5 24 1045 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/68ee2e65731d37e0e16ad9e281561428.mp3 ef4807d5b7579064ef2f63bd243976e0 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 XXIII Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text Isaiah 49:15, Matthew 7:10-11 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-0-19971026 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-10-26 Title A name given to the resource Re-Imagining God: Why? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 26, 1997 entitled "Re-Imagining God: Why?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 49:15, Matthew 7:10-11. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8e9b8fcdf010c2da6c2bf5a32f3eae01.mp3 8f27b5b4482d542105d169d776946047 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 XXI Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text Genesis 1:1, Psalm 139:7, Acts 17:28 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-0-19971012 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-10-12 Title A name given to the resource The God We Never Knew Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 12, 1997 entitled "The God We Never Knew", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XXI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:1, Psalm 139:7, Acts 17:28. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/061f039f53e1b1909c7a957f5f2e39d8.pdf ab7384b8853b936c8ef9c57ad3f7e62e PDF Text Text A Simpler Way From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time Text: John 4:23-24 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan October 5, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon The writer of the fourth Gospel tells us explicitly that he was very intentional in the creation of the Gospel he wrote: John 20:30-31 - a portrait painted, a story told, that you might believe that Jesus was the Messiah, thereby finding life through his name. This one, the author believed, came from God and was the embodiment in human form of God’s being, purpose, and grace that, through God’s Spirit, possessed him and filled him. The God Who in the beginning breathed the creative process into being was now breathing life in a new dimension in and through this one, Jesus - Jesus was anointed with God’s Spirit. The Hebrew word for that anointing was Messiah; the Greek word, Christ. John was writing at a time of great turmoil, tension and ferment in the Jewish community. The center of Israel’s life and worship - the symbol of God’s presence in their midst – had been destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman occupying power. How now would they maintain their peoplehood, their identity as God’s chosen ones? The dominant group emerging was the Pharisaic party - to become the group that eventually determined the Judaism of the future, the Rabbinic group ensuring that Judaism would be a people of the Book, the sacred text. But, in the last decades of the first century, the movement stemming from Jesus was a viable contender. The followers of this crucified one whom his followers experienced as living and present to them made up a significant segment of the population. But they had reached out beyond the narrow confines of the Jewish community; they had, in quite revolutionary fashion, formed a Jesus community among the Samaritans with whom the Jews lived in great hostility and even among the Gentiles - that is, with non-Jews. At least in part, the fourth Gospel was written to root this outward reaching of the very early movement in the understanding and ministry of Jesus himself. © Grand Valley State University   �A Simpler Way Richard A. Rhem Page 2   The reason is obvious: There were strong differences in the Jesus movement that in its early stages was exclusively Jewish. There were Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah and the End was near, the reign of God approaching, but who failed to see the reason for reaching out beyond their own. And there were others - think of Stephen and of Paul who felt the call to bring the story of God’s grace in Jesus to the nations. In other words, there were advocates of a purely Jewish Jesus community and there were advocates of a universal mission. I think that is the rationale by which the Gospel writer chose the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well who was encountered by Jesus. I will not retell the story; suffice it to say that Jesus chooses to go from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north by the direct route which takes him through Samaria, a hostile territory peopled by those the Jews considered alien, whose worship the Jews considered false, even though the Samaritans stemming from the ten Northern Tribes of Israel shared the Mosaic heritage, following the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture. It is in Samaria at the place of the ancient well of Jacob that Jesus engages a Samaritan woman in conversation. He asks for a drink of water from the well, only to offer her living water. The writer’s literary technique is to reveal the soul thirst of this woman for the truth. The conversation issues in a question that divided the Jews and Samaritans: the Samaritans claimed their Mt. Gerizim was the place of true worship, pre-dating the establishment of Jerusalem later by David, while the Jews, of course, contended it was at Jerusalem that God caused the Holy Name, or the Presence, to dwell. This allows the Gospel writer to put Jesus on the side of those who saw the universal implications of Jesus’ ministry "Woman," he says, "the hour is coming and now is when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Without attempting to give an in-depth explanation of that response, it must be obvious on the surface that Jesus here points to a new situation and a new manner of worship and devotion. He does not say worship at Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem had never been true worship, or that God could not be worshiped at one place or the other. He does, however, relativize the question of place which would represent the whole apparatus of the cultic forms used in the worship of the respective communities. © Grand Valley State University �A Simpler Way Richard A. Rhem Page 3   We have come to a moment in the practice of religious worship, Jesus contends, according to this account, when place and all the external accouterments that go with it become matters of indifference. The external forms of worship are intended to be and can be means by which, through which, the human spirit comes into communion with the divine Spirit the liturgy, the ritual action, the very physical space designated for the worship of God, can be vehicles of grace through which the communion with God is affected. The setting and the manner of our worship is not a matter of indifference to be tended to in a slovenly way. But they are the triggers only to bring us to awareness of the Holy, of that transcendent source of our being by whose grace we live and move and have our being. It has been characteristic of Christian preaching to set Jesus and thus Christianity off from Judaism as a spiritual religion over against a religion of outward observance. This is a distortion and it misses the point. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was not saying Judaism as a religion was being superseded, to be replaced now by Christianity. Jesus was pointing to the nature of true worship and the temptation of all religious worship to become an outward form lacking inward transforming power. The result of this encounter is not Christianity - Jewish - 1 and Samaritan devotion - 0. Worship that is inwardly aware of the gracious ground of our being is present in many religious traditions. Formalism, devoid of Spirit, is to be found, as well, in all forms of religious devotion, Christianity included. But, that in no way detracts from the stunning breakthrough that Jesus represented in his life and teaching. Jesus saw the temptation of the religious institution to make itself exclusive and absolute and he broke through the false barriers that purported to demarcate the only true way. Jesus saw the demonic barriers that walled people off from one another, defining those who were in and those who were out, the accepted ones and the rejected ones. He conversed with a Samaritan. Jesus saw the oppression and domination of women by men who considered women of a lesser subhuman class. In a society where a man prayed daily thanking God he was not born a woman, Jesus conversed with a woman, treating her with respect and dignity and human decency. Jesus saw the restrictive limitations of religious and cultural patterns and dared to defy them, to shatter them and to declare by word and action a new day, a © Grand Valley State University �A Simpler Way Richard A. Rhem Page 4   movement toward a fuller humanization of society. And Jesus did it not because it was in the cultural air, but because he believed that is the way God intended it. God is Spirit. God must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Jesus refused to bow to social custom or religious regulation when those violated the reality of the Spirit. Traditional definitions, conventional wisdom, social mores, cultural patterns - all of that, for Jesus, needed constantly to be examined, reformed, transformed in the light of the spiritual reality that comes from inward awareness and attentiveness. There are times of cultural crisis when old ways are challenged and foundations crumble. We are in such a time; it has been a long time building - perhaps since the 15th century, or certainly since the 18th. It is my contention that the church has not yet faced the implications of the modern period. The structure of faith and biblical understanding in which I was nurtured and trained and that has shaped the Christian tradition, Protestant and Catholic, is largely the product of the postReformation, a 17th-century paradigm of biblical faith impacted very little by the explosion of knowledge in the modern world. The Christian tradition from which we stem still speaks in terms of an absolute truth it claims to possess and an exclusive truth to which it must bring the world, denying the salvific value of all other traditions. I included a couple of paragraphs from Gordon Kaufman’s God, Mystery, Diversity as an alternative to the absolutism and exclusivism claims of Christian orthodoxy. I think what Kaufman is contending is very much in the spirit of what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman The hour is come when the model can no longer be pronouncement of our way as the only way. Rather, the time has come when the Spirit is calling us to break down the barriers we have erected. Is it not ironic that the one who threw down the exclusionary