in order to remember that the crucified one was exalted into the presence of God; that Jesus who was crucified was not only raised from the dead but was received into the presence of God, enthroned and empowered; that Jesus is in heaven with God for us on our behalf. According to the way that Luke tells the story, we have Jesus appearing to his disciples, but that appearance was the appearance of the resurrected one. Jesus didn’t have an address. He didn’t live someplace during that period of time. He always came from God. So the appearances of Jesus were the verification of the reality of his living presence with his disciples. The Christian Year is just about over. We are coming to the end of another cycle. But it is interesting that the story of Jesus as we celebrate it in the Christian Year is not a story that begins with the birth of Jesus. Rather the season of the © Grand Valley State University   �All This and Heaven Too! Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Christian Year begins with Advent when we celebrate the fact that God will bring all things to completion. We celebrate our Christian hope in the first season of the year, and then we move to Christmas and the birth, and the life, and the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. In other words, the story of Jesus is the ground of our hope, and the fact that Jesus is exalted in the presence of God is the deep assurance with which we live. I want to say just a couple of things very briefly to you this morning. The first may seem obvious and unnecessary to say and yet I am going to say it: the exalted one is none other than the one who was crucified. It is Jesus who died who is in the presence of God. The exaltation of Jesus is the consequence of the life that Jesus lived – the way that he walked, the faith in which he believed. Paul tells us in his great hymn about Christ in Philippians 2 that he “humbled himself.” Paul says, quoting a hymn of the time that, Jesus humbled himself, took on the form of a servant, became obedient unto death, even death on the cross whereby, wherefore, God has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.” The one who is exalted is the one who was crucified. I say that because sometimes I hear Christians talk as though it is possible in our present human experience to know victory and triumph. I remember a chorus from when I was a kid, “Victory in Jesus.” Sometimes I hear in some parts of the church a kind of triumphalistic attitude. Do you know that word? I looked it up in the dictionary. It’s not there! (Laughter) But it’s a word anyway. Triumphalism or a triumphalistic attitude is a kind of arrogant, superiority whereby we figure that we are on the winning team. You know - come to Jesus and be a winner. Join the church and be a part of the Christian movement, be “Number One.” It’s not true. Come to Jesus, and to the degree that you are faithful to the Way of Jesus, you might be a loser. Was Jesus a winner or loser? You say, “Well, he was a winner.” You know, “Crown him with many crowns. The lamb upon his throne.” I want to remind you on Ascension Sunday, that Jesus was a winner only because he was willing to be a loser. Jesus was a servant. Jesus went the way of suffering. He was a man of sorrow, despised and rejected. Jesus slugged it out and the world said ‘No’ to him. The world put him to death. And to the extent that the Christian Church today would follow the way of Jesus, I don’t think it would be any different. Young people, as you make your decisions, crucial decisions in your life right now, think long, decide carefully. It is so easy to just get caught up in the stream of things, unthinkingly making decisions, trying to be “Number One,” trying to capture the world. Suddenly you get yourself locked into a way of life and a structure of society. Then you get to be a doddering old fool like me and suddenly you say, “How can I get unlocked from all of this and really be what Jesus wants me to be?” © Grand Valley State University �All This and Heaven Too! Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Jesus was not a winner. Jesus was faithful to God. Jesus did all that he believed that God called him to be, and it got him a cross. We cannot leap over our present experience and grab that crown from Jesus and reign with him now. We are called to serve with him now, and if need be to suffer as he suffered. And if need be to go through crucifixion as he went through crucifixion because it is God who exalts the one who is willing to obey and follow - even to death. No cross. No crown. Don’t believe those superficial siren calls that say, “Come to Jesus and be a winner.” Well, that’s a downer. Want to reconsider? (Laughter) Is that all I have to say? No. I want to say this too, that in the meantime when you are slugging it out making the decisions that would honor Jesus and go the way of Jesus, you are not alone. Paul explained his understanding of the Christian faith in the letter to the Roman Church as fully as anywhere. Then when he concludes his exposition he says, “What shall we say to all these things?” That’s his question. “What shall we say to all these things?” He concludes, “If God is for us who can be against us?” There’s a promise for your confirmation and for us all. “If God be for you, who could be against you?” Then he summarizes all of the events we have just celebrated, for he says, “It is Christ who died, yea that was risen again, that is at the right hand of God who is praying for us.” Jesus in heaven, in the presence of God praying for us. Cheering you on. Encouraging you. Your cheerleader in heaven - one who has gone before you, who has gone through the cross, received the crown and is there in the presence of God and knows your name, and cares, and is with you and says to you what he knew so fully, “If God is with you, who could be against you?” Oh, you say, “But there’s a lot of things that could go wrong.” Paul knew that too. He says, “Famine, nakedness, persecution, sword, peril.” Well, what would be your list today? What things go wrong in our lives? Paul says, “It doesn’t matter.” Give the list however you want to construct it. Then he says, “Those things will never separate us from the love of Christ. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us,” but conquerors in the conflict and able to stand in the midst of the storm, able to stand against all of the pressures that would bring us in another way. You are not alone. God is for you. Jesus is praying for you. “There’s nothing that will ever separate you from the love of God.” That’s the way he concludes this chapter in some of the most beautiful lines that have ever been penned. He says, “Neither life nor death, nor principalities nor powers, nor things in the heights nor the depths, angels, things present, things to come, nothing in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You have all you need here and now to follow the way of Jesus in spite of the cost, in full light of the cross. But even that is not all I can say, because the exaltation of Jesus is a sign to us that this is not all there is. There is all of this, and heaven too. © Grand Valley State University �All This and Heaven Too! Richard A. Rhem Page 4   I was really moved last week at how deeply so many of you were moved at the song of Eric Clapton, “Tears in Heaven.” It reminded me that down beneath our education and our sophistication and our kind of natural reserve for one another the hearts of us all are haunted by heaven. The longing of us all deep down is to know that this is not all that there is. Jesus is in the presence of God, through the cross, receiving the crown. We can’t claim the crown today. Ours is still the way of the cross, but beyond that we have one waiting for us, preparing a place for us. The promise of Jesus in heaven is the promise of heaven for those that follow Jesus. Jesus with us here. We with Jesus there. All of this. All of this and heaven too! Thank God. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d9e75a1ac9f58b67d16315a9b03e79e5.mp3 2780971a8eea22e14f748f0497f32fc1 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 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 Ascension Sunday Scripture Text Luke 24:51, Romans 8:31-39 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930523 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-05-23 Title A name given to the resource All This and Heaven Too! Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 May 23, 1993 entitled "All This and Heaven Too!", on the occasion of Ascension Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:51, Romans 8:31-39. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Followers of Jesus Liturgical Calendar https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f97220491c563be8a6aa520560c839e7.mp3 8329a28ac6fd608bc8fede687923713d 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 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 Eastertide VI Scripture Text John 20: 16, Revelation 22:4 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Eric Clapton, "Tears in Heaven," 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930516 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-05-16 Title A name given to the resource Would You Know My Name If I Saw You In Heaven? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 May 16, 1993 entitled "Would You Know My Name If I Saw You In Heaven?", on the occasion of Eastertide VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 20: 16, Revelation 22:4. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Transcendance Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/34f3161a574651367bd33a00cbdf3006.pdf 8667306d8f5594aebda32d40a40b3cd5 PDF Text Text Family Values: Jesus’ Style Mother’s Day Text: Mark 3:35; John 21:16-17 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Easter V, May 9, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:35 “Do you love me? …Tend my sheep…Feed my sheep.” John 21:16-17 The family is an endangered species. You hear about it all over the place. What ever has happened to the family? This statement for example: “Much of the very mechanism of our modern life is destructive of the family.” That statement is a quote from the National Congregational Council Report, 1892. They were saying it 100 years ago, and they are saying it today. There are prophets of doom all over the place who are telling us that society is unraveling, social relationships are full of brokenness and pain, and the family cannot possibly endure the pressure. Actually we are being barraged with bad news about the family, and in his book Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter says that, in those social issues that are tearing the fabric of American society apart, the family is the very central focus. The things that center around the politicization and the debate about the family are at the very center of those issues that seem to be at the core of what is causing so much ferment and so much disruption in the social order. The Congregational Report said, “the very mechanism of modern life is destructive of family,” 100 years ago. And so in our day there are incredible pressures and forces at work, creating new situations daily and with every passing decade. The pressures on the family are not to be gainsaid. Nonetheless I want to bring to you this morning a message of hope about my conviction for the potential that lies before us for creating in our day a more humane world and a greater sense of community which accords dignity and worth to every individual. All of the ruckus in our day about the destruction of the family is coming largely from the religious right. Now I don’t like labels. I know it’s too easy to lump people into a category and to label it and to do away with them. But I don’t know how else to say what I need to say this morning without saying some things rather clearly that will help you to get the context of my comments. We live in a day when (again, I have to use a labeling word) © Grand Valley State University   �Family Values: Jesus’ Style Richard A. Rhem Page 2   “conservative” means those who have become rigid in their righteous views. Now, I use this word narrowly. In its broader sense I am a conservative. Every enlightened and educated person needs to have a conservative edge to him or her because a conservative is one who would preserve the best values of the past. So I don’t like to give up the word conservative to a single definition. But it is used to describe what, in the Christian movement, in the Christian Church today, is a very vocal and a very militant right wing. Sometimes we speak of fundamentalists. Their approach to scripture is literal. Morality is very tight, reflecting a pattern of long ago. “Family Values” has become a code word for these people who have a very definite idea of what the family ought to be as ordained by God. But as James Hunter Davison says in this book Culture Wars, what is at stake is a certain idealized form of the nineteenth-century middle class family, a male-dominated nuclear family that both sentimentalized childhood and motherhood, and at the same time celebrated domestic life as a utopian retreat from the harsh realities of industrialized society. What the religious right is focused on is a model of the 19th century, that has certainly continued into this century, but which is in itself a relatively new (250 years or so old) view of a traditional family. In the culture wars phenomena of our day we have a great polarization in society, the polarization of those calling for new forms and shapes of human community, and those who would go back to the so called traditional or nuclear family. Researchers tell us today that in what many conceive of as the traditional family, where the father goes to work and there is a male dominated home and the mother stays home and cares for the children, and children experience the nurture of two parents, that that is the experience of only 4-7% of our population. Yet today we have a great cry and hand-wringing about the unraveling and disintegration of the family and the fabric of society. I want to say to you that I think a lot of the fear that sometimes borders on hysteria is the consequence of the excessive media saturation that we have, much of which is very right wing, particularly in the case of television, Christian broadcasting. I don’t spend much time with TV and I spend even less on Christian broadcasting. Some of you may be offended by this, but I have got to tell you I think that much of the appeal of these TV personalities draws fives and tens of dollars out of sincere humble and relatively poor people who are concerned about these issues. But just as disconcerting is the reality that they are also supported by the thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars of some of the wealthy who would support them in order to reinforce the status quo of a day gone by. I don’t think this world is being made more humane through the efforts of Christian television. I think Christian broadcasting networks, Trinity Broadcasting, or whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to watch, is a source of divisiveness in society. I think that it creates hostility. It works on people’s negative emotions. It creates fear in the human heart, leading to despair, and is one of the great agents in the culture © Grand Valley State University �Family Values: Jesus’ Style Richard A. Rhem Page 3   wars that politicize society and create much of the tension that we have in our society today. (Amen spoken from audience.) I was delighted when I got to New York last week at my Perspectives meeting to find that the May issue, which I hadn’t received yet, has an opening article by David Meyers. David, a very respected social psychologist at Hope College was here a few weeks ago talking about his book, In Pursuit of Happiness. The title of his topic in Perspectives was “Let’s Focus on the Family.” Now you’ll probably catch that the code words “Focus on the Family” is the title of the program authored by James Dobson. Some years ago we showed a series of films with that title by James Dobson, here on Sunday evenings. They were very good. They had a lot of good stuff in them. But what has happened to the whole Focus on the Family movement, the Dobson movement, is that it has become, I think, a movement that has broadened out beyond the families to the whole cultural war agenda. Homosexuality, the abortion issue, I could give you the statistics from David Meyers to show that what has happened to “Focus on the Family” is that it is no longer a focus on the family. Meyers is pleading with the right and the left, now that the election is over, to begin to truly focus on the issues of family, because while I think that the hysteria and the hand-wringing is all out of proportion, there is no doubt that the family is critical to the well being of society and the family needs our deep concern and deep commitment. David Meyers states in this article, for example, these troubling facts: child abuse reports have soared from well under a million cases annually to nearly three million. The divorce rate has doubled. The happiness in surviving marriages has slightly declined. Teen sexual activity has doubled with accompanying increases in sexually transmitted diseases. The 5% of babies born to unwed mothers in 1960 has quintupled to more than 27%. Increasingly everywhere in America children are having children. In 1960 one in ten children did not live with two parents. Today nearly three in ten do not. Now that’s just a collage by David Meyers and we could get other statistics and other dimensions of this from many sources, so don’t hear me saying this morning that there is not a concern for the wellbeing of the family. Don’t hear me saying that we do not need to redouble our efforts for the nurture of the family and the support of the family as an institution. All of that is true, but I want to say to you as a Christian community that there is a kind of hysterical frenzied hand-wringing cry full of despair and hopelessness which I think is like acid undercutting the morale of the body politic, the social structure, rather than bringing to it a kind of positive nurture and insight that we as the family of God experience together and need to share with our world. There is such a division and such a polarization in our society, fueled by intensive fundamentalist media saturation, so that I think people fail to gain an historical perspective and sometimes lose their civility and their decency. And with that © Grand Valley State University �Family Values: Jesus’ Style Richard A. Rhem Page 4   they lose also then the creative positive power to make a difference and to effect human transformation, the kind of human transformation that’s going on in Griffith School with their “Circle of Friends,” where children are learning how to care for one another. No, dear friends, the family isn’t going to fail. People are going to learn to live in every new social situation in covenant and in faithfulness. People are going to continue to find ways to live in marriages, to raise and to nurture children, and to build human community. In a book that I picked up this week, What Ever Happened to the Family there is a discussion of 1930 to 1990, only 60 years, but in that survey of those 60 years, it is amazing that there are any of us that are still normal, and sometimes I question us as well. Think about it. 1930 to 1990. The great depression into the 40s with the Second World War and world convolution, into the 50s with the kind of euphoria following the war and that era of peace and well-being that was also an era of permissiveness and fear of parenting in many respects. The eruption of the 60s, the whole civil rights movement, moving into the narcissism and “me” generation of the 70s and into the 80s, and to the present. We have not only fewer traditional families, nuclear families, we have blended families and we have perpetual families. We have all kinds of new arrangements, new forms of family and community. And it is not surprising when you think about the tremendous ferment in the world in the last half century. Hear me. The form of the family will change. The form of the family has always changed. There is no static period in human history. Every time there is a social eruption there is resultant change. And in the meantime there has always been social evolution so that new forms have evolved and people have simply learned to live in new arrangements. Sometimes it’s been good, sometimes not so good. The pendulum swings back and forth. But don’t believe anybody that tells you that this is the worst of all possible times. There are also wonderful signs of new possibility in our day. We have the possibility in our world today with changing forms so obvious of using our creativity to build a more humane world. Goodness sakes, aren’t we aware, isn’t it impossible not to be aware in our world today of so many things that were hidden to our forbearers? Don’t we know today that we are called upon to treat every person with dignity and respect? Don’t we know today that the nineteenth century nuclear family that was male dominated was oppressive to women even when women didn’t know they were being oppressed? Don’t we know today that the whole issue of abortion is about human rights? Don’t we know today that sexism is as blatant a sin as racism, which continues even into our day? Don’t we know today that sexual orientation is not a choice and a preference, but a given and that such people need to be accorded human dignity and worth? Don’t we know today that the possibility for human relationship and human community is as multiple as there are types of people? Is not the diversity of the human family an indication of a God who loves diversity and loves with © Grand Valley State University �Family Values: Jesus’ Style Richard A. Rhem Page 5   prodigality? Don’t we know today that we could be on the threshold of a world that may be unraveling in order that it may be woven into a more beautiful pattern? I have a friend who loves to say, “It is necessary to let things chaoticize.” We don’t like things to chaoticize. We want things orderly and predictable and manageable, but as a matter of fact it is the chaoticization of those structures and forms that create the openings where the new light can come through. But we can find new arrangements and new possibilities where we are people of good will who will treat one another with dignity and with value. That is the possibility. The forms will change because they will give way to the accelerating pressures of our contemporary world. But you can’t go home, friends, you can never turn the clock back, and the Christian family has no right to wring its hands in despair and sit down in hopelessness and weep. It is for us to model out a new community, because while the form of the family changes the function of the family remains the same. It is the function of the family to create the space for human connectedness where we learn to love and where we are loved, where we are cared for and we learn to care, where we see modeled out compassion and become compassionate. The family must be the one place in this world where love is unconditional, enabling us to be released to love unconditionally. The form of the family will change. Let it go. The function of the family will always be the same: the creation of human connectedness where I know I belong, where I know I am loved, where I am accepted just because I am, where I am cared for, where I in turn learn to love, to care, to mend and to heal, to do unto others as has been done to me in the community, the form of the family that is mine. But beyond the biological family, the family of God. We here, in this Christian community, we can be the extended family. It was in the 50s with all our prosperity and our economic acceleration and the growth of corporations and the moving of people all over the country in that time of prosperity that we lost the extended family. And again, you never go home. But we have the possibility in the church to be family to one another, to experience community here, to know our connectedness, to be cared for and to care, to feel the compassionate love and support of another and to compassionately love and support. I don’t think Jesus probably ever celebrated Mother’s Day. You know mothers are wonderful and Jesus had a Jewish mother, which is really special, I guess. There was a day when he got out on a limb somewhere and they said to Mary, “Have you read the newspaper report?” She said, “Don’t tell me!” She said to Jesus’ brothers, “Go get him. Let’s bring him home.” Doesn’t every mother want her son or her daughter to be decent, somewhere down the middle, not too far to the right or to the left? I know that as long as my mother was alive I stayed pretty close to the middle. (Laughter) I mean, it’s just a matter of respect, you know? But Jesus © Grand Valley State University �Family Values: Jesus’ Style Richard A. Rhem Page 6   was out there turning the world upside down and Mary came to where he was preaching and she couldn’t even penetrate the crowd, so she sent him a message: “Dear Son, I have come for you. Your Mother.” Not “Hi Son, This is Mom.” This was signed “Your Mother.” It must have been hard for her to receive a note back: “Dear Mother, who is my mother? Who is my sister? Who is my brother? Those who do the will of God, those are family to me.” Not in any way to denigrate the ties that are biological, but in the Christian community we know of ties that bind us more firmly, with a greater bonding: the ties of the family of God – those who do the will of God, those who love and seek to create a loving community. I think that’s “Family Values: Jesus’ Style,” because what God is about, dear friends, is to make better lovers of us all. Thank God. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/86cd07d8d50961092450bcdb1cc042c0.mp3 f7feec19bd2eec89238135a0fe994a5e 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 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 Mothers' Day, Eastertide V Scripture Text Mark 3:35, John 21: 16-17 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930509 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-05-09 Title A name given to the resource Family Values, Jesus' Style Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 May 9, 1993 entitled "Family Values, Jesus' Style", on the occasion of Mothers' Day, Eastertide V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 3:35, John 21: 16-17. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Diversity Transformation Unconditional Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cad7291f389d2d48d1276b24de994abc.pdf 8bd6d2d9a013037cb12dda40a155778c PDF Text Text The Human Face of God From the series Faith in Jesus: Trust in God… Text: Acts 3: 14-15 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Eastertide III, April 25, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon You…killed him who has led the way to life. But God raised him from the dead. Acts 3:14-15 We made a switch at Easter. We moved from the consideration of the faith of Jesus to a consideration of a faith in Jesus on the part of that early community that gathered around Jesus. The switch was a switch from examining how Jesus believed, which shaped how he lived, which caused his death, to an examination of how those around him who had been impacted by him, who had experienced the faith of Jesus, came to put faith in Jesus. The Christian movement, which only gradually differentiated itself from the Jewish community, is characterized by those who put faith in Jesus. So with a little switch of the preposition from the faith of Jesus to faith in Jesus we move out of Lent and into Eastertide and try to get a handle on how that early community came to view Jesus as the unveiling of God. Jesus had been a faithful Jew. He lived within the context of the covenant of grace. He knew no God except the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And he had no intention to do anything but to speak to that covenant community and to speak to them of their God – of the nearness of their God, of the graciousness of their God – and to call them to trust in that God. He was a threatening figure. His destabilizing ways undercut the established shape of things: the temple and the priesthood, the political and religious structures. And because of this he was crucified. It would have appeared that he was simply one more in that line of prophets that had characterized the history of Israel. A prophet would stand and speak for God and would bring upon himself the wrath, particularly of the leadership of the community, and would end up a martyr for the faith. Jesus himself spoke about that whole line of the prophets that had been killed by “Jerusalem.” So it might have appeared that Jesus was simply one more of those. He had made his proclamation. He had made his call. He had been obedient to God. And he was killed. © Grand Valley State University   �The Human Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 2   But there was something different this time. This time his followers became conscious of the fact that the one who had been crucified was alive. Not in some bodily form. Unfortunately in our Christian tradition, in order to affirm the reality of resurrection, sometimes we have spoken about the bodily resurrection, and there is not a bodily resurrection—that corpse laid in the tomb didn’t suddenly resuscitate and walk out of the tomb. Jesus is spoken of as “appearing.” When Paul lists the resurrection appearances, sometimes to an individual, sometimes to a group, he also includes the appearance to himself and we know that was a vision. The appearances of Jesus were the inward experiences of those who sensed that the crucified one was alive and present and powerful, but not in an ongoing historical bodily human existence. Rather, God had raised this one to another dimension of life or reality, but a dimension of life and reality that was able to be experienced as personally, powerfully present. Still active, still alive, still with them. So those who had been with him throughout his life, who had understood gradually the faith of Jesus, came to believe that in him God had done some unusual thing. That God had vindicated the Way of Jesus. That God had authenticated this one as God’s servant. That God had said “yes” to Jesus’ faith and Jesus’ way, and Jesus’ call. So the followers around Jesus, and the experience of Jesus living in their midst, spiritually alive, began to put their faith in Jesus. Now in the beginning those early witnesses had no sense of separating from the temple or from the Jewish community. For example, in the story I read a moment ago, Peter and John in the ninth hour, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, are making their way to the temple to pray. They were good Jews. They were going to pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the God of the Covenant, the God of covenant grace. They didn’t know any other faith. They went to the temple to pray and to praise God. They went there with a sense that this one who had been crucified was with them also. They came to a cripple by the gate called “Beautiful,” who was placed there every day by friends so that he could beg for alms. Not a bad place to beg for alms, you see, people coming to church looking for a way to look as good as possible. So they flip him a coin, come in to the altar and feel a little bit justified. It was a pretty good place to pick up a nickel or a dime. This time Peter and John come by and he held out his hand and they say, “We don’t have silver and gold,” and he says, “Then you’re not worth much. Get out of the way so somebody can come.” That’s really the bottom line for this man. But Peter says to him, “Look at us,” catching his attention. “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And the man stands up and walks, and he begins to leap and to praise God. He goes into the temple and the people see him as the one who had always been there, day after day. He was the lame, the cripple, the handicapped one leaping and praising God, and they were astounded. © Grand Valley State University �The Human Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 3   This gives Peter an occasion to bear witness to what had just happened. So he says to them, “Why are you so amazed? Why do you wonder and stare at us as though through our power or our piety this man was made to walk? No,” Peter says, “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus.” You see Peter and John after Easter and after Pentecost in the presence of the Pentecost Spirit, and Peter says, “It is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the God of Israel. It is the God whom you are all here to worship. It is this God who has healed this man.” But, notice, this God healed the cripple in the name of Jesus. Peter says to the Jewish leaders who later call him on the carpet for what he has done, “You rejected the holy and righteous one. You killed the author of life.” In the New English Bible, (I like the translation a little bit better) it says, “You killed him who has led the way to Light. You killed him who has led the way to Light, but God raised him up.” Now he says, “…by faith in his name.” His name. The name stands for the person, for the reality, for the essence. The name equals the person in biblical thought. The name of God is the essence of God, the power of God, the person of God. And the name of Jesus is the person of Jesus. He says, “…by faith in his name.” His name itself has made this man strong whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given him perfect health in the presence of all of you. Now, this is rather interesting. Here in the immediate aftermath of the explosion of Good Friday and Easter the disciples are sorting out what in the world is happening. Jesus whom they loved was crucified. They think it’s all over. But it’s not over. They experience the presence of the crucified one, living! The crucified one then has been vindicated by God. God has said “yes” to this one, so this one was right. And this one is still with us now. Peter says a cripple is healed by the power of God through this one. What’s going on here? I don’t think they knew. I don’t think any of us could or can know exactly. But for Peter and John, representative of that early apostolic community, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of David, the God of covenant grace, the God of Sinai, the Creator – this God seems to be accessible or available through Jesus. Jesus becomes as it were, a handle on God. How do you image God? Could you form a picture in your mind? Maybe it’s off the cover of an old Sunday School leaflet of your childhood. Were you ever in a group therapy session or a seminar where they had you lie on your back? I remember one instance where I had to lie on my back, breathe deeply, close my eyes and visualize a huge white screen, and then let images tumble. Maybe somebody was reading something and you had to let images tumble. The only thing I ever see on that white screen is a white-out. One time I saw whole flock of white doves. (Laughter) I never see anything. I don’t visualize very well. Some people visualize very well. But, how do you visualize God? How do you bring God near? How do you get in touch? I mean, God – God! The eternal God, God incomprehensible! Beyond our human ability to comprehend, apprehend. That God becomes for us available, even visible in the way of Jesus. Jesus becomes the © Grand Valley State University �The Human Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 4   human face of God. God seems to draw near to us in Jesus. So Peter and John can say to this cripple, “In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.” But they are not claiming that the healing is the power of Jesus. Rather they say clearly that it is the power of God. It is not as though Jesus now comes as a secondary God or in competition with God, but Jesus becomes as it were, the conduit. Jesus becomes the mode of access. Jesus is the one who brings God near. Jesus is the one who draws us into the mystery that is God. Jesus becomes the medium for the experience of God. There was no reason for a Christian Church at this point. For Peter and John, I think it would have been the farthest thing from their minds. If you had said they were going to be disciples of an eventual institution called a Christian Church over against the Jewish community of faith they would have denied it at that moment. Those who study this thing tell us that probably this passage is the earliest attempt to give some kind of formulation to that relationship of Jesus to God. It is stated here that Jesus is not God. I think Jesus might have been very comfortable with Peter and John bringing the power of God to bear on that cripple through his name because Jesus represented God as a God who heals us: the God of the abandoned - the God full of compassion - the God who forgives us - the God whose power is available to us, so I think Jesus probably would have been comfortable with this. I am not so sure Jesus was comfortable with what eventuated down another few decades and down another couple of centuries where Jesus is elevated, and elevated and elevated until Jesus is God. In the early creeds of the Church, this human servant of God, Jesus, is continually elevated until he becomes God and becomes for Christians the primary focus of worship and prayer. I am not sure that that development would have been in accord with the intention of Jesus. There are enough evidences in the New Testament itself that Jesus intentionally deferred to his “Father,” as he called God. Jesus never abrogated to himself the prerogatives of deity. Jesus was the servant. Jesus was the proclaimer. Jesus was the revealer. Jesus in his life showed the Way, spoke the Truth, offered the Light. But in the development within the Christian Church over the first four and a half centuries, the development moved from this kind of conception to a higher and higher and higher raising of Jesus to where (and this is in preparation for Trinity Sunday down the way a few weeks), where in popular conception we almost have three Gods. I don’t know if it’s possible to hop back over those centuries and over those creedal formulations to get back to something like this, but sometimes I think we’d be better off if we could be right where Peter and John were at the Gate Beautiful. If we could say to the cripples, to the broken, to the outcast, to those who are lost, if we could say, “Look at me. In the name of Jesus, God’s servant, stand up and walk.” You see what Jesus made available was the presence and the healing power of God. © Grand Valley State University �The Human Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 5   The healing power of God . . . how do we access that? How did Peter and John access that power? It still happens today. There are still healings today. Everybody can’t do it, but some can do it. Some have the gift of healing. Some with the laying on of hands seem to communicate an energy that enlivens and makes whole. Perhaps they are people who believe and know that the whole world is pregnant with God’s power and presence, God who can make us whole so we can live, begging outside at the gate but dancing and leaping and praising God. Most of us are cripples. Most of us are dragging around so much baggage and garbage, and we hold tightly to our lives when someone needs to say to us, “In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.” How are we healed today? In the name of Jesus, but now through the presence of those who follow in his footsteps. Reach over and take the hand of the person next to you. There, in that flesh, the way of Jesus and the presence of God continues to heal and make one another whole. If we could only divest ourselves of all of our protective layers, we might be more open to the power of God which surrounds us. Feel that presence…and “In the name of Jesus, who showed us the power of God, rise up and walk.” That’s a God you can love. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ffd458ae1223b42ce15f56618927d4e9.mp3 bd7e9c7d9827b010e6711433435645ff 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 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 Eastertide III Series Faith in Jesus: Trust in God Scripture Text Acts 3: 14-15 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930425 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-25 Title A name given to the resource The Human Face of God Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 April 25, 1993 entitled "The Human Face of God", as part of the series "Faith in Jesus: Trust in God", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 3: 14-15. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Faith Followers of Jesus Presence of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bd9b5344140ce02c53bde00522ae6fbd.pdf 407342191b63529483b83bed3b9df3b6 PDF Text Text Good News From the series: Faith in Jesus: Trust in God Text: Luke 1:1-14; Luke 24:13-17, 28-35 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Eastertide II, April 18, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Luke 1:1-14 … As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked among with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. Luke 24:13-17 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. Luke 24: 28-35 We made a move last week. Easter was the hinge. We are making a shift from our Lenten pilgrimage in which we focused on the faith of Jesus, an examination of those things that Jesus believed—the deep convictions of Jesus’ life that shaped the way he lived, and the message he proclaimed, and the ministry he performed. We saw that Easter, when the crucified one is brought to life by God, was an affirmation, was a confirmation of that way of Jesus—the resurrection of Jesus by the power of God. And the Christian movement understood this resurrection as God’s ‘yes’ to Jesus—as the seal of God’s approval on the way Jesus lived and what Jesus taught. Now in the season of Eastertide, I want us to see how the Christian movement, coming out of the womb of Judaism as it did and drawing its vision from Jesus the Jew, came to define itself as having faith in Jesus. The difference is in the preposition. The immediate community around Jesus experienced that resurrection as “Good News,” as wonderful “Good News.” That “Good News” would eventually trigger a new genre into the literary world. The Gospels are really a literary genre of writing all their own. They are not biographies, not chronicles of the days of Jesus’ life. They are faith documents, proclamations of faith from a particular theological understanding. It is the life of Jesus seen through the lens of Easter, and it is a celebration full of joy in that triumph of the resurrection. © Grand Valley State University   �Good News Richard A. Rhem Page 2   When those first witnesses encountered Jesus, they reached for a way to express what they sensed, felt. How were they to explain it? What was their experience? What do you think? How might you have described it? Here was one who had been crucified, and with the shattering of faith and all of the disappointment that surrounded the darkest of all days, this one who had been crucified was present. There was a presence, and there was a power, and it was personal, and it was Jesus. It was the one who had been crucified who they sensed was with them. How were they to explain it? They spoke of resurrection. The idea of resurrection did not arise with Jesus’ resurrection. The idea of resurrection had been in Jewish faith, at least in Pharisaic thought, for a couple of centuries. There was a growing conviction in Judaism in those centuries that God would raise the righteous, who were suffering under the heel of the oppressor. The Jewish people believed they were God’s elect and chosen people, and that in their terrible sufferings God would not leave them destitute, but God would raise the righteous. In Daniel there is a statement to that effect. So the idea of resurrection was not introduced with the experience of Jesus risen from the dead. I think often in the Christian Church we have stressed in the Easter event the empty tomb, the objectivity, the factual nature of it. Actually, to be honest, it was not that historically objective. It wasn’t the kind of thing that you could demonstrate and prove. Luke starts out his Gospel by saying, “I have been aware of these things from the beginning. I have studied them very carefully, and I am going to give you an orderly account of these things. I think that we have a document whose historicity, whose reliability we can count on. Nonetheless, it is a document of faith.” And as a matter of fact the appearance of Jesus was not the resuscitation of a corpse, so that you go down the street and you see somebody you haven’t seen for a while. You shake hands and you say, “How nice to see you again. Hi, Jesus. Gee, I thought it was all over. How are you?” No, it wasn’t that. There was something strange about it. It wasn’t the resuscitation of a corpse. I used the prophecy in Ezekiel 37 in the Easter message last week. In the valley of dry bones the Spirit of God, or the wind of God, blows across those dry bones and they begin to come together. They get sinews and flesh, and they stand up like a living army. The point of that is that it is the Breath of God. It is the Spirit of God that enlivens. It is not the fact that the dry bones actually become living again. Too many of us like to hang on to that empty tomb as if to say, “doesn’t that prove it?” Too many of us cling to the empty tomb as though Jesus was laid in that tomb and three days later his corpse came to life and he walked out. Perhaps that imagery is almost inevitable. We tend to think in concrete images. And that can be misleading. The old funeral committal