barriers that divided people and defined the truth is, in the Christian church, made the absolute revealer of God and the exclusive source of the grace of God? The disciples returned from buying food to find Jesus in conversation with a Samaritan, and a woman at that, but they dared not mention it. Instead, they said, "Eat." But, Jesus wasn’t hungry any longer. The conversation triggered in him the realization of the deep hunger in the hearts of humankind. He was a man obsessed with his sense of calling to do God’s work. "Look around you," he said. "Don’t you see the spiritual hunger ... see how the fields are ripe for harvesting?" © Grand Valley State University �A Simpler Way Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Don’t you see it? The mainline churches are limping badly and the world is spiritually starved. The Promisekeepers have tapped into this spiritual hunger, but I don’t think the answer lies in what is an attempt to return to yesterday with a strong dose of emotion. The megachurches are flourishing, but there is no attempt to re-think the faith in the modern world. Jesus said neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem - old forms can’t bear the weight of truth for our world. The old institutional alignments are dead - the old orthodoxy cannot prevail. But, God is God. There is yet living water flowing to quench the thirst and satisfy the hunger of the soul - if only we would let go, wait with openness and awareness to hear and sense what the Spirit is saying to us. If only we would give up our certainties and wait in the darkness, trusting that the living God will show us wonders of which we’ve not yet dreamed. Reference: Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World. Fortress Press, 1996. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c657977270b6d84ea29123f64fdadf45.mp3 63a277b14df03c33cbf65eb7249af756 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 XX Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text John 4:23-24 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World, 1996 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-0-19971005 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-10-05 Title A name given to the resource A Simpler Way Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 October 5, 1997 entitled "A Simpler Way", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 4:23-24. Awareness Follower of Jesus Inclusive Nature of Religion Spirit https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e8fe37a112257c26aace32ba40fc3346.pdf d7b3417b7cd2257d01e14bb1764cc202 PDF Text Text Religion: Has It a Future? From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time Scripture: Romans 7:14-25; Mark 8:11-21 Dr. Duncan Littlefair Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan September 28, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon (Mr. Rhem) It is for me a very great pleasure and privilege to introduce to the congregation of Christ Community and our friends visiting with us today the Rev. Dr. Duncan Littlefair. My friendship with Dr. Littlefair goes back over a couple of years through one of those wonderful providences when a friend of his became a friend of mine, and we found ourselves on Tuesdays enjoying table fellowship and absolutely wonderful conversation. We meet on Tuesdays religiously. During the past couple of years in which we have been through some difficult waters, it has been a source of great encouragement to me to come to know Dr. Littlefair. His strength and his vision have steeled my purpose. As I said to the 8:30 congregation, when I reflected at the lunch table about the things we were dealing with, Dr. Littlefair told me that they had handled that 100 years ago at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids and, when I came with some brave new insight, I found out that he had published it in a primer on religion 50 years ago. I don’t know why some of us are so Johnny-come-lately, slow to learn, if not slow to speak. As we gathered around that lunch table, it was obvious to me that there was fire in the belly, there was a sermon brewing, ready to be delivered, and so I broached the subject, asking Dr. Littlefair if he would be our guest at Christ Community. He has been in our worship and warmly affirmed us, but he goes a step further in giving us the gift this morning of his presence in this pulpit. I want to say to you very sincerely that I am deeply moved and greatly appreciative of his presence here this morning. Welcome, Dr. Duncan Littlefair. (Dr. Littlefair) You cannot be human without being religious. You may doubt that in the course of my presentation to you this morning, but I want it to be in your mind. You cannot be human without being religious. Now, there are very many levels of humanity, and there are equally many levels of religion. You can have a profound religion. You can have a trivial religion. You © Grand Valley State University   �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   can have an intellectual understanding religion. You can have an ignorant religion. You can have a religion that is equal to the best of knowledge, or you can have a religion that is full of superstition, but religious you must be if you’re going to be human. Or, I like it better the other way, to be human means to be religious. There has never, ever been a people anywhere in the history of this globe (and that history goes back a long, long way now; we’ve extended it enormously), never any people without a religion. Isn’t it, then, more than just a little absurd that any one religion should claim that it is the only way? If you stop to think about it, can you imagine anything more absurd than for one religious people to proclaim that its way of reverencing and worshiping this Creative Source that makes us is the only way? And Christians have done that all these centuries. They’re still doing it! Criticizing this church because it moves out to the possibility - that’s all you’re doing - move out to the possibility that there are other ways. I cannot contain myself when I hear such stupidity and prejudice as to assume that there is no other way but your own. And as a result, Muslim faith grew out of Christianity and Judaism, you know. Of course you know. And, Islam faith claims that it’s the only valid way and scorns the Christian, or the Christian scorns the Muslim and the Buddhist. And I’ve been prophesying for some ten years and I think that it will come to be that any crisis that occurs in this world will be a crisis between these two faiths proclaiming themselves to be absolute and the only way. And they are meeting. As Colette made mention in her prayer, they are meeting across the world and they are fighting each other. They will engage in mortal conflict. The tenth and eleventh centuries all over again, and this is the twentieth, moving into the twenty-first. I know of no institution in the world that is as riddled and ridden by superstition as religion. Now, I want to make the definition of religion. I have said that it was a universal product, that there was never a person or a people without it, never a people, and that’s historically true, archeologically, anthropologically true, but I’m going to define religion for you and follow my definition in the course of my discussion because it doesn’t run counter to what I’ve said, it’s a definition and a description of it. Religion is to care. That’s all. To care. Care about what? I think anything. Anything. We start off with our children. We encourage their caring on their level, whatever it is. Care for money? Fine. Then it will be your religion. It is the religion of many people. Stupid. Trivial, insubstantial, insufficient. But, it can be a religion. But, if we start out with religion as caring, see, then you come to a place like this, this beautiful place, and you join yourself together with other people like you, beautiful congregation in this building. I’ve been here, I’ve seen you and felt you. You come to a place like this, you see, to deepen your caring. To illumine your caring. Enlighten it. Make it more profound. Make it more impressive and make a greater impact with it on yourself, and let the chips fall where they may, because you have a society of persons who care, you’ll have a caring society. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Now, I want to mention that I think we are in a cultural crisis in the world. A cultural crisis is not something that occurs in a lifetime, not a few years or months, you know. It’s a long, long thing. Our cultural crisis has been brewing for 350 years, maybe 400, we don’t argue about 50 or 100 years in this sort of thing. It started with the beginning of the scientific approach to knowledge. Not until the 1500s, Galileo the middle of the 16th century, 1500s, the beginning of the scientific approach to the world, not to go on here say, not to go on folklore, not to go on imagination, not to go on superstition, not to go on campfire ideas, but to begin to probe the nature of the world to see what it’s like, what it’s truly like. Not until the middle of the 16th century. It wasn’t until the middle of it the 17th century, which Whitehead calls the century of genius, that we even discovered the circulation of the blood. And that was the same century that Newton discovered the nature of gravity. And since then we’ve been growing so wonderfully in our ideas and appreciations so that now, after 350 years, it’s beginning to take account. It hasn’t taken hold yet. People feel it, but intellectually it’s not clear. And even our leaders are not talking about it enough because it’s a frightening thing and they don’t want to offend people. They don’t want to frighten them, but they are frightened. The people of the western hemisphere are frightened, and rightly so, because we’re discovering that we live in a world that can brush us aside like any of the thousands of species that have been brushed aside, failed and lost out in the past, that can happen to us, too. We’re not that long established, you know. I like to point out that the human life has been here maybe a million years and the dinosaurs were here 100 million years. Now, if you understand the nature of scientific progression of knowledge and facts, then that has to be significant to you. And the cultural crisis is that we have to come to the conclusion that things are in our hands. Oh, I know that I violate most of the ritual that goes on around, even in this enlightened church, and some of the ritual that goes on in my church, but we have to come to the conclusion that we are on our own in this world! I don’t know how any intelligent person could avoid coming to that conclusion, I just do not understand it. There is to be no divine intervention! There