liturgy – we have a new one now with which I am more comfortable – but you’ve probably heard these words at a grave side: “To Almighty God we commend this God’s servant, looking for the general resurrection in the last day, through the Lord Jesus Christ, who’s coming in © Grand Valley State University �Good News Richard A. Rhem Page 3   glorious majesty to judge the world…” And then this, “The earth and the sea will give up their dead.” Now if you take that literally, over here in Spring Lake in the cemetery, all of a sudden, Whoosh! There they go! Or, say you are out on a Caribbean cruise and suddenly the sea at the Bermuda Triangle just kind of erupts with bodies. Is that how we must take that image, so concretely, so physically, of the resuscitation of corpses? We do need concrete imagery. It helps us. It is really all we know. But listen to the rest of the concrete, physical descriptions in the Gospel accounts. In the Gospel, Luke for example has Jesus at one point sitting down at table and eating fish, but that probably was in order to say, “Look this wasn’t a fantasy. It wasn’t a phantom, a ghost.” We are talking about real personal presence. On the night of Easter the disciples are behind a closed door and suddenly Jesus is there. I mean he “appears” - doors and windows are barred. How does he do this? No explanations are given. Then there is the story of the two guys walking on the Road to Emmaus and somebody joins them. They don’t recognize him at first. Now please, they don’t recognize Jesus? When he agrees to sit down at table with them, when he blesses the bread and breaks it and gives to them, then, says the author, “their eyes are opened.” But once they recognize him in the breaking of bread – whoosh, he’s gone! The body the Gospel writers speak of is able to do things no resuscitated body could do. Whatever Luke has to say about him having a filet of halibut, he didn’t need fish to sustain that spiritual body. A spiritual body. It seems a contradiction in terms and it can be confusing. The New Testament witnesses - how were they to express it? This one whom they knew to have been crucified, dead, buried, was experienced as alive, powerful, present personally. So they struggled to give witness to their conviction. That experience finds stammering expression in the Bible, using various images and metaphors, but it breaks down when we try to use language because it is an inexpressible experience. What was their Easter faith? It was Good News to them because it said to them that the God of Israel had said ‘yes’ to the Way of Jesus. They were following Jesus. They had listened. They had heard. They had heeded. They were followers of Jesus. They had come to love Jesus. Then on Good Friday it all ended in the darkness of Golgotha, and now this one who had been crucified was alive and it was Good News to them because it was a sign and seal to them that the Way of Jesus was the Way of God. It was a sign that Jesus was right, that God was like Jesus said God was. That Jesus was right over against the established religious authorities and the whole temple authority structure. Their experience of a resurrected Jesus confirmed what Jesus had promised, that God was a God of the abandoned, a God full of compassion, a God of inclusive love, the embracing of the whole world, a God who would touch and heal, a God who forgives. Not a God who was waiting for some kind of sacrifice to be made in order that God might forgive, but a God like the Old © Grand Valley State University �Good News Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Testament Psalmist said, “Lord, if you should mark iniquity who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you.” Jesus was right and the fact that the crucified one was raised confirmed in the hearts of his followers that Jesus was right. That was good news to them. You know there was nothing in the faith in the risen Jesus of those early Jewish followers, those disciples that would have necessitated the breaking off of the Christian Church. In the Eastern origins of the Christian movement there was no need that it be separated from the womb of Judaism because they were in line with that strain of Phariseeism that was looking for resurrection. Jesus was a righteous one. God raised Jesus. If Peter and James had first met Jesus they would have been dumbstruck, of course. But on reflection they would have said, “Hallelujah, God raised the Kingdom. It’s true. Jesus said the Kingdom was among us. The Kingdom is here.” Now, to be sure, they didn’t expect that one would be raised; they were looking for a general resurrection. So Paul, a Jew, writing that Letter to the Corinthians says, “Jesus raised as the first fruits, but the first fruits are the first fruits of a harvest that is to follow very soon.” Obviously those Jewish believers experiencing the crucified one living, named it “resurrection” and expected the whole thing to explode very quickly. Well, it’s been 2000 years, and it didn’t happen that way. But that doesn’t take away from what their experience was of Jesus’ living presence. It was a confirmation of Jesus’ Way, and they put their faith in Jesus. Again, not faith in Jesus in place of faith in the God of Israel. It’s not as though now Jesus is God. It is that they had faith in Jesus because of the God to whom Jesus pointed them. It was simply a confirmation of the God of Israel who takes the side of the righteous, which was their deepest conviction. It was Good News for them! But it was more than that. It also, as I concluded last week, gave them hope. It gave them hope that the world was not finally a Good Friday world, but an Easter world. As I said last week, “I would follow Jesus if Good Friday were the last chapter. I would follow Jesus if the cross were the end. I believe in Jesus’ way of being human in this world. But if that were the end, there would be no hope.” In our world especially with the media available to us, where into our living rooms and into our dens and our kitchens, pour all of the images of the anguish of the world, if I had no hope in God I would still want to follow Jesus. But I wonder if I wouldn’t run out of gas and if that would not be to live with a terrible sense of futility in the face of all that’s wrong in the world. What’s going on in Bosnia, again this week – it seems like it is as bad as it can get, but then it gets worse. The continuing drama around the world of Palestine and Israel, and you name it, to say nothing of Los Angeles, of racism, of sexism, of homophobia, of the divisions that tear people, of the moral vigilantes that would blow up the world for the sake of their idea of God and truth. In a world of almost unrelieved tragedy, if I did not believe in Easter, I think it would be almost overwhelming when you look into the faces of the poor, of the refugee, of the © Grand Valley State University �Good News Richard A. Rhem Page 5   starving child, of the old woman with a babushka with marks of suffering on her visage. It would be almost too much if it were a Good Friday world, period. The Gospel means literally Good News because God didn’t leave Jesus dead; God not only said ‘yes’ to Jesus’ Way, which I want to follow, but God also said, “Righteousness will not always be crucified. Love will not always and forever be defeated. Justice will not always be absent from the land.” I don’t know how. I don’t know when. The images in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Easter community are rich pictures of a day when there is a city, a new Jerusalem, and through the city there is a river of crystal and on the banks of the river are trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Images of a day when God will make all things new and tears will be wiped away and there will be no more pain and no more sorrow, no more death and crying. Images of an age that is ending and a new age that is being born. They are all images. They are all stammering attempts to say, “I believe in God. I believe in a God who is creator, whose breath calls the dead to life, who vindicated the way of Jesus and one day, some way, will make all things new.” That’s Good News. That’s the Gospel. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/705d4e85a806c9319831cb2a3f839df1.mp3 090bf057ce6a0b7800a96e70c0ae10ce 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 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 Eastertide II Series Faith in Jesus: Trust in God Scripture Text Luke 1:1-14, 24:13-17, 28-35 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930418 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-18 Title A name given to the resource Good News Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 April 18, 1993 entitled "Good News", as part of the series "Faith in Jesus: Trust in God", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 1:1-14, 24:13-17, 28-35. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Christian Community Gospel Nature of God Resurrection Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1989eea9dfa8b14a230505f9b61ceeab.pdf 5dddf1a82436b221dca8701ea7279b0b PDF Text Text The Faith of Jesus Vindicated Easter Sunday Text: Ezekiel 37:9; Romans 1:4; Mark 16:6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan April 11, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon …breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Ezekiel 37:9 …declared to be Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 1:4 … Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, He has been raised. Mark 16:6 I often have maintained that if Lent is properly preached, if one has been true to the Gospel and honored the Way of Jesus, Easter is just a matter of saying, “The Lord is risen.” In this case, this Lent, we have been speaking of The Faith of Jesus, and this morning I want to say that the faith of Jesus was vindicated by the Living God who brought Jesus to life from the dead. Note that the resurrection of Jesus is not really something so significant about Jesus. It is not something that happened because of some intrinsic quality of Jesus, something that would separate Jesus from us, his brothers and sisters. Easter is not the celebration of something that Jesus did. It is the celebration of something that God did. God raised Jesus from the dead. What we celebrate today is a mighty act of God, the Living God, the God whose breath is Spirit. The God whose breath enlivens and inspires. The God who creates in the first place and is able to call the dead to life. We serve the Living God who is able beyond human possibility, beyond human extremity to say ‘yes’ when we’ve said our final ‘no.’ Let me say it one more time. Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived, and he lived the way he lived because he believed the way he believed. He believed in a gracious God who had drawn near. A God whose presence was unbrokered, available to all. A God who included rather than excluded. A God of the abandoned. A God who forgives, full of grace. Jesus not only believed that, but he lived it out and proclaimed it, and in so doing he ran afoul of the established borders of society: religion, politics, all of those who had a vested interest in the status quo, and keeping things as they were. Jesus was a © Grand Valley State University   �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 2   destabilizer. Jesus ran counter to conventional wisdom. He challenged the assumptions on which people lived without ever examining them. Jesus destabilized the status quo, and they killed him. Easter is God’s reversal of that human judgment. Easter is the vindication of the faith of Jesus. In raising Jesus from the dead – and he really died – the creed says as much, for it says, “They buried him.” This was no masquerade. God called him to life from the dead in order to say Jesus was right, and Jesus’ way was God’s way, and Jesus’ life was the Life. And so we celebrate today the act of God in the vindication of the way of Jesus, and the faith of Jesus. Let me ask you a question for your Easter meditation. It’s a very important question. In the midst of all the beauty and wonder, the grand music, the lovely flowers, the festive occasion, which we experience just now, let me ask you this question. If the cross were the last chapter, would you follow Jesus still? If there were no Easter glory? If there were no grand triumph? If there had been no public vindication, would you follow the way of Jesus nonetheless? I suppose what I am really asking you is, “Why in the depths do you follow Jesus? Why do you call yourself Christian?” Is it because in all of the light and splendor of a moment like this we have that triumphant note, “The Lord is risen!” The one who said, “Because I live, you too shall live.” Is this then the way to victory and to triumph? Is it the guarantee of life beyond life and all of that? Do you follow Jesus for that reason? Then perhaps you will hesitate a bit as I raise that question to you. If the cross had been the last word, would you still follow Jesus? Would you still believe in that way, in that truth? I have been wrestling with that question, and my answer is, “Yes I would,” falteringly, too often half-heartedly, and always inadequately. But even if Good Friday were the last chapter I would want to live as Jesus lived, and believe as Jesus believed. Think about him for a moment again. He was a grand person. Think of the magnificence of his life. Think of the freedom with which he lived. Don’t you love him for the way in which he stared down all of the imposing structures of society? The way he challenged the conventional wisdom. The way he simply refused to be one more sheep in the mass. Don’t you love him for that freedom, for that courage? For that consistency. For that faithfulness that, even in the darkness of Gethsemane, could get out the words, “Nevertheless not my will but Thy will be done,” which was a commitment to the way that he had gone from the beginning. It was staying the course. It was being true to the vision. It was sealing what he believed with his very life. The compassion of the man! Breaking through the taboos of his day. Reaching out. Embracing the abandoned. Touching the leper. Gathering in the sick, the children. The humility of his life. Washing the feet of his disciples. Finally offering his life. Would you say ‘Yes’ to Jesus, even if the cross were the end? I would. I believe that to live that way carries its own reward and is an end in itself. I think that’s really the only way one can really follow Jesus. Not following him because of what he promises us. Not following him because of some external threat, as though there is some gun at my © Grand Valley State University �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 3   head if I don’t. Not following him out of a sense of obligation, but following him finally because I love him! And I want to be like him! I want my life from the inside to be what I see his life to be, no matter what the end is. I’d better not say that loosely, glibly, because to say that is to say ‘No’ to so much of my American, twentieth-century culture that has shaped me. I am more a product of my culture than a critic of it. It means saying ‘No’ to that precious American individualism over against the needs of community. Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to that wisdom of the street that says, “Take care of Number One.” Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to my consumerist culture that would acquire, and acquire, and secure. Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to the philosophy that winning is not only the best thing, but is the only thing. Would you follow Jesus if we had ended in the darkness of Good Friday at noon, with the thumping of the organ, and the forsakenness of the one who died the way he lived? Well! I anticipate your question. And perhaps your question would be, “Then doesn’t this make any difference? Then isn’t there any need for Easter? Isn’t this essential? Doesn’t this add anything?” And I would say, “Yes, it certainly does.” Easter is the foundation of hope in the midst of that struggle to follow the Way of Jesus in our world that crucifies him over and over again. In our world of Somalia’s and Northern Ireland’s and Bosnia’s, and Israel’s and Palestine’s, and Latin America’s, and poverty and sickness, and oppression and tyranny, and greed, and all of that. In the midst of that human scene, this gives us a ray of hope because it says to us that love will not finally be crucified. The things for which Jesus lived, and the things for which Jesus died, are the things that matter to the God who created them in the first place, the God who is able to speak a word that will raise the dead. Easter gives us hope so we might be faithful in following Jesus, where otherwise we could live only with despair, and we look at the victim and only promise more tragedy, with no alleviation of the awful darkness, which is so much a part of the human scene. If Good Friday were the last word, if the Cross were the last word, then history is a terrible tragedy. Then there is unrelieved suffering. Then there is nothing to scatter the darkness. Then I will be true to Jesus, and I would rather die as Jesus died, than to live the way the world tells me to live. But I would have nothing to say to all of those who suffered, and who continue to suffer. I would have nothing to say to those who bear the burden of the human story. Then the victim would always be victimized by the murderer. Then the violated one would always be trampled by the rapist. Then God or the powerful and oppressor, would always lord it over those oppressed and downtrodden. Then human history would be one unrelieved story of crucifixion. Then I would not know, I would not have a clue that there is something in this cosmic reality, some grace, some heart at the heart of things, some love that will not finally allow the darkness to prevail. I need Easter, lest I despair. I need Easter, lest the tragedy finally wear me down. I © Grand Valley State University �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 4   need Easter to keep on believing and trusting and hoping. I need Easter to keep on following. When the Romans decimated Jerusalem in the aftermath of the events that we celebrate today, a band of Jews fled south to the fortress of the Massada and they barricaded themselves in that almost impenetrable fortress. The Romans threw up great ramparts, great building projects in order finally to be able to assault that fortress, and when they finally succeeded they found that band of Jews had fallen on their own swords and taken their own lives rather than be taken. But in the ruins that you can visit even now, there is a room that was the synagogue where they worshiped. In that synagogue when the ruins were excavated they found a fragment of a manuscript. The manuscript was of the prophet Ezekiel. The fragment that they found was Ezekiel 37, read this morning “…a valley of dry bones exceedingly dry.” And the words of the Lord, “Son of man, can these bones live? Thou knowest, O Lord.” And the word of the Lord is prophesied to the bones and the wind blows, or the Spirit blows, and the bones take on flesh and are joined together, and the bones become a living army standing up, brought back to life from death. God’s possibility in the face of human impossibility. God’s people have always been a people of hope, even of joy because, in the face of every human circumstance, they have been able to say, “Nevertheless.” I would follow Jesus if Good Friday were all there were. But thank God there’s Easter Sunday. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c21b12681b83a601466472bbb20c4bd6.mp3 ad0097c6290260a401f7188d54c1b431 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 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 Easter Sunday Scripture Text Ezekiel 37:9, Romans 1:4, Mark 16:6 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930411 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-11 Title A name given to the resource The Faith of Jesus Vindicated Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 April 11, 1993 entitled "The Faith of Jesus Vindicated", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ezekiel 37:9, Romans 1:4, Mark 16:6. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Followers of Jesus Hope Nature of God Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bd91d3605061e8e5442a6c71637018c5.pdf b16077893f69d3097bc22cf752c8427e PDF Text Text Suffering: The Need For Another From the series: Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering Luke 22:14-24 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Maundy Thursday, April 8, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon We can bear just about anything if we are not alone. We can go through just about any valley if there’s someone to walk with us. Unless, of course, we are accompanied by friends like Job had in his deep valley. We call them “miserable comforters” because, although they started out well, by sitting silently for seven days and simply being present to Job, they could not keep silence once Job began to reveal the intensity and the depths and the darkness of the anguish that he was experiencing. The real test of a friend is whether or not they can just absorb all of that pain and darkness that sometimes erupts out of the human heart when it is in the intensity of the dark night of the soul. Job’s friends couldn’t do that. They began to protest against Job’s cries to heaven and his cries against heaven. I suppose that it is because of the experience of a Job, for example, that most of us live lives of quiet desperation, not really revealing who we are. And not really bringing to expression the things that are in our depths. I have a book on my shelf, an old book really, written by John Powell, Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? Well, of course, I know why I am afraid to tell you who I am. If I really told you who I was, if I really dared to reveal myself, would you still be able to embrace me? Could you still love me? Or, with Job’s friends, would you begin to perhaps defend God, or whatever. Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? That’s part of the deep anguish of human suffering: to feel isolated and alone with no one to whom to reach out and to reveal. The anguish within. Jesus understood that. On that night in which he was betrayed, he sat at table with his disciples. It may have been the Passover Feast or it may have been the night before Passover. In any case we are told it was at the time of Passover and it was that gathering around the table. I chose Luke’s story because of what seems to be a rather peripheral side note I suppose, and yet it’s the kind of thing I wanted to say tonight. Jesus sits at table and in the fifteenth verse he says, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you.” In the original the word is repeated. “I have desired with great desire.” Used once as a noun and once as a verb, expressing the intensity of that desire, that yearning, that longing. © Grand Valley State University   �Suffering: the Need for Another Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Jesus knows now there is no question about what lies before him. So in this dark night of his soul he gathers around him, with him, those whom he had come to love and to whom he had given himself. He says, “I desire with such great desire to celebrate this feast with you.” In our darkest moments we really need another. If there is only someone to whom we can speak. To whom we can reveal ourselves. With whom we can feel so safe that we know that there is nothing that we can reveal about ourselves that will result in our being condemned or judged or rejected. Then we can go through just about anything. Job’s friends proved flawed at that point. Actually, Jesus’ friends did too because, when they went from table to the garden, he said, “Stay with me and pray.” But they fell asleep. We do let one another down so often at the point of our greatest need – that need to know that we are not alone, that our darkness is shared, that our pain is being absorbed by another, and that no matter what we are going through for whatever reason there is still someone there with us. We can go through almost anything if we are not alone. It was appropriate that this series of Lenten midweek meditations conclude on this night, the theme of which has been the Mystery of Human Suffering, because Passover is really the Old Testament feast of liberation and freedom and deliverance from the cauldron of human suffering. Sometimes I wonder how I lived so long without seeing some things that are so very plain, but for some reason or other I know that, in my growing up and in my training and many years of my preaching, I have identified the Lord’s Supper with the death of Jesus for our sin. I perceived it only as a feast of atonement, or a feast of celebration of atonement. Now I believe that is not necessarily the case. A festival of atonement, the Great Day of Atonement, was in the seventh month, the tenth day of the month and it led into a harvest festival, the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles. But that wasn’t Passover. Passover was the annual celebration of the deliverance from Egypt. The Exodus was that prime central event of salvation when God with mighty arm set God’s people free from the house of bondage, from the slavery of Egypt. You read the opening chapters of Exodus. You read how the cries of God’s people went up to heaven. God heard their cry. The terrible suffering, which is duplicated all over our globe tonight. The horrendous measures of a pharaoh whose power was threatened by the growth of the population of a people. An oppressive ruler. An absolute monarch, totally unfeeling. All of the anguish of that Hebrew situation in Egypt is a paradigm of the ongoing suffering of humankind in the midst of history, and finally God says, “Enough.” And God sets God’s people free. God says to Moses, “Have the people roast a lamb and be ready to move because this is the night of freedom. It is the deliverance from the oppressive human situation of bondage.” God set God’s people free. That is the Old Testament experience to which Jesus connects this meal that we celebrate tonight. In the intensity of his own anguish, having suffered what he suffered – “My God, if possible, lift this cup from me.” All of the darkness that he endured, all the © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: the Need for Another Richard A. Rhem Page 3   suffering that was his lot – all of that, gathered now and coming down in a heavy shadow upon him, he gathers with those whom he loves. I wonder if he wondered if this Passover he was celebrating, or was about to celebrate, was a sign that God might do again then what God did in Egypt? Maybe so. Maybe he came to conclude that it was not through his teaching, through his modeling out, but that somehow or other he was going to effect the change that had to be effected in the midst of that people, in his dying. We don’t really know, except that we know at this point he knew inevitably that he would die. But would his death be the means of deliverance and liberation? Would his death be the way by which Israel would be set free, and then perhaps the whole world? Human suffering is the constant chronicle of darkness. It was true in Egypt in Pharaoh’s time. It was true in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. It is true all over our globe tonight. Yet we come to this Passover Lord’s Supper to remember, but also to hope. To remember, to be sure. But the Passover in its initial celebration was a feast with sandals and backpacks ready, of a people who were ready to move into a new future. They were ready to go. They were coming out of darkness and they were moving toward the light. They ate bitter herbs. They ate unleavened bread. They didn’t forget that from whence they were going to depart, but they knew that they were on their way to something new. So, for us the Lord’s Supper is a Eucharistic feast. It is a feast of Thanksgiving because we take bread and break it, we take the cup and pour it, and we know that it cost the life of one who loved us and gave himself for us. But we know that we do this hastily, hastening toward Easter and toward the light and toward resurrection. So we come, perhaps in our darkness, but we come as a community together because that’s what Jesus intended so that we would never have to be alone. So that we could take one bread and drink from one cup and know that we were bound together in community, in communion, because you can endure almost anything if you are not alone. Jesus would make us brothers and sisters, one of another, caring for one another, supporting one another, being there for one another. Knowing that in this darkness the light will dawn, experiencing here in the bread broken and the cup shared, the community in communion that will enable us to move into the dawn of Easter. I experienced the breaking of bread and the sharing of a cup in a remarkable way a couple of months ago. Before I went on vacation I told you that a friend of many of us, Ernie VanDam – Ernie and Doris who were here for many years – that Ernie was on the threshold of death. I did not think by the time I got down there he would be living. In fact I anticipated getting down there and coming back for his funeral. We got down there and he had come home from the hospital with tubes, sacks, bags and was a shadow of himself. But yet it was Ernie, irrepressible Ernie. Then in the middle of our stay we had a call from a couple of other of our people, Marilyn and Weldy Brumels, who wanted to stop and see Ernie. I said, “Meet us at the gate and we’ll go in together,” because I had something up my sleeve. I brought a shirt with clerical tabs along with me. Not to wear at the pool. © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: the Need for Another Richard A. Rhem Page 4   (Laughter) But just in case. When we arrived at Ernie’s I said to Doris, “Open a bottle of wine and give me some bread.” Then the six of us—with Ernie in his hospital bed with sacks and tubes and things—we broke the bread, we shared the cup. I hugged him; I kissed him. All of us were weeping together. Loving each other. Made one with bread and cup. I don’t know whether Ernie will be back here or not, but I know that together we experienced the possibility in the darkness and the vulnerability and the mortality of the human situation, of that which lifts and enables us to transcend all of that. It happens at a rail like this, with a table like this and with people like this. You can go through almost anything if you are not alone. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2d992fc99977251c0e25d15c0a54e8e8.mp3 0853f52f2670acfc25b9e5b905e5f08d 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 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 Maundy Thursday Series Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering Scripture Text Luke 22, 14-24 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930408 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-08 Title A name given to the resource Suffering: The Need For Another Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 April 8, 1993 entitled "Suffering: The Need For Another", as part of the series "Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering", on the occasion of Maundy Thursday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 22, 14-24. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Empathy Job Passover Suffering https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b8ba316a3e59e9c5e07e2beae852fd77.pdf 8cba3711b3a419f340fba237aece4438 PDF Text Text Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them From the series: The Faith Of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Palm Sunday, April 4, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey... Zechariah 9:9-10 … he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’” Luke 19:28-48 We have entered again into Holy Week. We come to that moment, that flash point, to that time when all of that that was in ferment in the life and ministry of Jesus comes to a head. This was no accidental trip to Jerusalem. Matthew, Mark and Luke have Jesus going to Jerusalem just once. John has Jesus making several trips to Jerusalem. Which is the case, we really don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. The point is that this trip was to be a time when things would come to a head. There is pretty much a consensus about that, that this might be considered a prophetic action and a political statement. This was an intentional move on Jesus’ part to gather his whole life and ministry into one and challenge the very heart of that religious establishment and tradition of which he was a part. He knew what he was about. He knew what he was doing. It was one thing for him to have gone about the hills of Galilee proclaiming his message as a charismatic holy man and prophet, but he knew finally he would have to come to this central shrine - to this very heart of that tradition that had shaped him – all of that covenant faith down through the centuries centered here in Jerusalem in the courts of the temple. Jesus was coming now to make his point finally there, and to bring his ministry to a head, perhaps to see what God would do, or to give God an opportunity to move in vindication of the claims of this one who believed he was speaking and living in the flow and power and spirit of the power of God. Jesus came to Jerusalem. In these Lenten weeks we have been making the point that he died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. And he lived the way he lived because he believed the way he believed. How did he believe? What did he believe? What was the faith of Jesus? That is the question we’ve been trying to get at. We have noted some of the aspects of that faith and conviction. © Grand Valley State University   �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 2   That God would build all into a community. That there was no exclusiveness, but rather the inclusive love of God. That God never abandons or lets go. That God is near and full of grace. And in his table of fellowship, Jesus mediated the very presence of God. In doing that, he got into serious trouble. Those things seemed so positive and so good, who could object to them? Wouldn’t everyone agree? Was not that which Jesus believed something like the American flag, and apple pie? Wouldn’t everybody affirm those things: the nearness of God? The grace of God? The inclusive care of God? The fact that God won’t abandon? That God’s presence is available to all? Who would object to those things? Well, I’ll tell you who would object to those things. It was all of those guardians of society. For what Jesus did was to destabilize the order of his day, the social order of his day, the temple order of his day, the ecclesiastical order of his day, the political world, and the social world. Jesus was a destabilizer. Jesus undercut the conventional wisdom. Jesus challenged the things that everybody knew and everybody understood, and those ways and structures and forms by which everybody organized their lives. We all have conventional wisdom by which we live. That enables us to live without thinking every time we take a step or make a move. There are some things which we simply know. There are some things we simply take for granted. It’s like looking at the world through glasses. When I look at you through my glasses I see you out there. I don’t think about these glasses, these spectacles. I see through them, and seeing through them I see what is out there. I see what is true. I see what is real. However, of course, these are reading glasses so they don’t work. I can’t see you at all. (Laughter) But, normally, spectacles give us a certain shape and form of things. We very seldom question the spectacles. I always know when I start singing more wrong words than right words that it is time for me to see John Leenhouts and check the spectacles, but that’s a very specific case. Most of the time, in the living or our lives, we don’t question our presuppositions, our biases, the dominant conventional wisdom of the day. We don’t do that. “My mind is made up, don’t bother me with the facts!” We get into certain well-worn ruts that are comfortable, that are like an old pair of shoes. Then you don’t have to think. You know about certain kinds of people, and you know about certain nations, and you know about certain colors, and you know about certain behaviors. There are things that you just plain know. You don’t have to go through that whole process of thinking again. Do you? But then some human experience comes along and challenges what we thought was all settled. Of course, most of us are able to crush that down. Sometimes it requires our anger to do that, however. We hope it will make it go away so that we don’t really have to go through the whole process of reorientation to a new understanding of reality. Dear friends, that’s why Jesus died. He called people up short. Good and decent folks like us. He destabilized the way one gets up in the morning and shaves and showers, and goes off to work. He called in question all of that that makes life © Grand Valley State University �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 3   able to be negotiated without too much stress, too much thinking. That’s why he died. Because in his prophetic call, living in the flow of God’s spirit, giving voice to his vision, he challenged the conventional wisdom, the social, political, ecclesiastical relationships and structures of his time. When he came to Jerusalem, he was bringing all that to a head. So as Luke tells us the story, he sets it in the context of a prophecy from Zechariah. In the ninth chapter of Zechariah, the first eight verses are kind of an oracle about God coming to deliver his people. Probably this prophecy was written in the fourth century B.C. when maybe Alexander the Great’s great army was moving south along the Mediterranean. Maybe the prophet even saw the legions of Alexander the Great moving toward Egypt, where he would subdue that empire. You see, the ancient world was a world also of shifting power arrangements. In Israel’s history there first was Israel, and then it split into the Northern Kingdom, and the Southern Kingdom, called Judah. Then the Assyrian Empire moved in and took over the Northern Kingdom. Some 400 years later the Babylonians overcame the Assyrians, and eventually they came and they carried the people of Judah into exile. Then the Persians overcame the Babylonians and let the Jews go back to Jerusalem. Eventually, Alexander the Great and the Greeks move across the landscape. Then, finally, there were the Romans who were in power when Jesus was there. With all of the stresses and strains, and the juggling for power at such a time, a prophet saw the armies move by and he envisioned God embracing and encompassing God’s house. He thought perhaps this incredible shifting of powers and empires would be a propitious time for God’s anointed one to come – that one who would be anointed with the Spirit of God and would bring justice and peace. Israel was always looking for that servant of the Lord, that one who would be full of the power of the Spirit of God, who would be able to mediate justice and bring Shalom. That messianic vision always beckoned them. They looked for a day when God would rule over all. When God’s justice would prevail. When there would be peace on earth. When the lion and the lamb would lie down together, and the wolf would graze. Ah! The vision! The vision of the one who comes as a peaceable king. He comes riding on a donkey. On a colt. Not a war-horse. Not a mighty charger. He comes and he brings the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom together. He removes the enmity. He heals the wounds of the divided Israel and he speaks peace to the nations. This is the picture that Luke gives us from the prophet Zechariah - the context in which we see Jesus coming to Jerusalem. You see Jesus on the crest of the Mount of Olives about to approach the city, riding on a donkey. Looking at Jerusalem, he weeps. Can’t you feel those hot salty tears, the pathos of his life? Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew the © Grand Valley State University �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 4   things that make for peace, but now they are hid from your eyes. And there will be this terrible devastation. This terrible destruction. Violence. Atrocity. Because, Jerusalem, you knew not the time of your visitation. Jesus believed to his dying moment that the eternal God was visiting Israel in him. That he was the mediated presence of God, the God whose presence is really an unbrokered presence in the world. Jesus said, “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” And we know that within forty years it happened that way. The walls were torn down, the temple burned, the people slaughtered and massacred. Jesus weeps. He weeps for Jerusalem. He weeps for the folly of the human way that seems again and again and again to invite such awful devastation, such violence and death. And so he comes with tears knowing he will probably die. And he does die. He dies because of the sin of the world, not for the sin of the world as though, somehow or other, God was waiting to pour out God’s grace and speak God’s word of forgiveness through some sacrificial death. I know it says that here. I understand that. But that, in all honesty, doesn’t really connect with my world and what I see going on in the world, which seems to be such a duplicate of what was going on in Jesus’ day. I know the biblical writers are using Old Testament imagery, simile and metaphor. But they were on the other side of Easter looking back at that death. They were looking back at the cross and trying to figure out what in the world was going on. Why did he die? What did it mean that he died? Why did he have to die? What was the significance of that death? This was necessary. It was an attempt to understand in retrospect. It was an action of interpretation, of translation that goes on and will always go on. And St. Paul gave us the imagery of payment and atonement. But the Gospel writers were trying to tell us by telling us of the life of Jesus, and the events of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus. Over these weeks, and even in Lenten series over the last few years, we have seen that the Gospel writers were showing us that the way he lived caused him to die. As I think about that, it seems to me that what he taught was not that God’s great problem was that God could not forgive. The Psalmist believed in God’s forgiveness. “Oh Lord, if thou should’st mark iniquity, who could stand?” But there is forgiveness with God. Forgiveness. Grace. It’s all in the Old Testament. Jesus believed in a God who forgives. The problem was not that God could not forgive. The problem was that God cannot get through. The problem was not that God would love to take away my sins and give me a personal relationship and a passport to heaven, but rather the problem is that God cannot change me! God cannot get through to me! Somehow or other there is no transformation here! I go on and I repeat again and again, and all of my brothers and sisters in history repeat again and again the same kind of foolish obstinate death and destruction over and over and over again! Jesus says, “If only you knew.” I suppose that it’s because of the World Trade Center bombing, but in the New York Times in the last two months there has been so much about the Middle East © Grand Valley State University �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 5   and the Muslim Fundamentalist Movement. I am sure you have been reading about it in whatever you read. Egypt, particularly, where the Muslim Brotherhood has rejected violence but has spawned into other groups because there are groups that absolutely insist on blowing up the world in order to make their point. The problem with the Muslim Fundamentalists is that, not only are they against Israel and against the United States for being with Israel, but they are against their own secular Arab leaders. And what they want to return their nation and their culture to is a religious state, so that their own leaders also need to go, so they have really nothing to lose. There is this worldwide conspiracy. An article a couple of days ago relates how they are pouncing on the ancient Christian church in Egypt, the Coptic Christians. The interconnections with the World Trade Center bombing means that this terrorism is being exported and the battles will be fought anywhere in the world because our world is interconnected. The point of the article is that a professor from some Florida university says that we will have a serious problem for a long time to come, and it’s not certain what can be done about it because our world presents so many opportunities for this kind of guerilla terrorism. There is now a group of people, militant of mind, absolutely dedicated, willing to die, full of purpose, full of fire, who are determined to effect this revolution in our world, take it one generation or ten generations. I was interested to read the last paragraph of a guest editorial, which had a huge drawing at the bottom with a sign like a road sign that gives warning of men working. But this one man had a bundle of dynamite and the fuse was lighted, and on one side was Egypt with a sphinx and a pyramid, and everything all in devastation. Then over here was the World Trade Center and all was devastation. Everything - civilization devastated. You see, as long as we had east and west, U.S. - U.S.S.R. we had this focus on the super powers and the super powers sort of helped everything like this. But now we live in a world where there is eruption all over the place. What’s going on? People who are angry. People who have nothing to lose. People who will say, “Burn, baby, burn.” This professor from a Florida university says that the Muslim rulers themselves are going to have to put down those fanatical groups, and perhaps brutally. I read it and I say, “That’s true. That’s true.” How can you have a world where you can have that kind of stuff going on? You have to put it down with force, don’t you? But what happens when you put it down with force? All you do is cause it to come out in another place. It seems to arise in another more militant form, another more deadly form. Do you ever deal with those ancient blood feuds, those great, great angers and hostilities between people? Do you ever really solve the problem that way? Of course not!! That’s the story of history. Jesus, 2000 years ago, saying “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Was not his point that there is only one way to deal with that which is so endemic to the human situation that spews violence and spawns response in violence? That is the way of © Grand Valley State University �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 6   sacrificial love. Turning the other cheek. Loving the enemy. Embracing the one who despitefully uses me. Of course, you can’t run a world that way. But my point is, you see, God’s problem is not that God cannot forgive me. God’s problem is that God doesn’t seem to be able to change me. Jesus didn’t die so that I could have the sentence removed and I could have a passport to heaven. I mean, wouldn’t that be wonderful. I could say, “Yes I believe. I’ll take that ticket. Thank you very much,” and remain unchanged. I couldn’t, of course. But that, as a matter of fact, is what has happened. We have this neat theological system of Christian doctrine where we have a problem, our sin; a solution, Jesus’ death. Sin removed. Guilt removed. Openness to God. All of that stuff and the world continues to be on the brink of exploding because in the human heart there is never any significant transformation. Not in my heart. And not in the hearts of Muslim fanatics, and Jewish Orthodox, and Christian Fundamentalists. The problem is not that God can’t forgive my sin. The problem is God can’t break through to me. I put my glasses on. Got it made up. Figured out. Don’t make me change. But, don’t you see, the word repentance comes from the Greek word metanoia , which means to change one’s thinking. The problem with the world is not that God can’t forgive the world of sin. The problem is that the world’s thinking will not change. And we egg each other on, and we escalate the violence, and we raise the stakes and nothing changes! Well, let me give you an image to close. Let’s imagine on the wall a beautiful Oriental rug. Since we are talking about things Middle East, let’s roll it up. Now it’s just a big roll up there. Now it’s like a movie screen. Let’s pull it down a little bit. You see it coming down a bit? You can begin to see the pattern? Now, of course, when it’s rolled up there it is complete. It is all woven. The design is done. We can pull it down as fast or as slowly as we want to, but when we get it all the way unrolled it will be a completed, finished product, but as it was already when it was rolled up, and that unrolling becomes a revelation. An unveiling. An unrolling of what is. That’s an old conception of God, of history, of creation. That’s the way former generations and former centuries used to think about God the King, omnipotent, in control, knowing the end from the beginning, controlling all things. But let me suggest another image which I think fits more with what we understand about the human person, about human willing and decision making, about the forces that are operative in history. Let’s image a huge loom on which there is a tapestry being woven. God is significantly involved in that weaving process, but we get involved as well. Punching in our threads. God moving and accommodating according to the threads we put in. You see, when you are operating on a loom with a tapestry that is in process, it is in process. It is in the process of being created. Its design is not yet finished, nor clear. And what happens over here will be somewhat dependent upon what happens over there, and about all of the input of all of the crazy people called human beings. God © Grand Valley State University �Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Richard A. Rhem Page 7   negotiating, maneuvering, operative, engaged, judging. blessing, but not pulling strings. God let Jesus die. God let Jesus hang there. We are not puppets on a string. Jesus is the visible sign of God’s presence in the void. God never letting go. Never giving up. Never abandoning. Weeping. Broken hearted, but never giving up. You see the cross is that human NO to all that Jesus lived for! And Easter is God’s far grander “I will not take ‘no.’” That’s at least the way I understand it - it is what helps me know what I am called to do. That’s to follow Jesus. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/53592ecabdac6908165eb42a68498b32.mp3 d91aef8b0dee8131684d53a86d65075f 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 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 Palm Sunday Series The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Scripture Text Zechariah 9:9-10, Luke 19: 28-48 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930404 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-04 Title A name given to the resource Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 April 4, 1993 entitled "Jesus Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Them", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Palm Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Zechariah 9:9-10, Luke 19: 28-48. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Atonement Forgiveness Grace Inclusive Love Nature of God Presence of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6f9975ba9c92e0775c3b29e6d446dd40.pdf ff9d3037cd116fd38732380825e315b0 PDF Text Text Suffering: Nevertheless… From the Midweek Lenten series: Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering Text: Romans 8:18-39; Mark 14:32-42 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan March 31, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon Jesus expressed the ultimate in human suffering with his cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” We raised the question last week: Are We Abandoned? And suggested that it was in the sense of abandonment, in the consciousness of the absence of God, that we had a tenuous link to the presence of God. For one does not miss what one has not experienced. So, ironically, paradoxically, the very absence was a sign of the presence. That experience of abandonment and knowing the presence only in the absence was the deepest of human suffering and the nadir of Jesus’ anguish. The garden experience was the place where he waged the greatest conflict and won. It was not on the cross that he won the victory. It was in the garden. On the cross the die was set; the die was cast. There he experienced the abandonment and the awful suffering. But in the garden it was the struggle to be true. It was the last chance. His entry into the garden was not marked by a sign “No Exit.” It could still have been different. But it was with a poignant awareness of what lay before him that he struggled there. Lest we take away at all from that suffering, we must recognize that Jesus was not some stoic, setting his chin, gritting his teeth, simply going through with it. He was not a fatalist, throwing up his hands, saying, “Whatever will be, will be.” It was in the garden that he said, “Please release me.” He did not want to go through with what he was going to go through. In fact the language that the evangelist uses could not be any stronger. One New Testament commentator says that when Mark records words like, “My soul is crushed within me,” it could be translated, “I wish I were dead.” So this was no heroic figure. No calm philosophical Socrates draining the cup of poison. This was a trembling human being. This was a human being who knew fear and trembling, and who faced down the darkness, fully cognizant of all of the implications, pleading for release, yet coming finally to say, “Nevertheless. Nevertheless. Not my will but Thy will be done.” The irony of that is that in so winning through, in bowing in such obedience, Jesus found the truest human freedom. Had he buckled at that moment, he would have denied his truth. He © Grand Valley State University   �Suffering: Nevertheless… Richard A. Rhem Page 2   would have denied himself. He would have become a slave in bondage to fear, to prejudice, to all of that which was set against him and the truth that he proclaimed. He would have denied his deepest sense of who God was and what God had called him to be, and to do, and to say. He would have lost his freedom and been robbed of his strength if he had saved his life, and so his “Nevertheless,” was really his breakthrough to victory. It was the saving of his soul. It was the holding on to his life. And the very giving of his life. “Nevertheless, Thy will be done.” In the home in which I grew up, and in the church in which I grew up, and the piety which was a part of the shaping of my life - family prayers, long prayers. (There used to be long prayers in church. That was a pretty good example of our liturgical sense at Third Reformed, Kalamazoo. I had no idea what these various prayers were, but I knew they were long prayers.) There are certain clichés and certain little phrases. I remember as a young person a certain church I attended that was not my own had a pastor I liked to hear quite a bit, but in his pastoral prayers I knew that he was about 1-1/2 minutes from landing when he would call upon God to cast the “lariat of his love around us.” One of the phrases that tripped off the tongue almost without thinking, well, indeed without thinking was “Thy will be done. Thy will be done.” Oh, those are words that sometimes I hardly dare pray, now that I have become somewhat conscious of what those words really mean. It is quite rare with me when I can honestly say, “Thy will be done,” when it runs counter to my will and what I would have done. I am not very good at that point of ultimate submission. I am a rebel. A strong rebel, affirmed of my way. Jesus in full light of the darkness said, “Nevertheless, Thy will be done,” and ironically won his freedom in bowing to the will of God. That’s not how we see the will of God very often. Usually the human will and the divine will are in competition. They are over against each other. It’s God’s will at the expense of my will. Or if it is my will, it’s at the expense of God’s will. It’s like there’s 100% will out there and whatever percentage I give to God is deducted from my share. So there’s conflict. We never really believe that it is finally in finding the will of God that we find true freedom and the empowerment of our own will to be all that we can be. So Jesus was able to say, “Nevertheless, Thy will . . .” And in the wake of Jesus, those who follow him have also found a great “Nevertheless.” It has been expressed nowhere more powerfully and beautifully than by St. Paul in the 8th chapter of Romans. That chapter is so replete with riches that one paragraph is enough to give a congregation indigestion in one message. Sometimes I treat it as a paragraph at a time and I forget the string, but beginning with the 18th verse, he talks about suffering. He talks about the fact that the whole creation seems to be caught up in these convulsions. It is almost as though there is a cosmic convulsion, a suffering, a bondage, and a darkness. The Apostle says that we are all in the whole creation - one translation has it “the whole creation is on tiptoe” - © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Nevertheless… Richard A. Rhem Page 3   for that day when we will be delivered and freed from this bondage which has its share of suffering and darkness. Then he goes on to give us that marvelous assurance that “in all these things”– that is, in all this crap, that he has been talking about that we have to wade through –“in all these things God works for the good of those who love him.” I was not welcome last Saturday to this church. It was Woman’s Day, but I got to listen to the tape. My friend, Carmelita Murphy spoke powerfully, as I knew she would. She spoke about the darkness and about being willing to stay for a time in the darkness. That sometimes the darkness becomes the womb of newness, and that in the disarray and the dis-ease, in the brokenness and in the pain lies the seed of the new which is striving to be born, because the Spirit of God also is active in the darkness. Someone in the discussion raised a question; it is a question that I hear often. It is a question often raised by people who are concerned with the present state of things, whether it be the world, the nation, the church, the community, or the family. The question was raised: “But how do we know how to go on when all the norms of the past…there’s just a breakdown all over?” Carmelita was equal to that question. She said, “Someone has said that breakdown leads to breakthrough.” If we could only believe it. If we could only hang on long enough in the darkness. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I hate the darkness. We all resist the darkness. If we don’t resist the darkness there is truly something dysfunctional about us. To be followers of The Way, we do not need to be masochistic and go out of our way to find suffering, but we don’t really have to because there’s plenty to go around. If only I could remember in the darkness that it is so often the prelude to the dawn and that the brokenness is that which invites the newness that sometimes can only come when we have had forcibly ripped out of our tight fists that which is all settled and safe. The Apostle concludes with what must be among the most marvelous words ever written. “What are we to say to all these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Famine or nakedness or peril or sword,” cancer, betrayal . . . you name your hurts. “What can separate us from the love of Christ?” All these things? No. None of these things. “For we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” For the Apostle Paul said his “Nevertheless,” in the wake of Jesus’ “Nevertheless.” His “Nevertheless,” wasn’t exactly Jesus’. Jesus’ was “Nevertheless, Thy will be done.” But following Jesus, Paul could say in the face of the deepest darkness that life could hand out, “Nevertheless in all these things we are more than conquerors. For I am persuaded that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things in the future, the world as it is or the world as it shall be, nothing in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Nevertheless… Richard A. Rhem Page 4   So we will kneel tonight and we’ll take cup, and we will be in touch with Jesus. As you taste and digest, let this word of promise seep into the pores of your being as well. With the touch and taste of bread and wine, let the word “Nevertheless,” become the word that you take into Holy Week, knowing that you will never be abandoned. You will never finally be left alone in the darkness, for you are loved with an everlasting love, and with cords of love God has bound you to God’s self. God will never let you go. Let the bread and the cup, the body and the blood be the sign of God’s never ending love for you tonight. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6d71afec9b91c5b3edf394f1c78b5f6c.mp3 7cd8269dabe5d35ca3bffc4b833a0e6f 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 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 Midweek Lent Series Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent Scripture Text Romans 8:18-39, Mark 14:32-42 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930331 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-31 Title A name given to the resource Suffering: Nevertheless... Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 31, 1993 entitled "Suffering: Nevertheless...", as part of the series "Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent", on the occasion of Midweek Lent, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 8:18-39, Mark 14:32-42. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Suffering Unconditional Love of God Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d4a9ae5f246964ffa35845405dba3fed.pdf d2a3cd92c4149ce0d1d0b31550c4d933 PDF Text Text The God Who Forgives From the series: The Faith Of Jesus; Trust in a Gracious God Text: Psalm 130:4; Luke 23:34 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Lent V, March 28, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon But there is forgiveness with you…. Psalm 130:4 “Father, forgive them….” Luke 23:34 Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived, and he lived as he lived because of that which he believed in. The faith of Jesus - that’s what we have been trying to get at these weeks. What did Jesus believe? That is an important question because what he believed shaped how he lived, and how he lived issued in the way he died. So to understand his death we need to know what he believed. We’ve been saying that at the heart of it was a belief in the nearness of God. Trust in a gracious God. Or, for today, trust in a God who forgives us. Sometimes, in the Christian Church, we tend to think that we have a monopoly on forgiveness. It is not so. I have been trying to say in these weeks that Jesus lived out his Jewish faith, and it was as a believing Jew that Jesus believed in the God who forgives. Jesus is sometimes claimed by us as the first Christian and that is not true. He was a believing Jew. And if he believed in the God who forgives, then it is because in his own Jewishness, Yahweh, the God of Covenant, was a God of grace. We do a great injustice if we think of the Old Testament as being over against the New Testament. In fact, even that terminology is a put-down for Israel. For it is not as though there was an old covenant, and then a new covenant, as though there are two covenants. There is only one covenant of grace. There was its form in Israel, and its form in Jesus. To be sure, Jeremiah, speaking to Judah in a time of its own rebellion said that a time would come when God would make a new covenant. But it is the same covenant. It is new in the same sense as we speak of the new moon - the new moon that has appeared recently this week in a small sliver. It’s not a new moon at all; it is the new appearance of the old moon, the same old moon. Thank God! Israel knew that God is a God who forgives and probably nowhere does that come to better expression than in the Psalmist, the Psalter hymnbook of the Old Testament, particularly in the seven Psalms, the group Psalms 32, 51, 102, and © Grand Valley State University   �The God Who Forgives Richard A. Rhem Page 2   130, as we had it this morning. There we find this marvelous statement. “There is forgiveness with Thee,” the Psalmist cries out of the depths. The depths are the chaos, the watery chaos, the chaos that always threatens the world and humankind, and one, in whatever experience he may have been in, feels the foundations shaking, and he is being sucked down. He cries, “Out of the depths. Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my cry. Let your ears be attentive to the supplications.” And then, conceding his guilt, making no rationalization, no parade of excuses, he simply says, “Lord, if you should mark iniquity, who could stand?” Lord, if you kept books, who of us could stand? But then this amazing, wonderful Gospel declaration, “But with you there is forgiveness.” Jesus lived that way. That’s what he believed. And we can tell, because that’s the way he acted. He was one who, going through Jericho one day, picked out the leading entrepreneur, the wealthiest man in town, the one who had gotten the franchises on the tax-farm system, Zaccheus, by name. He may have been short, but he was big. And he was curious, for whatever reason we don’t know. Maybe just curious. Maybe some hankering need, some unfulfilled yearning that all of the taxes that he could skim off could never satisfy. Jesus said, “Come down. I want to dine with you today.” And in that story we have what we’ve been talking about all these weeks. The table fellowship of Jesus. He sat down at table. He sat down at table and thereby mediated the grace of God. He said to Zaccheus, “I’m going to your house today,” thereby indicating an acceptance that amazed Zaccheus. It’s a lucky thing that he didn’t fall out of the tree. “I’m going to your house today. I’m going to sit at your table today. I’m going to be in solidarity with you today. I’m going to speak the grace and the forgiveness by my very presence in breaking bread with you today.” Luke probably adds the story recorded in the 8th verse that tells us about Zaccheus’ amazing response to this amazing grace. Zaccheus claims that he is going to make restitution far beyond the law would require, but Luke probably adds that verse 8 - it was a story without that verse at one point, but Luke uses the story as a paradigm, as a model which shows the results of conversion. But if you just take out the fact that he was going to make all this restitution, read the story without verse 8, then you will find Jesus at his table gracing Zaccheus with his presence and saying, “Today salvation is come.” If you put verse 8 in there, the thing that tends to happen to us is that we tend to see Zaccheus making restitution and then Jesus saying, “Today salvation has come,” as though it is salvation that has come in the wake of the restitution that has been made. But that is not so. Jesus simply embraces this man, and it is in the embrace that this man is transformed. Grace always grants the acceptance, and whatever follows is a consequence of the initiative of the grace of God. It is the announcement of forgiveness that is the catalyst of repentance and penitence. And in the church, and in religion in general, all sorts of religions, that’s what we never keep straight. Somehow or © Grand Valley State University �The God Who Forgives Richard A. Rhem Page 3   other when we get organized, and we get institutionalized, and we get our prescriptions and our formulas, and we have our way in and our processes and our structures, then it becomes a matter of believing certain things or doing certain things, behaving a certain way, making a certain response, on the basis of which we are embraced. That is simply the way of religion - all religions, because as Walter Brueggemann says in his commentary on Psalm 130, “This premature announcement of forgiveness scandalizes all of our calculating religion.” I wonder, is that enough? The story from the instance of the Psalmist, the story of Zaccheus, and I could add the stories of the prodigal son or the Publican and the Pharisee or I could multiply the stories of Jesus, but in the Zaccheus story is what we have been talking