is no miraculous intercession. Hasn’t been. Is not now, and never will be. I like the little story in the New Testament, which is a very important book to me, of Jesus in the midst of a circus, a parade. The man stood up in a tree so that he could participate in it, and Jesus said, "Come on down. Come on down, Zaccheaus, and get out of that tree. We’ve got things to do." We’ve got things to do. Did you hear Colette’s prayer? I have difficulty hearing behind there, but I heard it. We have to save our environment. We have to save the air. We have to save the water and make it open and accessible for quality and human living. We have to save our woods. We have to deal with our hatreds, with our tribal loyalties and devotions. We have to deal with our selfishness. We have to deal with our ignorance. We have to deal with our hatred, which leads people to fight against each other, killing neighbors year after year. No matter what we do, we cannot © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   stop it. This is a cultural crisis and religion is so far showing its awareness of it by its frantic, absolutely frantic retreat into what I call "warehouse religion," emotional binges without the slightest degree of interest in pursuing knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Just emotional expression. Now I want to say, after having indicated that the cultural crisis is hinged on knowledge, that this kind of knowledge has really nothing to do with religion. I have a principle that I introduced to the men at lunch and I jokingly call it "The Littlefair Principle." I thought I might as well, nobody else has said it. To the degree that any religion depends upon the repudiation of knowledge and truth and facts, it is to that degree of dependence spiritually ignorant, illiterate, and unworthy. Now, the alternative: To the degree that any religion is founded upon and dependent upon knowledge of the world, it is to that degree, spiritually invalid. I have not excluded religion, now, because religion is to care. But, if your caring involves you repudiating the best and most established knowledge, it’s obviously unworthy, too trivial for any people to adhere to. But, if you make a religion out of the facts, you’re missing the whole point of a religion, which is to care. Now, we do not allow the religionists to tell us what the facts are. That would be ridiculous. They’re not trained to do it, obviously, are they? You want to know about the earth, what it’s made of? You want to know its structure, you go to the geologist, don’t you? They know. They have learned. They’ve applied the scientific method. They have irrefutable facts, not some dream that arose around a campfire about what the nature of the earth was. No way. You want to know about the human body? You go to a biologist. And let me tell you that I’ve heard from the biologists that if you don’t know the biology of the last 20 years, you’re ignorant, biologically speaking, so great has been the advance and growth and knowledge of the body. But, you don’t ask a religionist about the nature of the body. You want to know about the structure of things like this? And the rocks and some trees? You don’t go to the geologist, you go to the physicist and the chemist. He’ll tell you. You want to know about the history of life on this planet? You go to the anthropologist. They’re the ones who have been doing the studying on this thing, and they know. They’re not guessing, they’re not hoping. They have facts, and those facts are important for anybody trying to live the modern world so that you can make your caring an intelligent thing. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   One other point: We’re on the stage of the democratization of religion. I’ve been wondering about this for some time and it suddenly occurred to me that what I’ve been after all these years in my ministry is the democratization of religion. Isn’t it amazing that we make God a monarch? Have you thought about that? We make God a monarch. We don’t believe in monarchies! Goodness sakes, we abolished them long, long ago! Even Japan. Certainly the monarchy in England, Britain, the one outstanding one is just decorative, it’s not the essence of the British Republic. We don’t talk about monarchs, but we make God to be sitting on a throne. We have people supplicating Him, fawning over Him, flattering Him. Most of our prayers are forms of flattery equivalent to a courtier and an emperor. God is not Louis XIV. Surely that ought to be clear to us. Degradation. Can you see Jesus on a throne? Can you really see that? You grew up thinking about it, having it given to you, and maybe you’re hearing it as adults, too - can you see Jesus on a throne? The man who put his arms, figuratively, around a prostitute and made her his best friend - that’s an emperor? My God and I walk through the fields together, we laugh and talk as good friends should and do. Our voices ring with laughter. My God and I walk through the fields together. You have your choice. Jesus talked about God as a father, and I assume the best of fathers is like a friend that you laugh and talk with and walk through the fields together. Now, I want very briefly to go to describe something more about religion as caring. I want to define Spirit for you, and I’ll be back next week, I trust, to talk some more about it. But, I want to define the Spirit. It just doesn’t get defined. I do a lot of philosophical reading and it just doesn’t get defined, and I’d like you to take it home and think with it, about it, and put it together with my notion that religion is to care. Spirit is to feel while you are aware. Now, listen to this - it’s not a "thing," almost anyone surely knows with their fourth-grade mind that it’s not a "thing." It’s not something that resides in the body and comes out. We’ve thought that for centuries. It’s too late for that kind of thinking. We’ve got things to do. The Spirit is a part of the body and so much it is a product of the body, and is never found apart from the body. No Spirit apart from the body. And I gave it the simple definition and I defy you to exhaust it. You or the geologist or biologist or anthropologist or any physicist or chemist - it’s a feeling awareness. Doesn’t sound like very much, but it’s the essence of being human. We’re not very aware, you know. I challenge you to go back over your drive here this morning to come to church - what do you remember of it? What were you aware of when you were driving? Oh, if something happens, you’d see it, if a red light came on or some child crossed the street, or somebody was driving - you’d see that and react to that, I know. Squirrels do that. But, what do you feel? What © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   are you aware of? Most of us live in a sleep, really almost 100% sleep. You can carry on business jobs just by being animal responsive. But, to be feelingly aware. Do you see this beautiful hanging? Maybe you notice that it’s red or black or white, but are you aware of it? Are you aware of that beautiful brick wall that you have? It’s so fascinating to me. I’ve spent my ministry in a church with the most magnificent stained glass windows in America. I find this wall just a total fascination. I come in and I sit there and I look at it and I think about it. What are you aware of? Are you aware of the grass? I’ve been aware this whole season long of leaves. I can’t believe the wonder of a leaf. And then of the trees - they stagger me! I cannot comprehend them. And I sit and look and I walk and look and I feel. The grass - yes. Leaf? - yes. Tree? - yes. Anything. How about a person? Are you aware of the person that you’re living with? Or is it like your awareness of driving to church? Women are particularly alert to this. Do you see the face? Do you see the concern? Do you see the agony? Do you see the depression? "You have eyes," said Jesus, "and you don’t see." Mr. Rhem read that this morning. It’s the most profound spiritual observation. "You have ears, but you don’t hear. You have hearts and you don’t understand. Woe is the person." To feel, to be aware of anything - anything! This is God’s world. I hear Him pass in the rustling grass, I see Him everywhere. My listening ears all nature sings. Feeling awareness. And then you treasure it. It’s no use bothering people about Sunday religion, but, of course, true, it’s wonderful to have it, that kind of Sunday following a custom, routine - it’s not enough! If you’re going to treasure your spirit, you have to treasure it every day! Or you lose it. Very few people ever arrive at the spiritual level, you know that. Jesus knew it. Every spiritual person has known it. You have to treasure it. You have to pay attention to it as if it were important, as important as the money you used to care for. Or the success, or the arrogance, or the pride, or the power. You have to treasure it, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be, and where your heart is, there your treasure will be, and if you have a treasuring of the spirit, you have something that nothing can take away - neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creature. Nothing! You treasure it, and you’re grateful for it. You’ve got to be grateful, because you didn’t make it. If you want to get down to the heart of religion, here’s another one of those fundamental things - you didn’t make it! The thing that you treasure. You didn’t make the leaf, you didn’t make the flower, you didn’t make the tree, you didn’t make yourself, you didn’t make your mind, you didn’t make your body. It’s a gift. We call it the gift of God, don’t we? So, you have to be grateful. No spiritual person swaggers with the qualities of the Spirit. No. No swaggering with the Spirit. It’s just the utmost of gratitude. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   And then you celebrate it. You celebrate it by - you come to church and you light candles and you listen to that beautiful, beautiful music, and you have a birthday party or you give a gift or you bake a cake and you gather your friends around and you hold hands, and you say, isn’t it wonderful, the gifts that are ours? That’s a celebration, and there’s no religion without it. You have to have the Spirit there to make the celebration significant and real. Now, that’s a description of religion as best as I can do for you. What’s the language of religion? Just a word or two now and that’s all. What’s the language of religion? I said of religion, not about religion, because the investigation of religion or of anything falls into the realm of scientific categories. You explore religion like you explore the structure of a city or of an institution or of a piece of metal. Thus, we use technical language when you want to discuss the nature of religion. But, what’s the language of religion? I keep trying and I’m a preacher and I should know how to do it and I feel so helpless at it, and I want to tell somebody what it means to be in rapture by that blossom that I saw out my window. How do I do it? How do I tell somebody how much I love them? I don’t know how to do it; you stagger and you stumble. We don’t do very well at it. Well, the language of religion is story, it’s poetry. Poetry is the nature of religious language, because you’re explaining. You see something and you just let go. I keep thinking of David dancing before the ark of the Lord - just totally feeling. He expressed it in dance, like you do here so frequently. I have an enduring memory of being out there last spring sometime and you had all those children dancing down the aisles. And there was one child who caught my imagination so that I didn’t want to lose myself in the panorama of it. Interestingly enough, on the way home, the wife of the person I was driving with said, "I know who you meant. I saw that, too." What was it? I don’t know. I couldn’t describe it. But, that girl - she exemplified it to me, with all those children she exemplified the Spirit, the miracle and wonder of being human. We use myth and story, legend and song and dance and art. These are the language of religion. Mr. Bryson plays that organ and has that choir sing so beautifully they’re singing of the Spirit, if you have ears to hear. How better could you describe Paul’s dilemma, which is yours and mine - "I want to do good and I can’t because the evil’s all around me. I want to do good and the evil takes over. I know that in my heart reigns the law of God, but there is another law, the law of my members entangling me in sin." How would you describe this? Well, it’s never been better done than it was in our religious heritage. In the beginning the world was wonderful, beautiful, and everything was there. And then God made man and it was all right then, too, except that man ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge. And then he became like one of us - gods, says the Bible. Knowing good and evil. And if you know good and evil, you’ll never, ever be totally free! Because the evil is always there; it’s part of being human. And that’s our biblical story. © Grand Valley State University �Religion: Has It a Future? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   You want to describe the miracle of life, the wonder of being human, the wonder of a child which is where we see it most and should not confine ourselves there, do you want to describe the miracle of the birth of a child - how would you do it? Well, we’ve had a description, a poetic, beautiful description that has been a cardinal part of my heart for all these years that I’ve been thinking about dreams. There was a man and a woman, simple man and woman, carpenter and his wife they had to go to a distant city and she was with child. But, they had to go and it was a difficult, long journey, and it came on wintertime and they were up in the mountains and the time for her came, and they didn’t know what to do and there was no place to go. There was a little village up in the mountain and every place was filled because everyone else was going as they were going to this thing that had been called by the emperor, and they had no place, no place in the inn or anywhere. And the innkeeper gave them a place where the cattle were. Not much, was it? Oh, no, but it was something. It was a gracious act and it was some comfort and protection, and they were there with the animals, you see, and she gave birth to her child and it was just a miracle. And there were three kings who had been out on the road for a long time, looking for the glory of God. And they had been told that they could find it, and there was a star that they had to follow. And they followed that star for many days, many weeks, and finally the star came and stood over a stable. Stood over a stable. And they knew that that was the end of their search. They went in and found the child, and they brought their gifts as tribute to the miracle of God in human life. And there were some shepherds out in the fields, not just the kings, but some shepherds, ignorant shepherds. And all of a sudden, when they were keeping watch over their flocks, the air was filled with angels singing, "Glory to God in the highest, for unto you is born this night in the city of David a Saviour." And the shepherds went off, left their flock and went up into the stable to pay tribute to the glory of God and the child. You have ears but you don’t hear. If we were to listen, if we were to listen, anytime, we’d hear the angels singing. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85c5c7ebd675c7c365e6dac356607ddf.mp3 6045c2bbb3d6bbc772595a6cf13df566 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 XIX Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2 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-0-19970928 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-09-28 Title A name given to the resource Religion: Has It a Future? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 September 28, 1997 entitled "Religion: Has It a Future?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2. Awareness Compassion Nature of Religion Story Wonder https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cc3d3e57a03c845674654a2b99ff1361.pdf 29005dc923ec671e693eb5e7c6449d58 PDF Text Text Shall the Fundamentalists Win? From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time Scripture: Acts 5:27-42; Matthew 5:17-21 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan September 21, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon It was May 21, 1922 - a Sunday morning. In the First Presbyterian Church of New York City, Harry Emerson Fosdick preached what is probably the most famous sermon ever preached in this country. I borrow his title and texts this morning. Shall the Fundamentalists Win? That was the question Fosdick posed. It was a gracious appeal to the fundamentalist party in American Protestantism to give room within the fellowship of the Christian church for those of more liberal views. Fosdick was gentle, in no way derogating those who held to the old doctrinal positions of Christian faith. He acknowledged the fruitfulness of sincere Christian lives that had long lived by ancient formulations of faith. But he challenged the illiberal and intolerant spirit that marked the fundamentalist parties in the respective denominations that were attempting to cast out those who were seeking to rethink Christian faith in light of the explosion of new knowledge and to understand the burst of new knowledge in terms of their Christian faith. Fosdick based his plea for tolerance and inclusiveness on the passages read this morning. The 1920's were not the first years of religious conflict. We could point to many such crisis times, but surely the ministry of Jesus brought about a serious crisis for the established religion of Judaism. The Gospels record the conflict of Jesus with the main religious parties of the Jews. And as is the case time and again, Jesus was not about introducing a new religion, but about the renewal of the tradition within which he was born, nurtured and carried out his ministry. Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. But, that was not how Jesus was received. Rather, he was seen as a troubler of Israel, a threat to the established religious institution and a danger to the good order of society. © Grand Valley State University   �Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Jesus was crucified by Roman power that wanted no popular uprising in the province, but certainly with the consent and to the relief of the religio-political leaders of the Temple cult. Such use of violent force settles nothing, however; rather, it spurred his followers, convinced he was not dead but living, to take up the message and further the movement. Thus, the authorities were forced to go to round two. They now attempted forcibly to silence the disciples. That is the setting of Luke’s account in Acts 5. After the apostles’ imprisonment, the authorities called them in and charged them to cease and desist in their preaching, but they refused, driving the authorities to the brink of violence again. Then it was that a voice of wisdom and reason was raised. Gamaliel, a respected Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, addressed the body. He reminded them of two recent popular uprisings that came to nothing with the death of their leaders and, he suggested, the counsel of wisdom would be to set the apostles free - have nothing to do with them, he said, for if this Jesus movement was of human origin, it would fail, and if it was of God, nothing they could do would overthrow it. Indeed, they might then be found fighting God. Good advice. Wise counsel. And Gamaliel prevailed that day. Gamaliel is Fosdick’s model in his appeal to the fundamentalists of the 1920's. He raised the question I have often raised: What might have happened if Gamaliel’s advice had been heeded, not only that day, but from that point on, and the Jesus movement might have been a flowering of Jewish faith, renewal and rediscovery of the spiritual depth of Israel’s faith? But, such was not to be the case. Nor was it the case in the 16th century when the Roman Church was rent asunder and the Protestant movement developed its own identity over against Rome. Fosdick raised the question, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" and his answer was "No" because intolerance never brings a solution to conflict situations. Intolerance solves nothing. Rather, pleads Fosdick, the church must be "intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving, open-minded and fair." Fosdick’s appeal was reprinted in three Christian journals and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. paid for the publication of 130,000 copies of the sermon for distribution across the nation. He appealed for liberals and conservatives to assume a posture of courtesy, kindliness, humility and fairness, but the appeal had the opposite affect. Conservative response was swift and strong. The Presbytery of Philadelphia, led by Clarence McCartney, requested the General © Grand Valley State University �Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Assembly to "direct the Presbytery of New York to take such action as will require the preaching and teaching in the First Presbyterian Church of New York to conform to the system of doctrine taught in the Confession of Faith." The issue was joined; there was no turning back. For the next dozen General Assemblies there was serious conflict. This was the time during which G. Gresham Machos left Princeton Seminary and founded Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. As to Fosdick, he was First Presbyterian’s preacher by special arrangement, being himself a Baptist. Rather than taking him on, the General Assembly voted to require him to enter the ranks of Presbyterian clergy, thinking he would have had to pass their theological requirements. The liberal element in the Presbyterian Church pleaded with him to do so, but he declined, stating, I simply could not make the sort of even formal assent required of all candidates for your denomination’s ministry. I would choke - for, rightly or wrongly, I should feel as if I were lying like a rogue. Fosdick was out of a pulpit, but not for long. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. asked him to come to the Baptist Church in New York City that he attended. He is said to have refused, saying he would be concerned about being the pastor of the wealthiest man in the country. Rockefeller replied, "How do you think I will feel having Harry Emerson Fosdick as my pastor?" With that, Fosdick agreed and eventually Rockefeller built the great Riverside Church in New York City as the showcase for Fosdick’s remarkable gift of preaching. What was going on in the early decades of this century that came to a head in the ministry of Fosdick? In the sermon he preached on that May Sunday morning in 1922, Fosdick spoke of the new knowledge. Now the knowledge was not new in the sense of a sudden arrival of knowledge in 1922. Rather, there had been a growing body of knowledge over the past decades that simply had to be assimilated to the biblical worldview if there was to be any possibility of intellectual integrity. Fosdick declared, A great mass of new knowledge has come into man’s possession: new knowledge about the physical universe, its origin, its forces, its laws; new knowledge about human history and in particular about the ways in which the ancient peoples used to think in matters of religion and the methods by which they … explained their spiritual experiences; and new knowledge, also, about other religions and the strangely similar ways in which men’s faiths and religious practices have developed everywhere. Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is his revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal, but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might © Grand Valley State University �Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   really love the Lord their God not only with their heart and soul and strength, but with all their mind, they have been trying to see this new knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge. This, of course, is the imperative for every generation and also the source of the tension that is always present in faith and of the conflict that has always marked institutional religion. For a time in the Presbyterian Church it seemed as though the Fundamentalists had won. Fosdick was out and the fundamentals of doctrine were reaffirmed. But, they did not win, for in the long run the repression of knowledge and honest inquiry can never prevail. It is my contention that, although the mainline Protestant denominations eventually yielded to the more liberal perspective, there is much of the church that has not yet brought its faith into engagement with modern knowledge. This I believe is the fascinating challenge and opportunity that we face at Christ Community. We have a new freedom to interpret the Christian faith for our day. We have been at this for a long time; or, at least I have, and you have been supportive of that. But, now as a people, we have been galvanized through the ordeal through which we have passed. This is one of those rare moments when a whole community is thinking, asking questions, wrestling with matters of faith. Thus it is that we embark today on a new series of sermons under the theme, Meeting God Again for the First Time. Some of you have read Marcus Borg’s book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, where he relates how he moved from childhood faith to unfaith and then with a fresh spiritual experience returned to vital Christian faith. It is my hope that we as a community might come to a fresh experience of the living God Who is big enough to encompass our questions, our best knowledge, and our deep yearning for communion with the Ultimate Mystery in Whom we live and move and have our being. Next Sunday Dr. Duncan Littlefair will preach for us. For decades in Grand Rapids at the Fountain Street Church he was known as the Voice of the Liberal, as a radical, even as one who did not believe in God. But I have gotten to know him well, to feel his passion and sense the deep spirituality of his being. He is deeply concerned for the future of the Christian tradition. I want you to meet him, to experience him as he will challenge us not to stop now, simply treading water, but to continue to wrestle with how to bring the Christian message to our society in the present context. The following Sunday during the Perspectives hour, Dr. Littlefair will be joined by Dr. Lester DeKoster, former Librarian at Calvin College and Editor of The © Grand Valley State University �Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Banner, the Christian Reformed Church publication, a stout Calvinist whose conservative credentials are impeccable. These two men, longtime friends and friendly adversaries, will dialogue on the future of religion. In all of this I am inviting and challenging you to think deeply, to ponder the faith that has shaped us and to struggle with me to find the manner in which the faith tradition must be translated for today and tomorrow. Bishop Krister Stendahl who preached for us last year was the moderator at the recent Jewish/Christian dialogue. On the way from the airport, he mentioned a phrase that has stuck with me since our first encounter in 1991 when he was David Hartman’s dialogue partner. He said, "Tradition is an instrument of continuity and change." I was struck by that when I first heard it in ‘91 and I have used the phrase frequently. That tradition provides continuity with the past - that was always obvious to me. But that the faith tradition is, as well, an instrument for change, I had never realized. I suspect my too narrow sense of tradition’s function stemmed from my nurture and training - always focused on relating to and being faithful to the past formulation of the faith that had come to us from our forbears. In all my theological education, the stress was on explanation of the faith as given and the defense of that faith as received. I cannot remember ever being challenged to think about the reformulation and revision of the faith tradition for fresh statement in the present, in a context dramatically different from the context in which the faith was initially formulated. In a word, I had no sense of a living tradition, a growing, developing faith understanding that not only puts me in continuity with the past, but illumines present experience and continues to light up the path into the future. Thus, breakthroughs in knowledge impact faith’s understanding and faith creates a framework within which to assimilate new knowledge. One is open to embrace the world in all its wonder and new experience because one is rooted, one has a place to stand. But, one is not swept away on a flood of new learning, but examines new thought and experience critically with some distance and detachment because one has a trusted tradition within which to think, to reflect, to take in the new. This is the critical issue before the Christian church today. As I stated above, much of the evangelical Protestant church, to say nothing of the Roman Catholic Church, has not yet come to terms with modern knowledge. The resurgence of fundamentalist religious mentality in our day is a flight from honest engagement with what we know about the world, the human story, history and scientific probing of our universe. We find the conservative churches that have not been traditionally fundamentalist in spirit turning to worship as entertainment and emotionalism in mass movements. And all of this, I am convinced, is an escape © Grand Valley State University �Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   from wrestling with the impact of knowledge on faith’s understanding and the critique of modern knowledge and life from faith’s perspective. No one need be faulted for not engaging in this serious and taxing endeavor. No one need be condemned who is seeking simply a bit of comfort and security. But someone needs to find a way to the experience of God, the way of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit in the midst of this world, here and now. There will always be those who will continue to parrot yesterday’s answers to today’s questions and with intolerant spirit seek to set outside the community of faith others who are searching for today’s expression of faith in light of today. But, the fundamentalists shall not win because a fearful, rigid and intolerant spirit convinced of its own rectitude is a denial of everything Jesus incarnated. If we dare pursue the path upon which we have embarked, we must be clear-eyed about the fact that we will be swimming against the tide of current cultural opinion as well as choosing the road less traveled by the churches as the agents of institutional Christianity. But, we will be set free to recognize the crisis of the church at large in the present, to see the denial in which it is living and to be free of fear that drives it, whether conscious or unconscious. Further, we will provide a place for people who value intellectual integrity and whose heart cannot find rest where their minds cannot follow. We will provide a place for those whose hearts yearn for God and whose spirits thirst for spiritual depth, but who cannot abide the narrow mind and intolerant spirit that marks so much institutional religion. And we will revel with delight in the Presence of the Mystery that is God amidst the ambiguity of the human condition, having few answers but able with abandon to raise our questions and, in community, experience the presence of the Spirit and know the compassion of Jesus, trusting that finally all is Grace and all will be well. And again and again we will meet God as if for the first time. Reference: Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?: Defending Liberal Protestantism in the 1920s,” historymatters.gmu.edu © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4880597d0cfd2cdf624d36fe1f5cda59.mp3 e0cd2cb775cef742148c021960e6a513 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 XVIII Series Meeting God Again for the First Time Scripture Text Acts 5:38-39, Matthew 5:17-21 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Harry