about - the God of the abandoned, the God of the outcast, the God of the excluded. Jesus undercutting the religious institutions, the institutional forms. I don’t think he had anything against religious forms, as long as they were recognized as the medium through which the presence of God and the grace of God came. But not as absolutes. Not as though, somehow or other, the organized religion, or church, or temple, or the mosque held the spigot which could turn on and off the grace of God. No! No, Jesus spoke of an immediacy of the forgiveness of God, announced ahead of time, before there was any evidence of faith or repentance, or penitence. And I wonder, is that enough? A couple of weeks ago on Wednesday night I raised the question about whether or not “That’s Enough?” Is it enough just to say, “I forgive you?” God knows that there is something in us that disallows that, calls for something more. I think there’s something primal in us that wants something more. I think it is true of all religions. Religions speak about appeasing God, or expiating God, or atonement. Religions have a means by which to put people back into communion with God, and there is always a sacrifice or an offering, or a price to pay. There is, it seems in religion, be it Islamic, Jewish, Christian, some bookkeeping that has to go on. God can’t simply forgive. I think there is something in us that demands that, because we structure our religions with that same “tit for tat.” Paul uses the image of the Roman law court. This is his metaphor, at least one of his metaphors. He has more than one for the atonement, but essentially, Paul’s metaphor claims that Jesus “takes the rap” for us, so that there isn’t really forgiveness pure and simple. Something has been paid. Someone has paid. Is that important? Is that necessary? There must be something in us that senses that that must be necessary. That’s the way we operate. I mean, you can’t run a world on any other basis, can you? But look at our world. Last night on the NBC News there were two clips about the escalating violence, the IRA, the bombings, the capricious bombings in England. A three year old killed and then a twelve year old killed. There was a funeral yesterday, and services being called in Ireland out of deep concern, and the Protestant extremists in northern Ireland not having anything really to do with Protestantism, but they killed four Catholics again, gunned them down, dead. You see the terror on the faces of the people. Then the clip from Israel where the © Grand Valley State University �The God Who Forgives Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Palestinian issue escalates, the violence is greater, stabbings, shootings, a young man named Martin Fletcher, I think, who goes to the store and buys his pistol and takes some target practice, hating to do it and yet feeling he must do it. This terrible thing going on in Bosnia Herzegovina, the genocide where as a military strategy the soldiers rape and impregnate the Muslim women. Dehumanizing. Terrible things! Do you just say, “You are forgiven?” But, you see, what’s going on in our world is the festering, and the festering again of ancient feuds, and old, old hurts that will not be let go of. It’s true in Bosnia. It’s true in the Balkans - what is going on is a result of ethnic pain out of the past. It’s true in Ireland. It’s not just Catholic/Protestant. It’s deep wounds in the culture, centuries back, continuing to come between because there is something primal in us, I am sure, that demands retribution and vengeance and retaliation. Where retribution and retaliation and vengeance operate, there is no end! It never ends! So, I wonder. I ask this question. You think about it with me. Was God with Jesus on the cross just dying? Was Jesus’ breakthrough the thing he was reaching for, was that what got him killed? The fact that he undercut the religion tit-for-tat and the neat bookkeeping of people in mosque and church. Was he crucified because he tried to say, “Retribution, vengeance, retaliation, tit-for-tat will not work? There is only one way to break through, through this accursed human plague, and that is to take it on the chin?” I wonder. Jurgën Moltman, in his book, The Crucified God, claims that God does not need a blood sacrifice to forgive us. I think he needs to show us that that won’t work. It is only love that becomes the transformative catalyst that changes people. It is only if I can forgive you before you say, “I am sorry.” It is only if I can enwrap you in my arms while you are still alienated that something happens inside out. I wonder if God, in Christ, was taking it on the chin? And all the darkness, and all the atrocity, and all of the horror of the human story crashing in upon God, in Christ, on the cross, and God absorbing it all, just absorbing it all. Then hearing Jesus who lived out his faith in concrete action and died saying, “Father, forgive them.” I suspect if that won’t do the trick nothing will. And I suspect that Easter is the sign that that love may be crucified, but never finally defeated, and that finally, either here or there, God won’t quit until we get the picture. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/06a12ea6a0b0f3e6e9a2db90335d2c6c.mp3 888cc70b03c46bad22818cbeddf5a36e 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 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 Lent V Series The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Scripture Text Psalm 130:4, Luke 23:34 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930328 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-28 Title A name given to the resource The God Who Forgives Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 28, 1993 entitled "The God Who Forgives", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 130:4, Luke 23:34. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness Nature of God Transforming Grace https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ae562377967707e6b4d9b0bfcef548d9.pdf 6e011328b4f64cbbbd186b77ac5dc186 PDF Text Text Suffering: Is One Abandoned? From the Midweek Lenten series: Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering Job 23:3; Mark 15:34 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan March 24, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon As we have moved through this Lenten journey, we come to the very heart of it this evening. Actually in these meditations I am reversing the events of the narrative itself. We go to Calvary this evening, and then back again to Gethsemane next week. I do that because I want to treat as honestly as I can the sense of abandonment that Jesus experienced. But I don’t want to leave the study there. I want rather to leave it with a final word of trust. So I am going to move to Calvary and back to Gethsemane, contrary to the record itself. The whole question of God and suffering which has been our focus defies rational explanation. Human suffering puts a limit to human reasoning. Inevitably, down through the centuries people have tried to reconcile the almightiness of God and the anguish of human suffering, and there have been all kinds of schemes proposed. The technical term is theodicy: the justification of God in light of the reality of human suffering. There have been some grand schemes proposed, but finally there simply is no rational explanation that can remove the sense of darkness and despair, which is so very real a part of our human experience. Someone has said that all of the attempts at rational explanation and understanding are like a lecture on nutrition to a starving person. For when one is in the anguish and in the darkness, there is no satisfactory explanation. There is only the darkness and that fragile connectedness that is the consequence of the experience of the absence of the presence. That’s a rather complicated thought, isn’t it? The sense of the absence of presence points to that other one that one has known, whose presence one has known. Only as one has known that presence does one become conscious of the absence. So, ironically, it is the sense of the absence that points to the presence and becomes that tenuous link between the darkness and the Living Lord. In Job and in Jesus we see the depth of human suffering. We see it in their cry of abandonment. What an eloquent word in that Old Testament story. Can’t you feel the pathos of Job’s cry, “Oh that I knew where I might find him. I go forward and © Grand Valley State University   �Suffering: Is One Abandoned? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   he is not there. I go backward and I cannot reach him. I go to the right hand and I cannot behold him, and to the left hand and he is not there. Oh that I knew where I might find him.” And Jesus. The words from Mark’s Gospel, the cry from the cross, borrowed from Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” In the case of Job the purpose of that Old Testament book was to break the link between sin and suffering, that traditional conception of things that if one is suffering one must have sinned because God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. So the “miserable comforters” who come to be with Job, being prisoners of that scheme of things, cannot fully enter into Job’s suffering because their scheme disallows their total identity with him. They cannot hear him. His anguish is that he is suffering and he cannot figure it out because he has lived with integrity. So he knows in his present human experience that the scheme of things that is traditionally accepted, the conventional wisdom, simply doesn’t hold. That’s part of the anguish, when our human experience doesn’t fit the mold. Some of us know what that is to get in circumstances that simply don’t fit. They don’t fit the conception of things that we had always taken for granted, that we had always assumed, that had been taught us from our childhood up. In Job’s case he suffers alone, because there is no one who will grant him that, just perhaps, there is a mystery of human suffering that shatters the conventional wisdom and the commonly accepted scheme of things. The Old Testament book is an eloquent denial of that conventional wisdom that God, the rewarder of the righteous and the punisher of the wicked, makes everything finally come out right. And that, if one is suffering, one has sinned. A denial of the conventional wisdom that suffering is the punishment for wrongdoing. No causal relationship. No necessary proportion between those two, says the Book of Job. We have in the book itself, finally, this overpowering revelation, which doesn’t answer the existential question of why, but is a revelation of God, so that Job out of his darkness and anguish is encountered by God. Then, picking up that old tale which is at the beginning and the end of the dialogues, we have the restoration of Job in this life. So for Job there is the awful anguish and the revelation, and the restoration. But it is not so for Jesus. For Jesus we have the cry of abandonment, the darkness and death. The cry of abandonment of Jesus reaches to a brassy heaven that makes no move in reply. There is no scattering of the darkness. There is no alleviation of the pain. Jesus hangs abandoned to the public gaze. Job’s problem was difficult enough: the suffering of the innocent. One living with integrity, yet crushed. But it didn’t begin to address the anguish of Jesus. For with Jesus the absence of God at the moment of his terrible need begged the question of the whole project of his life. This is the one who had proclaimed the nearness of God, the presence of God, the grace of God. This was the one who had announced the presence of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the people. Consequently, it was not simply that he was suffering. It was the fact that everything he had staked his life on hung in the © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Is One Abandoned? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   balance. That was the depth of the anguish of Jesus. Who can begin to imagine, to conceive of the physical agony of Jesus? But I suspect he hardly was conscious of the physical suffering in light of the mental and spiritual anguish that he was undergoing. I asked you on Sunday morning whether in your understanding of Jesus there is any room for self-doubt. I believe that that must have been the great temptation of Jesus. The temptation to lose faith. To stop trusting in the midst of that darkness when his whole life’s project was on the line and the heavens were silent. Might he have been wrong? He had set himself against the whole institutionalization of religion, that whole structure – the temple and the priests, and the sacrifices – not denying the efficacy, not denying the fact that they were a part of this covenant people of God and not denying that they had been and still could be the mediators of the grace of God, and the presence of God, but relativizing all of that and announcing the presence of God for all. The inclusive concern of God. God of the abandoned. God of the outcast. God of the godless. All of that was at stake as Jesus hung there, for it was Roman power and Jewish religion collaborating to put the lie to everything for which he had lived, and for all the claims that he had made; therefore, far beyond anything that Job suffered, Jesus saw everything go up in smoke. There are different opinions as to the citation of Psalm 22. Mark, giving us that opening cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” was reflecting his understanding, I think, of what was happening. But there are those who say that cry, which Mark gives us from Psalm 22, goes through the utter depths of human suffering, but comes through finally at the end of the Psalm to offer praise to God and express confidence in God. There are those who say that word from the cross was simply the beginning of the citation, the quotation of the Psalm. God’s children have long recited the word of God in times of extremity as the source of comfort and strength. There are those who say this is what Jesus was about. And it may be so. Mark is considered to be the earliest Gospel, and it is interesting that, especially Luke and John, later Gospels, coming perhaps with the Christian interpretation of Jesus’ death, soften. They don’t have the word of forsakenness. They have in Luke’s case the word of trust: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” a citation from another Psalm. Or in John’s case, “It is finished,” a declaration of accomplishment. I wonder if maybe even those Gospel writers were uncomfortable leaving the raw suffering and darkness, and cry of dereliction as the last word? In any case, that’s what we have in Mark. So in the cry of abandonment, in the case of Jesus according to Mark, there is suffering, and there is darkness, and there is death. In the case of Job, after the point has been made, there is revelation and restoration. In the case of Jesus, there is abandonment, darkness and death. I think sometimes we attempt to defend God and a rightness of things so that we are uncomfortable just leaving it with the darkness. But to the person who is in the darkness, it is not always a kindness to try to lighten the darkness. © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Is One Abandoned? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   William Styron, the novelist of Sophie’s Choice, has Stengle making his sad journey from Washington to New York on the train to bury his two close friends who had committed suicide and, in his utter despair, a black woman who is a fellow traveler, offers him Psalm 88, the one Psalm that we began with at the beginning of this series and in which there is no alleviation of the darkness. Again, paradoxically, Psalm 88, which is unrelenting darkness, becomes a source of comfort to one who has no eyes but for the darkness in the present circumstance. The cross gives us a true, an honest, and an awful insight into our human existence, which is historical existence, which means that we move one step at a time, and one day at a time. Therefore, we walk by faith and not by sight, and at the cross we see that sometimes there is a sense of abandonment with no alleviation, no relief, and no final resolution. That’s a hard word, but it’s honest, and it is true to human experience. Henry Nouwen says that we resist being with people in their pain. We do, don’t we? We would love to fix it. We resist simply being there with care. We would go there with a cure. It is an act of tremendous grace to go there with care and identify with the darkness and not try to explain it away. I think we pastors are probably the most vulnerable to that temptation to try to make it better. But the cross and the cry of dereliction is testimony to the fact that within the parameters of our life, our human experience sometimes is an experience of abandonment, darkness and death. But that dismal word is not my last word, thank God. I mentioned to begin with that it is that sense of absence that points to the presence. Even that cry of dereliction was a cry to God: “My God, my God.” The link. The fragile link between the darkness and the living Lord is the cry. And, for us, we cannot talk about the cross without at least pointing ahead two weeks hence to Easter. If it is the cross, and only the cross, then there is only bad news. For there was no alleviation of the sense of abandonment for Jesus. But the one to whom he cried, we believe, had not abandoned him, but was present with him and not unaffected by him. That’s bald-faced trust. That is an affirmation of faith that comes from Easter faith, but in no way does that take away from the darkness. Yet our darkness can never compare with his darkness. For if we have lingered with him in his darkness, then we have learned with him to cry, even to sing, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” But if we have been with him in the darkness, we also will know now and again what it is to steal away to Jesus. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c850af7f5f30fe23af99ebac22c4e672.mp3 d192f0e560ba8971192f153b25b5286a 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 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 Midweek Lent Series Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent Scripture Text Job 23:3, Mark 15:34 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930324 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-24 Title A name given to the resource Suffering: Is One Abandoned? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 24, 1993 entitled "Suffering: Is One Abandoned?", as part of the series "Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent", on the occasion of Midweek Lent, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 23:3, Mark 15:34. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Job Nature of God Suffering Theodicy https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a96c7d01918fe508417cd74d8128d89e.pdf 7d9edd71674acfcdc3f6fa2204bee3b3 PDF Text Text By What Authority…or Who Says So? From the series: The Faith Of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Text: Jeremiah 7:1; Mark 11:27-28 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Lent IV, March 21, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord… Jeremiah 7:1 The Chief Priest, Scribes, and the Elders came to him and said, “By what authority are you doing these things?” Mark 11:27-28 Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. And he lived the way he lived because of what he believed essentially, at his heart, what he believed about God. These Lenten weeks we are trying to determine the faith of Jesus. I have suggested that right at the heart of that faith was the conviction that God was gracious. That God was near. That one could trust God to be gracious and near, never to let one go. That seems rather harmless. Why in the world would Jesus get into trouble for believing that? But you see, he acted on that conviction. He acted on the conviction that God’s grace embraced all. And so in his table fellowship he sat down with all sorts of people and became very threatening to those who had drawn lines and circles to include some and exclude others. He reached out, touched the leper, and healed the leper, contrary to the whole social structure of the day, which ostracized the leper and placed the leper outside of community. He took on his religious establishment in terms of its ritual and its perfunctory performance. He didn’t fast with his disciples. He didn’t keep the fast. And in terms of the Sabbath, although he observed Sabbath as a gift of God, he did not keep it legalistically, so that it became inhumane. He realized that all religion, all religious ritual, all religious observance ought to be for the enhancement of our humane existence and not a burden on it. And so in all of that he was threatening to the religious establishment. Religion sets down codes and pathways, and observances and performances, and obligations and demands, and then it says to us, “Fulfill those and all will be well.” But Jesus said, “No.” In order to be well, do only those things that will enhance your spiritual life and your sense of the presence of God. © Grand Valley State University   �By What Authority, or Who Says So? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Finally, after his ministry in Galilee – which was no bucolic backwater as it is so often pictured but, rather, Galilee of the Gentiles, Galilee where the international trade routes crisscrossed. Galilee included Nazareth and, within four miles, Sepphoris, which was the capital of the Galilean territory of Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas made Sepphoris a great city with theatre and temple and civic works. It was called the Ornament of Galilee – Jesus, after carrying on his ministry there, provocative as it was, knew nonetheless, that finally he had to bring his message to Jerusalem. In the Synoptic Gospels we have Jesus going to Jerusalem just once. In John’s Gospel, he seems to go back and forth, observing the feasts there on more than one occasion. We can’t know which is more correct, but in any case, the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, give us the sense that Jesus finally headed to Jerusalem in order to bring things to a head. Jesus knew that he would have to confront the religious establishment at its central shrine. It was one thing to carry on that ministry and to make his claims in Galilee; it was another to come to the very precincts of the temple and make his claim. Those who study these things debate as to whether Jesus was finally calling the religious establishment to account, or whether perhaps even unconsciously Jesus was calling God to show God’s self as to whether or not his ministry was indeed a ministry of God’s Spirit. Do you think he ever wondered about that? Is your Jesus such that he just plowed through his life and the events to the cross without wavering, or is there room in your Jesus for questioning and self-doubt? I wonder. Anyone who made the claims that he made, anyone who caused the waves that he caused, anyone who went to the root of things – that is, was the radical that he was – I suspect there were those times all alone when he looked into the heavens, into the starry night, and wondered. Couldn’t it be possible that he needed to go to Jerusalem to know indeed whether or not he was right? In any case, he came, and in that movement into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, a bold prophetic act itself, he comes finally into the temple precincts. We speak of “cleansing the temple,” but it wasn’t the cleansing of the temple. It was a prophetic act. It was a symbolic act. It was like all of the Old Testament prophets who would do some action to underscore their word. I don’t think that Jesus was against the temple, or against the priesthood, or against the sacrificial system. I think Jesus was a Jew - every inch of him a Jew, a believing Jew. I think it was a matter of his understanding of what it meant to be a Jew. What it meant to be a person in the covenant of God’s grace. What it means to be a son of Yahweh. But he went into the very center, the very heart, into the shrine itself. And in this symbolic act - well, it might have been nothing more than going into the parlor and turning over a table or two and causing a bit of a stir in order to get some attention, and make his proclamation. He certainly didn’t empty the whole thing out. Actually what was going on there was quite legitimate. It was absolutely necessary for the whole temple to operate. Jesus was © Grand Valley State University �By What Authority, or Who Says So? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   not attacking that which was happening. He was rather taking his message and his claim into the heart and into the center of his own tradition, into its central shrine and saying, “This is all relativized in the name of the God who is beyond all of our particular expressions of God.” Jesus was calling for repentance and renewal - a fresh grasp of what God was calling his people to be. And in so doing, he challenged the whole established system of things. That’s really quite amazing isn’t it? What he did there was to act out what he had been doing as we have seen in these past weeks: sitting at table with all kinds of people, touching the leper, not observing the fast, keeping the Sabbath as he understood God intended it to be kept – all of those things threatening to that carefully prescribed way of doing things. The religious system - he challenged it. What would we think if we who have been imbibed and nurtured and saturated with Christian faith, we who have been brought from the baptismal font, taught that Jesus is the only Saviour of the world and Christian faith is the final and last revelation of God’s truth, and the only means by which the world might be saved – what would we do if one came in and challenged those assumptions? If one started to erase the lines that we have drawn and to tear down the barriers that we have erected, dismantling the structure that we have built? Overturning those tables was what Jesus was about, concretely and symbolically. He went into the temple itself, and through that symbolic, prophetic action said, “God doesn’t need this temple. God doesn’t need this priesthood. God doesn’t need these sacrifices. All of these are means, and quite legitimate means when used properly for the mediation of the presence of God and the grace of God, but God needs none of them. And to the extent that you absolutize them, to that extent you falsify them and you go against God.” Well, as I asked, “What might we say?” Might we not also come to him, this destabilizer, and raise the obvious question: “By what authority do you do this? How dare you! Says who?” That was the issue. You see the assumption is – and I suppose that it is a natural assumption and probably we all share it – the assumption is that there is some norm, some standard, there is some kind of absolute by which things are measured and constructed and by which observances are carried out. Some kind of absolute norm. There was an assumption that the whole temple apparatus was not only a true means of access to God, but it was the one absolute. And that, apart from it, God would be quite disabled and people totally handicapped. Jesus simply called all of that into question. So by what authority? He was being questioned by those who were orthodox. To be orthodox was to have the correct opinion or the correct understanding or doctrine. There is a truth. It has been spoken. It has been revealed. It can be articulated. And it must be embraced and followed and obeyed. That is characteristic of religion in general. The orthodox line is the correct line. It is the © Grand Valley State University �By What Authority, or Who Says So? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   true line. In all of the religions that line is absolutized and eternalized. It is not seen as a historically conditioned expression of faith in God, and experience of God at one point or another, but as something above time. And now, once it is articulated, you may not think about it any more. All you do is hear it, accept it, and pass it on. Hans Küng, one of my favorite theologians, can no longer teach those who are preparing for the priesthood for the Roman Church because he has dared to challenge the orthodox line of the Roman Church. And so, if you take his courses now, you don’t get credit for them in your preparation for the priesthood. Jesus was a destabilizer of the orthodoxy of the Judaism of his day, and they crucified him. All of the Gospel writers connect the temple incident with his death. It would seem that was the friction point. That was the climactic moment. That was the time they said, “He’s got to go.” But in order to make it appear as though they were reasonable, they came to him and said, “By what authority?” They weren’t serious, and he knew it. So he said, “I’ll answer you if you will answer me. What about John the Baptist?” Of course, he had them, because they didn’t want to acknowledge that John was a prophet of God, operating in the spirit of God. But if they didn’t acknowledge John, the people would be after them. So they simply declined to answer, and he declined to answer. And that question remains unanswered, that burning question, “By what authority?” Do you ever raise that question to me? Do you ever wonder by what authority I say what I say, and do what I do? What will I say? Well, if I was in the Greek Orthodox tradition I would say, “tradition,” that whole blessed tradition back to the first century. If it is in the tradition, there’s no question. The prayers and the rituals in that tradition are repeated down through the centuries. That tradition in all of its glory and all of its splendor. If I were in the Roman Catholic tradition I would say, “the ecclesiastical authority of the Vatican Office of Teaching.” The Roman Catholic tradition, in order to steel itself against the acids of modernity relatively recently in terms of Church history, postulated the infallibility of the Pope, would you believe? And, of course, being poor Protestants in our fragmented pitiable state, coming out of the great Roman Church in the sixteenth century, we needed something upon which to base our claim, and so we’ve invented a paper pope - this inerrant, infallible Word of God. All religions need authority. All religions have a lust for certitude. All religions do their best to absolutize, to get it clear in black and white, i’s dotted, t’s crossed, no loose ends, and no questions allowed. So they said to Jesus, “How dare you? Who are you? By what authority?” Do you ever say that to me under your breath? There are congregations all over the world that would not tolerate what you tolerate. They would walk out - en masse, because they do not come to struggle in the presence of God for what is true, but to have reinforced what they already know. Religions are full of answers, and too often unwilling to ask the questions. © Grand Valley State University �By What Authority, or Who Says So? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   What would Jesus do if he came today? A world full of papal infallibility, and Ayatollah’s, and church bureaucrats and pastors like myself, televangelists, all of us who know too much. Not always right, but always certain. He would do his very best, I believe, to destabilize. I think he would try to destabilize Jewish fundamentalism, and the rabbinical office in Jerusalem that is determining who can be a Jew and who cannot be a Jew, and imposing the rigid interpretations of orthodoxy on all of those people. I think he would have a field day in the Vatican. He would suggest that it is long overdue to take away that statement “outside of the Church, no salvation,” particularly the Roman Catholic Church. And he would go to the World Council of Churches, but he wouldn’t know to whom to talk. It’s just kind of a mess. I think he would say to these three great prophetic religions that all find their basis somehow or other here, he would say, “Until I can destabilize you, until I can shatter your foundations and tear down your structure, you will all be absolutizing yourselves, and cursing each other, and excommunicating each other. You will be bringing your world, if not through nuclear holocaust, to a religious war, and a kind of terrorism. You see someone has said that Jesus, in his interpretation of the Torah, his understanding of that tradition, would have advocated a politics of compassion. Politics. Politics, the arrangement of things, the whole structure of things. Jesus came advocating a politics of compassion, the unbrokered presence of God. The unmediated presence of the grace of God in this world, and in all of creation. He opposed the whole temple establishment, which was the politics of holiness, which was a way to separation - an exclusiveness, separation, dividing of peoples. Religion has been the great divider of people. Jesus was crucified because he tore down walls and broke down barriers, because he believed that God would gather all God’s children into one. Dominic Crossan's recent book The Historical Jesus is a very careful, methodical, historical search using the very latest methods of historiography. I think it was a year ago I shared with you, from an interview with Crossan in the Christian Century, a conversation that he imagines: Jesus says, “Dominic, you’ve done a fine job. Congratulations.” And Dominic says, “Thank you, Jesus. You liked my book, and the method is good, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is Dominic. And, thank you for being honest and not diluting my claims. Now, I suppose, Dominic, now that you see that, you are willing to join me in my program. And you’ve been captured as well by my vision.” Dominic, “No, I don’t have the courage, Jesus. But I’ve put it out there, haven’t I? Is that enough?” “No, Dominic. It’s not enough.” I could continue that conversation a bit, “So, Jesus, by what authority?” “It’s what I’ve got to do. It is the Spirit of God. It is the passion of my life. It is all I know. I must be true to that which the Spirit of God tells me to do.” “Then you die.” “Then I’ll die.” Reference: © Grand Valley State University �By What Authority, or Who Says So? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   John Dominic Crossan. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/74b7b75d150ca4ae0e10afc0ec27890d.mp3 e0b26209569435c859a19b9aa8a53f45 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 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 Lent IV Series The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Scripture Text Jeremiah 7:1, Mark 11:27-28 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 1991 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930321 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-21 Title A name given to the resource By What Authority...Or Who Says So? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 21, 1993 entitled "By What Authority...Or Who Says So?", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7:1, Mark 11:27-28. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives God of Grace Non-exclusive Nature of Religious Authority Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/673e96bb3456ee833c64ac256e353a04.pdf 49f8756330fbd916d2c6440727da8e68 PDF Text Text Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious? From the Midweek Lenten series: Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering Text: Isaiah 53:1-11; Hebrews 12:1-2 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan March 17, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon The question tonight is whether suffering can be vicarious, that is, on behalf of another or in the place of another. Or, perhaps, is suffering redemptive? Is it possible that there is a suffering in the world that works for the salvation of the world? Not thereby attempting to rationalize suffering or to take away anything that I have said in the last couple of weeks about suffering, but simply recognizing that suffering is a mystery in our human experience, and asking the question: beyond the fact that in so many cases we can simply give no reason for it, beyond the fact that we want to affirm that it is not punishment and there is not a causal connection between sin and suffering as we have seen in the Book of Job, nonetheless, is it possible that sometimes suffering has a positive, saving consequence? That’s really the question. In the Old Testament, as I said, obviously in that servant poem, there was the conviction that there would be one who would suffer and thereby bring salvation to many. Through this one, who bore the sin and the grief of the many, there would come salvation. “He will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” Interpreted by the Christian Church after Good Friday and Easter as a portrait of Jesus, it is very possible that Jesus fed his own soul on these servant songs. It is very possible that when Jesus moved away from John the Baptist with his calling down of the judgment of God on humankind and announcing the end world, that Jesus, moving away from that mentality of John, found his own identity and his own ministry in these servant poems: that he was not to be the Elijah who would come and bring down fire from heaven, but that he was to be the servant who in his exemplary life and in his suffering would effect salvation. It is difficult to say. We can’t really say that. We can say that the New Testament Church certainly understood the life and the death of Jesus in those terms. It seems as though there is something, not only in Israel’s state tradition, but really in a wide spectrum of religious systems, or a wide spectrum of religious expressions that there is some sense that something has to happen to deal with © Grand Valley State University   �Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   what is wrong in the world in order to make it right. That something has to be paid. Or that someone has to pay. Now it has certainly been a part of Old Testament faith as well as some interpretations of the New Testament at the heart of things, but it’s not only biblical faith but also many other faiths as well have some kind of sacrificial system. It seems as though there is something very primal in the human person that believes that God must be appeased, that we are wrong and need to be put in the right, and that in order for that to be effected some offering has to be made. I say that’s not only in the biblical tradition; it seems to be in religion in general, and I wonder then if it is not something very primal in the human person. Is there hell to pay? For example, we read about genocide in Bosnia. Not just genocide or ethnic cleansing, but the methodical rape of Muslim women as a strategy of war in order to dehumanize, in order to impregnate with a generation of children over against whom there would be this equivocation. The systematic rape of women by an army of men as a military strategy. How does that make you feel? The last time the Balkans erupted there was a world conflagration, and then there arose a Hitler who conceived of the final solution using the Jewish people as scapegoats. Ripping families apart. The Holocaust. Six million Jews in the gas ovens. How does that make you feel? There is a report by the United Nations that has just come out which I think will probably (It’s always a little risky to call these things at this point.) reveal the complicity of the United States government, the Reagan and Bush administrations, in the financing of the El Salvadorian conflict. They supported the army over against the guerilla groups that perhaps had as much atrocity on their side. Though there were voices raised about the fact that it needed to be a political solution, nonetheless, we continued to pour in guns and tanks and helicopters, and military advisors, supplying a regime that murdered the Catholic nuns. We were part of the configuration that gunned down Archbishop Romero who had taken the side of the poor in El Salvador. We the superpower, in order to make sure that Communism did not get an inroad into Central America, we are all tied up in the atrocities, the massacres of the people in El Salvador. That report will reveal more than we will want to know. I could not help but feel repulsion, revulsion, as I saw Alexander Haig, at a Senate committee testifying about the fact that perhaps the nuns were gunned down because they tried to run a blockade! How cynical can we be? I just got a little tail end of a clip of a movie that’s being produced. James Garner is going to be in it. I don’t know what it is going to be called. It’s about the sale of the R.J. Reynolds Company and the breaking up of all its subsidiaries in a move which turned that business into a cash cow, weakened the industry, split up the conglomerate, had absolutely no concern about the future of the companies or the economy of this nation, but was a bold and blatant grasp for immediate money, capital. Apparently they are making a movie about it now. I don’t know what will happen, but it will be interesting to see. It is a story that happened two or three years ago. I had 100 shares of R.J. Reynolds, and a member of this congregation called me, my broker, who said, “It just went up 20 points. Do you © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   want to sell?” And I said, “Yes.” If I had waited another week it would have gone up another 20 points. But Gordon Van Hoeven said, “You can be a bull but you hadn’t ought to be a hog.” (Laughter) So I sold and made $2,000. Somehow or other I am also in complicity with this move in corporate America that was a blatant grasp for immediate cash. Perhaps the problem with our economy is the fact that there has been so much greedy grasping for the short term, a refusal to pour the resources into research and development, or to look at the long term and the good of the nation. Who would look for the long term good of the nation? Well, obviously there are those of you here present who could speak to these financial questions with much greater erudition. I mean simply to be thinking about our world, and I am asking you: Is there anything wrong with the world? Are there things that are so obscene, so unspeakably awful that it would be obscene to say that God can simply say, “Well, I forgive you”? Is it possible, given what I have set forth as admittedly extreme instances, but which nonetheless are part of a fabric of wrongdoing – is it possible that the only thing that needs to be done is for God to say, “You are forgiven”? I wonder if that primal thing in the gut of humankind has resulted in religions coming up with sacrifices and offerings. In Israel it became the conception of Isaiah 2, the innocent suffering on behalf of the others, the one bearing the guilt of the many. In the Christian Church, Jesus is seen as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” I think that’s perhaps all of a piece, and it is all that kind of primal sense we have that it would not be decent for God to say, “It doesn’t matter. I forgive you.” Now the problem that I have is that I don’t believe that God is a God of retribution. I don’t believe that God is going to line us up against the wall and say, “tit for tat.” It seems to me that that system would fall right back into the trap of the thing that we saw in Job, where God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. The Book of Job said, “No, that’s not so.” And what I see in Jesus also says, “No, that’s not so.” So, how does a God who would be gracious deal with that which is so terribly wrong in our world without just making light of it and pushing it aside as though it wasn’t there? How does God deal with that awful evil and still grace us and redeem us? That I think is all tied up in the Mystery of Jesus’ life and Jesus’ death. Certainly Jesus died because he lived the way he lived. And living the way he lived he ran into the Hitlers and the Bosnias, the El Salvadors and the R.J. Reynolds of this world, which means he ran into all of us. And so in that sense he did die because of the sin of the world. But I wonder, in all of the biblical metaphors that are used in trying to get a handle on this Mystery, I wonder if somehow or other in identifying with Jesus who felt abandoned, God was absorbing into God’s self all of the pain and darkness and evil and wrong. I don’t know. I just wonder if the Mystery of the cross, symbolized in the darkness and the cry of God’s forsakenness, was the identification of God with Jesus, soaking up like a sponge all of the acid and © Grand Valley State University �Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   venom and bloodshed of human existence in order that God could say to all of us, “You are forgiven.” Not cheaply because it doesn’t really matter, but in a costly fashion because somehow or other God swallowed the poison, God’s self in our brother Jesus, who drank the cup to the dregs. Somehow or other in the Christian Church there has been an understanding of Jesus as bearing our sin, as suffering in our place. I suppose the power of the Christian Gospel stems from the fact that it speaks to that primal sense within us that somehow or other all of the hell that has been suffered in this world cannot simply be shoved aside, but needs to be absorbed, which is maybe the hell of Calvary and the desolation that Jesus experienced. If that is true, then maybe we can see Jesus in the history of Israel as in his life, living out what Israel was called to be: the servant of the Lord, and it is life living it out. Living it out as that one exemplar on behalf of us all, and being faithful even unto death, thereby fulfilling what we are called to be and calling us to follow in his footsteps. Then he gathers us into himself, absorbs all of our wrongs, and all of our pain, and all of our suffering, suffering for us and not without the fruit of salvation. For God raised Him up. God said, “It is enough.” And now to the whole world and the whole human race is the glad announcement that there is forgiveness. There is grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. I don’t know, but it seems to me sometimes one can suffer on behalf of another and bring salvation. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ce5a28b2a8769b0bfa047a14a870d6be.mp3 e16a2b8460ccc4f9ae1acc9f1d02e05f 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 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 Midweek Lent Series Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent Scripture Text Isaiah 53:1-11, Hebrews 12:1-2 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930317 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-17 Title A name given to the resource Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 17, 1993 entitled "Suffering: Can It Be Vicarious?", as part of the series "Job and Jesus: The Mystery of Human Suffering, Midweek Lent", on the occasion of Midweek Lent, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 53:1-11, Hebrews 12:1-2. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness Grace Hebrew Servant Poems Nature of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4c6899833d7f9455d3961ff65abe3882.pdf c1cf06394eab657545503a8adb082c7c PDF Text Text Smashing Idols – Again and Again From the series: The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Text: Mark 3:5-6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Lent III, March 14, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon …he was grieved at their hardness of heart…conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. Mark 3:5-6 Jesus died the way he died, because he lived the way he lived. He lived the way he lived because of the faith that he had, because of his conception of God, his understanding of the nature of God, and the spirit and attitude of God. We are trying in these Lenten weeks to discern the faith of Jesus - Jesus as a believing person in the midst of this world. Because our concrete actions and our attitudes, our behavior, really finally stem from what we believe, deep down. And if we can get to the faith of Jesus, maybe we’ll understand something of the life of Jesus. But we might not want to do that. Because if we ever discovered it and ever truly followed it, we might end up as Jesus ended up, of course – crucified. He didn’t die in bed, remember. He was put to death. We are trying to see that larger canvas which reveals the faith that he had, leading to the life that he lived, bringing him to the death that he experienced. We are able to do that better today than probably any time in the last nearly 2000 years. It’s not easy to find a historical Jesus. There are volumes and volumes written about the quest for the historical Jesus. Particularly in the 18th century when the whole science of history arose, there was a great quest to find the Jesus of the Gospels. The historical methods that were used and the way the documents of the Gospels were treated led to a blind alley, a dead end. And then for a time the possibility of discovering anything about the historical Jesus was just given up. All we had was the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of the New Testament Church. We couldn’t get back to history itself. The reason it’s not easy to get back to history is because you are talking about Gospel documents which were already many decades removed from the life of Jesus. No one followed Jesus around with a stenographer’s pad. And then of the manuscripts we have which record the early Gospel accounts, already removed by two or three decades or more from the event, the best manuscripts are out © Grand Valley State University   �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 2   another century or so (the earliest around 200 CE). And so, by that time, there was a lot of interpreting and a lot of shaping, because it was a very polemical period, it was a controversial period, and so it is not easy to find the historical Jesus. But I am saying to you that today we may have a better chance of getting some sense of the historical Jesus, the believing man, the Jew in the Judaism of his time, than has been true to this point. There are a number of recent studies out right now. One of the most significant is by John Dominic Crossan, a Roman Catholic scholar, who has written The Historical Jesus, a Story of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. It’s an excellent, scholarly work. Fascinating book. Not the kind of book you read for devotions for Lent. It’s a scholarly treatment. It assumes a lot of background. But there is kind of a neat image he uses for Jesus in his concrete life. He speaks about Jesus as “proclaiming the unbrokered presence of God.” The “unbrokered presence of God,” proclaimed by Jesus meant God’s presence, God’s nearness, God’s accessibility to anyone and everyone, everywhere, at all times was proclaimed. The “unbrokered presence of God.” You know what brokers are? They are people who don’t own anything, and don’t do anything, produce anything, they just make money on other people who do. (That’s supposed to be funny!) (Laughter) But I am glad there are brokers. I love brokers. Don’t leave, brokers, I’m going to redeem you yet. Because you see there are a lot of things that I want to do in my life and I don’t know how to do them. You know - detailed paper work, contracts, and knowledge I don’t have. But I want to get this thing effected, so what do I do? I call my broker. My broker does it for me. For a fee. But, it’s worth it. I get it off my back. Details I don’t have to worry about, get the job done, pay a little fee. I would rather pay a few bucks and get the job done for me. That’s what brokers do. Crossan says that Jesus “proclaimed the unbrokered presence of God.” The “unbrokered presence of God.” In other words, you don’t need me as a broker of religion. And as an ecclesiastical institution, you don’t need Christ Community. And we don’t need the Reformed Church in America. And we don’t even need all of the structures of the whole Christian Church because, according to Jesus, God’s presence is immediate - available - accessible. The “unbrokered presence of God!” Well, if he’s right, I am out of business. I mean, I work hard. You don’t really want to read all of the theology I do, do you? Do you want to worry yourself about it? Do you want to have miserable Saturday nights like I do? No! You would rather go out for dinner. Have a nice evening. Get up on Sunday morning, yawn, stretch, come here. And I do it for you. I work hard, and I earn my fee. But now, here comes Jesus, and he says, “All that isn’t necessary, folks. You really don’t need him.” Well, I can understand why they killed him. (Laughter) I am serious. That’s really what was going on. Because if you were a part of the religious establishment, if you were a part of the temple and the priesthood, and the sacrificial system, and the holy days, and all of that, plus everybody that got to © Grand Valley State University �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 3   set up a hotdog stand outside the temple on special days and pay the fee for that. I mean, it was good for business! It was quite an institution! And anybody that threatens institutions like that is touching the economic life, and the social life, and the religious life of the community. And anybody who comes in with that kind of iconoclastic plan is probably going to pay for it with his life if he is making any kind of inroads at all. In the passage we read, if we had started earlier in the second chapter, about Jesus being in a house. You can’t get in the door, so some desperate friends of a paralyzed man chop a hole in the ceiling and they let their friend down, right in front of Jesus. He says, “Your sins are forgiven!” And they said, “Who is this - to make that kind of a claim? Only God can forgive sins.” He said to himself, “Well, you don’t think I can do that? Which is easier, to say that, or to actually make the man walk? Man, stand up.” The man stood up. But, you see, in the traditional establishment of things, there was a connection between sin and sickness, and you needed the whole priesthood, the whole mediation of the religious institution in order to provide the way by which sins could be repented of and forgiveness could be pronounced, and healing could be effected. But if you bypass that by taking a lame man into your presence and say, “Your sins are forgiven,” that undercuts the whole decent and orderly structure of things. They came to him and they said, “Your disciples don’t fast. Why don’t they fast?” Jesus played fast and loose with “fast.” He said, “They can’t fast when the bridegroom is there.” Because when you have a wedding reception, you don’t fast. At a wedding reception, you toast the bride and the groom, and you dance, and you have a wonderful party. Jesus was saying, “My presence is the presence of the Kingdom. God’s presence doesn’t need to be mediated here. And the time of the “unbrokered presence of God” here at this time, is not a time for fasting. There are not some little religious practices that you have to do, to say, “Pardon me, I am having a wonderful time, but I am going to take time off in order to do these little religious things.” Jesus said, “For goodness sakes, stay at the wedding reception.” And then, of course, there are the two instances in the third chapter about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is probably the finest gift that Judaism has given to the world. The gift of the day of rest, ceasing from labor, ceasing from figuring, planning, conspiring. Ceasing from everything, and simply being for 24 hours the presence of God. Great gift! And I am sure Jesus observed Sabbath. We have lost Sabbath. We don’t keep Sabbath any more - to our loss. But, even such a great gift as Sabbath can become a bondage, and it can become a barrier to doing what one needs to. In the case of the disciples, it was a humane thing to feed people. There are not some religious rules that need to be followed. If someone is hungry, for goodness sakes, eat! And in terms of the healing of the man with the withered hand, Jesus was angry. He was angry at their hardness of © Grand Valley State University �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 4   heart. Paradoxically, religion can make people so hard of heart, hard of heart in the execution of their religious duties. Jesus said, “For God’s sake, forget it!” “Man, come here. Stretch out your hand.” He said, “Is it right to do good or ill on the Sabbath?” Certainly God is into doing good, into healing, into giving life. Well, the sixth verse of that third chapter says that they went out and began to conspire to kill him. Because those are just examples. Mark marshals them in one after another, in order to show that the whole presence of Jesus was a challenge to the religious establishment. It is not a case of where the Jews were bad people or that the New Testament gives them such a bad rap, but they were just people like us. They were simply the prisoners of a traditional religious pattern of things. They were caught up in the structure of the institution, and Jesus challenged the institution at its most basic level. He spoke of the “unbrokered presence” of God. He said, “You don’t need an institution. You don’t need a temple. You don’t need the priesthood. You don’t need me. I don’t have a franchise on the presence of God. God is such that God is available for everyone and anyone, every time, any time, everywhere.” Well, in saying so, he relativized the importance of the religious institutions and the religious functionaries. And so they killed him. I don’t really think though that Jesus was against religion in its institutionalized forms. I suppose Jesus knew what all of us know. Spirit always needs form. There have always been institutional forms, institutional expressions that have been the particularization and the concretization of the religious motivation, the religious quest. And, I think, that’s legitimate, necessary and good - until it becomes an end in itself and becomes a barrier to the free flow of the Spirit of God, and the love and grace of God in the world, as so often has been the case. You say, “Well, Jesus mediating the unbrokered presence of God to anyone, anywhere, any time – What about all of the statements of the New Testament that say things like ‘No one comes to the Father but by me,’ and ‘Jesus Christ the only mediator between God and humankind,’ and all that?” Well, I’ll tell you about all that in the New Testament. Do you know what the New Testament is? It is a collection of the documents of the early Christian Church. Now think with me for just a minute. What do you have in the New Testament? Do you have some objective, unbiased statement of timeless and eternal truth? No. You have in the New Testament a polemical document of an early community, which was very fragile, very vulnerable, weak, fragile, fledgling, insecure. It was trying to find its own identity over against this massive institution of Jewish religion out of which it comes. Jesus destabilized the temple. Jesus destabilized the priesthood. Jesus destabilized the whole Jewish system without, I think, intending to be anything else than a good Jew. But he destabilized it. And there were those who, after his death, believed he was with them still. They experienced his presence. And so unexpectedly, who would have believed that this rag-tag community might grow and become like a spreading flame through the Roman Empire? But in those © Grand Valley State University �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 5   early decades they were seeking to find their identity over against this massive institution from which they had derived. They didn’t know if they were Jews or what. They still went to the temple. They still said their prayers. They still had their feast days. They were also followers of Jesus, thinking he was the Messiah. They were really in a transition period. They were about to jell, but they weren’t really yet what they were going to become. They didn’t know where they were going. But one thing they knew is that Jesus had been crucified by this religious institution and, over against that institution and its legalism, and its moralism and its oppressive tyranny, its domination of people, this community of followers of Jesus were saying, “No! Jesus is the Way.” It is really no wonder that the scribes and Pharisees come off pretty poorly here. You would almost think that they were some kind of demonic folk when, as a matter of fact, they were people just like us. And so, in this attempt to bear witness to their absolute conviction that Jesus was God’s presence here and that Jesus was indeed the way, the truth and the life, they put all their eggs in that basket, and these documents aren’t at all balanced objective accounts of what was, but they are the faith-ful witness of those who found everything focused in Jesus. And so, within a relatively short time, this infant community with all its vulnerability and fragility took on strength, numbers, power, form, structure. This infant Christian community, in the name of Jesus who destabilized the whole Jewish institution, found its sea legs and put stabilizers out and formed an institution over against Judaism, another brokerage house of religion, Christianity, just as much a brokerage house of religion as Judaism, and no more legitimate. By the year 312 CE, the Emperor Constantine made the Christian movement the established religion of the Roman Empire, an amazing success. And it was a fatal hour because now the state co-opted the Church, and the altar and the throne became one, coupling with faith the powers of state and religion to dominate people and control masses. Christianity had arrived in the world and it became exactly what Jesus had tried to smash in his own Judaism. So now we have not only Judaism, we’ve got another brokerage house. Merrill Lynch has got a real Paine ‘n Webber. (Laughter) Each one claiming to have the absolute truth. Each one claiming to have the only way. Each ostracizing the other and excommunicating the other. Each trying to penetrate the other side and bring it over and make it like itself. It is the tragic story of religion throughout 2000 years, and it had gone on, of course, before that. So, you see, it just may be that if Jesus came back now and looked at the Christian Church, he would shake his head and say, “I thought that’s what I died to prevent.” I was in a discussion group this week where I mentioned the fact that I grew up thinking that the whole globe was going to be Christianized, that there was going to be world evangelization – everybody would become Christian and then Jesus would come again. I don’t believe that any more. It could happen. You never say © Grand Valley State University �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 6   never in history, but I don’t see the world becoming Christian. I see the resurgence of the great religions of the world and the absolute necessity of the religions beginning to talk to one another, because if we don’t the prophetic historical religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - are going to blow up the globe. Waco, Texas, the New York Trade Center, the killing outside the abortion clinic in the Panhandle of Florida – it’s all in the name of God, my friends. The historical religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - they are called prophetic religions, and someone in the discussion group said to me, “Well, religion needs to be institutionalized.” They said, “Christ Community is an institution.” I said, “Yeah, tell me about it, I know.” They said, “What do you see? What do you see?” I said, “I don’t know. But I do believe this, that the Christian Church, as it is currently organized into three great branches and the branch of which we are a part is fragmentized into hundreds of small little competing companies, brokerage houses.” They said, “We are all pouring energy into the survival of those institutions while the world is about to be blown up.” And, it seems to me what we need to do is align new alliances and new coalitions - the old ones aren’t working. And then someone told me a rumor that was circulating in Catholic circles. It was only a rumor he said, but he has some connections that make me think that there might be something to it. He said that the word out of Rome is that the present pope is rather seriously ill. I hope that’s not true, because I don’t wish him any ill, but certainly the present pope is to me the epitome of the barrier and blockage of what needs to happen in our world in terms of movement forward on a whole variety of issues. But, nonetheless, maybe he is ill. I don’t know. But, in Africa there is a black Cardinal who can speak Arabic and who has connections to Israel, who is being spoken about as the next Pope. And I began to dream. I began to think. You know, three years ago we would have said that the east-west ideological standoff was something that was seen to go on and on, and the arms race and the nuclear threat, and then suddenly out of the blue, to the amazement of the whole world, the candles were lighted and prayers were said, and the walls tumbled down and Eastern Europe began to unravel. And, of course, that creates its own set of problems but, nonetheless, there is more freedom and more potential for democratic humane existence in the world than we would have thought possible just three or four years ago. Things can happen. History is open. History is dynamic, and the Spirit of God moves through structures and sometimes structures that seem impregnable get blasted. Sometimes something happens and the kind of accommodation with all kinds of demonic compromise gets blown sky high and there is newness, and the new wine of the kingdom begins to flow. And I thought to myself, what would happen if there appeared on the scene someone with the charisma of a Jesus and the spirit of God who could say to the Christian religion, “Unwrap yourself. Go back to your founder. Go back to Jesus. Undo your trinity. Undo your Christology. Undo your elaborate theories of the © Grand Valley State University �Smashing Idols Again and Again Richard A. Rhem Page 7   atonement. Go back to Jesus whom you rejected and see him as an advocate of the best of your covenant religion.” One who would say to Islam, “Look into the face of Jesus and see if Jesus is not really what you are all about.” You know my dream was that Jesus could become the Savior of the world in a way that I would never have dreamed. Jesus will not become the Savior of the world as the Christ, the exalted Christ of the Christian religion. But Jesus might just become the Savior of the world in the alchemy of God’s grace by the smashing of the respective religions in order that the truncated images of God represented in each one of them might unite to reflect that one true God, might somehow or other shine through the broken fragments into a newness and freshness that we have not yet dared to dream of. Wouldn’t that be something? I wonder if we would dare give up our Christianity for a world-saving fresh vision of the true and eternal God whose “unbrokered presence” would embrace one and all. You know when I went out to Brandeis last fall and I told you what I was going to suggest they consider: what might have happened if the Jews had not rejected Jesus; the Christians, Mohammed; the Romans, the Greek Orthodox, and you clapped. You applauded. I believe you are like people all over the world, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I believe people all over the world like you, good people, spiritually hungry people, sincere people, morally serious people would just love for all the institutional trappings to get out of the way and that people would soften in order that you could all embrace your neighbors and we could all worship before the one God who was full of grace. It will take some idol smashing. Got your hammer ready? © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/363eda46c609f75c3ae851a70d0400be.mp3 d9705aae12a8714835acfaa79feb51df 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 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 Lent III Series The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God Scripture Text Mark 3:5-6 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930314 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-03-14 Title A name given to the resource Smashing Idols - Again and Again Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 Sound Text 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 March 14, 1993 entitled "Smashing Idols - Again and Again", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 3:5-6. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Followers of Jesus Inclusive Nature of Religion Unbrokered Presence of God