Emerson Fosdick, Shall the Fundamentalists Win?: Defending Liberal Protestantism in the 1920s, 1921 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-0-19970921 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-09-21 Title A name given to the resource Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 September 21, 1997 entitled "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 5:38-39, Matthew 5:17-21. Community of Faith Fundamentalism Inclusive Re-imagining the Faith Worldview https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9bc8d24a71344fd5126b6f11128337ca.pdf c2e24361d2adbdef80499caef9abd244 PDF Text Text The Church: Who Needs It? From the series: Tough Questions; No Easy Answers Text: Ephesians 4:15 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 24, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Our summer sermon series, Tough Questions; No Easy Answers, concludes today with a focus on the church, the institutional form of the Christian religion: "The Church: Who Needs It!" Who needs it? That is a question. However, you may have noticed in the printed liturgy that the question is terminated with an exclamation point rather than a question mark. Who Needs It! This reflects not so much a genuine inquiry into who really needs the church as a statement reflecting a serious question about whether or not perhaps the church in its present forms and structures has a future; even more, whether it would be a serious loss if it continues in its present process of demise. Let me acknowledge at the outset that I am not able to be completely objective in the contemplation of the question. Who needs it! is probably the expression of my own frustration with, and disappointment in, the institution in which I have been nurtured and to which I have given my life. You will simply have to hear me keeping my own bias before you. Granting that, let me tie this sermon on the church in with that which I have been stressing throughout this series, namely, that religion is a human construct, a human creation, which in multiple religious forms and institutional structures is a response to the experience of God, the sense of a Presence that fills all things, a Mystery which is always hidden from us, yet so present in its absence that its reality cannot be denied. This is true of religion in the earliest forms discovered in the practice of ancient and primitive peoples; it is true of the great world religions. Religion as a phenomenon of humankind is a humanly shaped response to an encounter from beyond or from the depths. This is true of the Christian religion as it is institutionalized in the church in all the manifold forms and structures that have emerged over 2000 years and in all © Grand Valley State University   �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the wide variety of churches with us in our day. The Christian church is a human creation, a human institution consisting of a belief system (doctrine), cultic forms for worship and devotion (liturgy/ritual), and a moral code (ethics). To claim this does not deny that the Christian religion is a genuine and authentic response to God, that it is a mediator of truth, of revelation, that it is an agency of God’s grace. It is simply to recognize that, in response to the revelation of the Mystery that is God in Jesus Christ and the grace that he mediates by God’s Spirit, those who have been encountered by revelation and embraced by grace have created a religious institution we call the church in order to witness to their experience and pass on their faith. The religious faith and institutional structure which provided the womb for the Christian faith was Judaism. One of the fruits of current study of the historical Jesus is our recognition that Jesus was a Jew. Of course, the church has always known this, but the fact is, the church has not recognized the Jewishness of Jesus sufficiently, nor done justice to the rootedness of Jesus in his own religious tradition. He was born a Jew, lived as an observant Jew and died a Jew. It was Jewish tradition he was seeking to renew. It was the Jewish institutional religion he was seeking to dismantle in the fashion of Israel’s prophets. From our present knowledge of Jesus’ time from cross-cultural studies, we get a sense of the institutional forms and structures that he was up against. We also recognize the Gospels as post-Easter documents that were based on oral tradition that went back in part to Jesus himself but, at their writing, were documents that reflected the situation of the Christian communities from which they arose decades after Jesus’ life and ministry. It seems apparent that Jesus never intended anything but the renewal of his own Jewish faith. The early Jesus movement that developed in the wake of Easter was a Jewish movement in its entirety. In the early years, the Jesus movement was a movement within Judaism. But, this was a time of ferment and crisis for Judaism. In a struggle with Rome who occupied her land, she saw her temple razed and Jerusalem destroyed. The question was what would emerge as the ongoing Jewish tradition. By the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, from which we read this morning, two generations separated his community from Jesus himself. It was clear by the time Matthew wrote that the majority of Israel was not going to follow Jesus as God’s Messiah. The Jesus Jewish movement had reached out to Gentiles. The movement was constituted of Jews and Gentiles and was taking on an identity over against Israel. We see this in the passage read from Matthew 16. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks, "Who do people say that I am?" The disciples answered, Elijah or Jeremiah © Grand Valley State University �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   or John the Baptist - one of the prophets. And then Jesus asks, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers for the group, "You are the Christ (or Messiah), the son of the living God." Jesus praises Peter for the answer - giving him the nickname Rock and declaring that on the Rock he would build his church. It is fascinating that Matthew used Mark as his basic source, but in this instance, he goes beyond Mark. In Mark, Jesus does not give Peter his nickname, nor does he praise him; rather, he sternly warns the disciple to say nothing of this messianic identity. But, even in Matthew’s account, Jesus continues after his high praise of Peter to speak of his forthcoming suffering to which Peter objects, actually rebuking Jesus for such talk. In response, Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things." Even though Matthew intends some six decades after Jesus to make Jesus the establisher of the church, he lets show through the constant peril in which the church will live - becoming human, all too human. The Protestant Church should never have argued with the Roman Church that Peter was the first Pope because if anyone puts the lie to papal infallibility, it is Peter. Calling Simon "Rock" may well have been a bit of Jesus’ humor. Rock-like, he was not; human, he was. Well, it seems we have a guest. (At this point, "Peter" arrives, hurrying down the aisle, excited and emphatic.) Peter: I’m Peter, and, "On this rock I’m gonna build my church." That’s what he said. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up. Oh, you just did. I never understood the rock thing. Who would call somebody a rock? Would you call somebody a loaf of bread, a tree? "Hey, Shrub, come over here." How would you like that? But, who could figure him? The way he talked sometimes? Very mysterious. So, this is church, eh? A little breezy. Reminds me of the old days, Sermon on the Mount. No air-conditioning there. Whew! It was a scorcher. They don’t tell you that, do they, in that book you got there? Ninety-eight degrees that day, and lots of humidity. But, this is just for fun today, right? You got your buildings for regular. I see you’ve gone to Sundays ... Saturday wasn’t good enough? Anyway, I’m really pleased to see you’ve made it so big. I kept telling Jesus, all we needed to do was get to the big boys, the movers and shakers, the Big Kahunas, show them we could work with them. I said, "Jesus softer, softer. Ease up on the ‘Woe is you, Pharisees,’ stuff. And ‘Woe to the lawyers.’" You just don’t say "Woe to the lawyers" and get ahead in this world. © Grand Valley State University �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   They got such a powerful lobby, you wouldn’t believe! And getting into real estate ... that’s smart. Oh, that’s smaaaart. I told him all along. When he had that shmooze with Elijah and Moses, and he turned all sparkly, I told him then. Build three tabernacles here ... Okay, just one. At least put up a plaque, "Jesus transfigured here, June eleventh, 0-0-27." But, no. "Don’t tell anybody," he says. So, what are you pulling down? 40-50 big ones? You know what I got? Lunch, I got. On a good day, maybe breakfast. I’m not complaining. I was in on the ground floor - that counts for something. I got statues all over the place. None of ‘em look like but, but, hey, the headquarters in Rome? St. Peters! That still seems a little weird to me. St. Rock. Who would do that to a friend? "Simon," I says, "what’s wrong with Simon?" "Give up your stuff and follow me," he says. I brought this nice young kid in to see him once. Very well connected. Good family; the Dad’s really big in olive oil. And the kid wants to join. I’m thinking, this could be good. So, Jesus asks him the big one, you know, what’s the most important commandment? And the kid spouts it right off, not a hitch. Okay, so I prompted him a little going into the interview, but the kid’s sincere. And Jesus loves him, you can tell. He’s a good looking kid, well behaved, nice clothes. But, then Jesus says, "You want to go with me, you gotta get rid of all your stuff first. Give it away to folks who don’t have any stuff, then come back and see me." I couldn’t believe my ears. So we lost him. I said, "Jesus, this kid was loaded. You just blew a potentially large investor." And then he goes on at me about how tough it is to get to heaven if you’ve got a lot of stuff, and something about camels going through needles, and I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad to see that’s changed. I mean, this looks like a pretty well heeled bunch here. What’s the weekly take? Pretty good, I bet. Oh, you got a good thing going here. One night the boys and I, we’re sitting around a campfire with Jesus singing "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore," "We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder," some of the oldies but goodies, and then Jesus starts talking about he has to go to Jerusalem and the Son of Man is going to have all sorts of bad things happen to him, and we’re not understanding what he’s saying, so a few of us start trying to work out an organizational chart. You know, Jesus is the CEO, that’s a given. But, who’s the V.P.s? I mean, you can’t have any kind of operation like that without flow charts. You got to have your P.R. section. Quality Control, and so forth. Well, Jesus just threw a fit and says, "You want to be Vice President, you’ve got to be the custodian. You want to lead, you’ve got to serve!" He was always saying things like that. "You gotta die to live. The first are last and the last first." I kept saying, "Jesus, you’re going to drive ‘em away with that sort of stuff. You need upbeat, upbeat! ‘It’s the real thing!’ - take a tip from the Coke folks, Nike, whoosh! The Pillsbury Doughboy." © Grand Valley State University �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   But, don’t let me interrupt. You guys are doing great, just great! It’s a real pleasure. I’ll just sit down here, zip the lip. You were saying? (Mr. Rhem) I was saying, Peter, you never got the message. In the paragraph following our reading, we have Jesus speaking to the disciples about denying themselves, taking up the cross and following Jesus. Those who want to save their life will lose it, Jesus warns. Those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake - that is, for the sake of the way of Jesus will find life. But, that word has too often been muffled in the history of the church. It just may be that what appeared to be the triumph of the Christian religion and its institutional form, the church, was its undoing. In the year 312 C.E., the Roman Emperor Constantine was victorious in battle and he attributed his victory to Jesus Christ. Constantine decreed that Christianity would be the established religion of the Empire. Thus, the movement that sprang from Jesus, beginning as a Jewish sect, becoming a persecuted minority evolved into the state religion of the Roman Empire and Jesus, the destabilizer of the religious institution of Judaism, was co-opted by the Roman Emperor to bring unity and cohesion to the Empire. It is no coincidence that the Constantinian decree of 313 was followed in 325 C.E. by the Council of Nicaea, perhaps the most critical Council in terms of the definition of the deity of Jesus and his relationship to God in the Trinitarian formula. John Dominic Crossan, in his Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, writes, ... Constantine, wanting a unified Christianity as the empire’s new religion, ordered the Christian bishops to meet, under imperial subsidy, in Nicaea, southeast of Constantinople, and there erase any major theological disagreements between them. Even if one is not already somewhat disturbed at imperial convocations, presence, and participation, it is hard not to become very nervous in reading this description of the imperial banquet celebrating the Council of Nicaea’s conclusion, from Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, 3.15: Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor’s companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than reality. (p. 201) © Grand Valley State University �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Crossan comments, "Dream or reality? Dream or nightmare?" There are many serious students of the history of the church who see the Constantinian establishment not as the church’s triumph, but rather, as the critical moment it lost its soul. The collusion of throne and altar, the mating of secular power and religion is always finally fatal to religion; it becomes a tool of the state or, when in the ascendency, wields power as ruthlessly as any secular government. I am always struck by the passage in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus mentions his forthcoming death, and James and John come to him to request positions of power when he enters into his glory. Let us sit on your right and left hand, they ask. It is in response to this that Jesus tells them that greatness lies in servanthood. Obviously, from the beginning the religion that evolved from Jesus - Christianity - has lived with the temptation to save its life, preserve its life, enhance its life. Surveying its history, one must recognize great fruits that have derived from Christian faith, from the church. It has, indeed, shaped our Western civilization, combining as it has the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem. But it has been, as well, the enemy of the one whose name it claims. Were I to cite its greatest failings, I would point to its triumphalism of attitude, coercion of method, exclusiveness of spirit. Triumphalism is arrogance. We are first. It is one thing when expressed by the Marine Corps. It is unbecoming when expressed with nationalist zeal. But, it is downright betrayal when manifested by a religious tradition, especially a tradition that looks to Jesus, the crucified one, as its founder. And triumphalism soon leads to tactics of coercion. No longer do we simply witness to what we have experienced, but we use power to enforce our views and policy. Throughout its history, when the church has been in a power position, it has forced its way, leveling the opposition, the Inquisition of the 15th century only the most glaring example. And such coercion is justified by the claim of exclusiveness - the claim that truth is finally captured in the church’s creeds and that there is truth and salvific grace alone through the channel of the church. But it is not working anymore; the church has lost its position of dominance in the West. We speak of Europe as post-Christian and, appearance to the contrary, the church as institution is not a vital, confident body going from strength to strength. Multitudes are saying, "The Church: Who Needs It!" But, there are astute observers who are deeply committed to the Christian faith who see the dis-establishment of the church as a blessing. We are now, they say, in the same situation as the Jewish folk following Jerusalem’s destruction. We are © Grand Valley State University �The Church: Who Needs It? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   in a diaspora situation. Douglas John Hall writes in Confessing the Faith, citing the great Catholic thinker, Karl Rahner, ... we "must" accommodate ourselves to the diaspora situation, and this "must" emanates not only from our actual, empirical condition, but from the same gracious sovereignty that is contained in the journey of Jesus toward the cross. But we must and may do this joyfully. (p. 221) To do so, we must cease striving for "total victory." But, says Rahner, this is not resignation and defeatism. ... If we once have the courage to give up our defense of the old facades which have nothing or very little behind them; if we cease to maintain, in public, the pretense of a universal Christendom; if we stop straining every nerve to get everybody baptized, to get everybody married in church and onto our registers ... if, by letting all of this go, we visibly relieve Christianity of the burdensome impression that it accepts responsibility for everything that goes on under this Christian top dressing, the impression that Christianity is ... a sort of Everyman’s Religious Varnish, a folk-religion ... then we can be free for real missionary adventure and apostolic self-confidence. (p. 222) Douglas Hall, Karl Rahner, Hans Küng - and many more of the most acute thinkers in the church see our present situation as holding great promise. As a minority without cultural assent or political power, we are free to get back to the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, of loving service and gracious embrace. In the word of the apostle, we may yet grow up into the likeness of Jesus and speaking the truth in love become the true servant people as Jesus envisioned. The Church: Who Needs It! as a coercive institution seeking power. But, the church as community, a community of worship, of nurture, of gracious servant serving the world in Jesus’ name - that is the church I need, for which I will live and, if need be, die. Reference: Douglas John Hall. Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, Vol. 1. Fortress Press, 1991. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2f9819f95c4de7aba6e9587f5da0fe92.mp3 1edec60d2acdc59cccbdc62aa9a1b501 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 XIV Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Matthew 15:13-23, Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Douglas John Hall. Confessing The Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, 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-0-19970824 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-08-24 Title A name given to the resource The Church: Who Needs It? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 24, 1997 entitled "The Church: Who Needs It?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost XIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 15:13-23, Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16. Myster Religion as a Human Construct Servanthood Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1007ab87214d3a4b8978ca2520db88fe.pdf e3511f546e3243f70b11cb76dc36aec4 PDF Text Text Is Christianity Dying? From the series: Tough Questions; No Easy Answers Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-5; 3:17-19; Luke 3:1-9; 19:37-38 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 10, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Is Christianity dying? That is a tough question and there is no easy answer. Let me acknowledge at the outset that no one can answer that question with certainty. Is Christianity in trouble? Yes. If that is challenged by pointing out that it is in trouble in Europe and the West in general, but flourishing in Africa and some other regions, I would respond by saying that the same secularizing tendencies and advance of scientific knowledge that have put it in peril in the West will have to be dealt with wherever the Church extends itself. I suspect Christianity as an institutionalized religion is dying in the form in which we have known it. But, perhaps the question, "Is Christianity Dying?’ is not the best way to formulate the question. It would be better to ask as does Charles Davis in the book he entitled What Is Living, What Is Dead in Christianity Today? And I even prefer a further sharpening of the question: "What can Christianity become for us?" That is a crucial question and that is the really critical matter: What can this 200year-old religious tradition, through which and in which we have been formed, become for us? To become a significant shaper of our lives and an ongoing, dynamic faith tradition, Christianity must undergo a major creative transformation. Continuing on its present course in fundamentalist form, or even in strongly orthodox or timidly mainline expression, Christianity will not continue. Let’s probe this question and as we do, I will do as I have been driven to do throughout this series - I will focus on the phenomenon of religion because, obviously, Christianity is a religion and to examine it, we must be clear about the nature of religion. © Grand Valley State University   �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Lest you forget, I say again; religion is a construct of the human mind. We create religions as human beings. A religion is a humanly constructed symbol system that provides an orientation for our lives, supplying us with a map for negotiating life’s passages, offering us an interpretation of culture, history, human action and the transcendent Mystery of our existence. Feuerbach in the 19th century saw religion as a human invention arising out of the human situation of need and threat. In Feuerbach’s understanding, God was simply a human projection of one’s own idealized self. We have recognized the genius of Feuerbach’s analysis of religion, but we have demurred at one critical point; we have claimed that the creation of religion on the part of humankind is the consequence of a prior address from beyond or from our depths, an address that puts us in question, that calls forth our response in the form of religious faith, devotion and practice. Religious faith or awe or wonder or fear is response to an experience of some Reality. Charles Davis writes, The reality experienced in faith does not manifest itself as an object. It reveals itself as the term of a feeling response but remains hidden from us or unknown inasmuch as it does not appear to consciousness as an apprehensible object. ... feelings rest upon a oneness between the subject and what is felt.... Feelings are responses springing from what we are. They are responses of our being to reality as we meet it. Our feeling responses depend upon what we have become as beings, what we are as persons. Feelings are the resonance of reality upon human subjects, the arousal of our personal being through union with a reality present to us. In the case of religious feeling, the response of our spiritual effectivity to transcendent reality precedes knowledge and continues without any direct knowledge of a kind that would make the term of that response a known object. The reality that draws us where our own being falls off into nothingness, the reality that gives a sense of basic fulfillment at the center of our emptiness, remains outside our intellectual grasp. (pp. 9-10) Feuerbach’s claim that religion is a merely human activity with no referent beyond the human subject remains an unproven and unprovable assertion. The same is true for the claim I make that faith is response to that which encounters us, to the Mystery that meets us, but can never be grasped because it remains hidden. This is the watershed; the great Divide. But the claims are beyond verification; each of us must decide if we believe we are addressed by Someone, Something beyond us, or, conjuring up a fiction. © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   To conclude the latter is the end of religion as a viable, meaningful human activity; to conclude the former sees the variety of religions and religious beliefs and practices as modes of response to a Reality beyond us, although present to us. And that is our claim. That being the case, we can see Christianity as a human creation in response to the Mystery as manifested in Jesus of Nazareth. In sum: we affirm the Mystery we term God and we affirm the nature of that Mystery as defined in Jesus, the concrete, human, historical expression of the Mystery. Well, perhaps you breathe a sigh of relief; Christianity is then a genuine article, a faith response to the Mystery of Reality, to God. And that is true enough, except it is not the only religious response to the Mystery; religion is a universal phenomenon of humankind. Are we prepared to say that our response in the Christian tradition is the only response that reveals the Mystery and mediates a saving, healing communion? That’s one question; but there is a second: Has the tradition faithfully and adequately responded in light of the ongoing drama of creation and human development? Let’s deal with the second question first and let us be reminded of the temptation to which all religion in institutional form is subject, the temptation to freeze a given form and absolutize it, denying the dynamic movement of history and human development, and thus denying the imperative that the religious symbol system remain open to re-symbolization, to fresh expression and new forms. I chose the scripture lessons with this tendency of religious institutions to absolutize themselves in mind. A late seventh century B.C.E. prophet in Judah surveyed the moral and spiritual life of his people and found it wanting. Habakkuk, in the prophetic book that bears his name, cries out to the God of Israel, O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, "Violence!" and you will not save? In a word, the prophet cries out to God to do something to turn the nation from its spiritual decay. The writing goes on to record the Lord’s response - the work becomes a dialogue between God and the prophet. God’s response: © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   ... a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. We learn that Judah is indeed in for judgment and that to be inflicted by the great and growing power of Babylon. Thus Habakkuk has his answer: God is doing something, but now the prophet has a larger problem. How can the God of Israel utilize a pagan power to bring judgment on God’s chosen people? Judah had strayed from God’s ways and the prophet sought God’s movement to judge and through judgment bring grace. But Babylon or, as they are called in the text, the Chaldeans? No way! That was too much. Israel was God’s chosen; Judah was God’s special people. Habakkuk simply could not conceive of God raising up a foreign power against God’s own. That attitude was always present in the tradition of Israel and always challenged by Israel’s own prophetic voice. It is such an attitude that was attached by John the Baptism who called the Jewish people to repentance on the banks of the Jordan River outside Jerusalem. It was the first century C.E., a time of apocalyptic expectations, a time of great ferment and expectation of some dramatic in-breaking of God ringing down the curtain of history. John the Baptist, like Habakkuk before him, was a fiery preacher of judgment calling God’s people to repent and prepare to meet their God. But the party line of the religious establishment resented such radical preaching and the exposing of their spiritual and moral apathy. Were they not God’s elect, immune to God’s purging action? No, claims John the Baptist. Do not begin to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor;" for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees... Luke 3:8-9 Jesus, too, ran headlong into the religious establishment, the guardians of the institutional forms and traditions of Israel. Luke tells us of the Palm Sunday procession to Jerusalem. The disciples are praising God with joy and no doubt displaying a festive holiday spirit. The Pharisees tell Jesus to make them cease their celebration, to which Jesus responds, ... if these were silent, the stones would shout out. And Luke tells us, Jesus came over the crest of the hill and saw Jerusalem in full view and he wept. He wept for what he saw as the inevitable horror that would befall the city because of the mind-set, the spiritual blindness he had encountered in the Temple establishment, which was also the center of political power. © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ... you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. ...Luke 19:41-44 What is my point? Simply this: Religion is a human construction in response to an address from beyond, an encounter with the Mystery of Reality that becomes present in the consciousness of humankind. All religious response is not the same, offering equal clarity or illumination, resulting in equal fruitfulness in human lives. Some responses are the result of penetrating insight, the Gift of the Spirit. Some have less of beauty and elevating capacity, but no religion is absolute; none is without human limitation and distortion. And none is absolutely essential for the unfolding of the Mystery of the cosmic drama. Let me expand on that for a moment. I raise the question, "Is Christianity Dying?" in this message. I would never have conceived of such a question when I arrived here in 1960, nor when I returned in 1971. To contemplate the demise of Christianity would have been beyond the boundaries of my thinking. Jesus was God’s supreme and last word; Christianity the one true religion, the result not of human construction, but totally of God’s revealing. History was moving toward an End at which point Jesus Christ would appear on earth and bring in the Kingdom of God. It never occurred to me that such simplistic thinking was one more instance of Habakkuk’s horror at the thought of Babylon breaking Judah, or John’s opponents who said, "Hey, we have Abraham as our father," or the religious establishment who refused God’s visitation in Jesus. Neither was I at all aware of the uncritical arrogance of such a position; o The arrogance of assuming God’s ways were synonymous with the human religious response of my tradition; o The arrogance of assuming no other human religious response could be the consequence of a genuine encounter with God; o The arrogance of assuming God’s ultimate purposes could not be accomplished apart from my religious system. It just never occurred to me. In spite of the prophetic core of the Hebrew Scriptures and the ministry of Jesus in his own conflict with the established religious structure, I failed to see that I had made an idol of my own tradition and absolutized it, as though God had created it rather than recognizing it as a human creation of response. © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   That it is a human response, a human construct does not mean that it is not response to authentic encounter, that the encounter has not yielded genuine insight into the nature of the Mystery as gracious, nor that the structured response does not mediate healing grace. All of that, I believe, is true of our Christian faith tradition; all of that has indeed been the fruit of Christianity. But, it is not the only tradition; it is not alone the true glimpse of the Truth. Earlier I raised two questions: Has Christianity faithfully and adequately responded to the Light of the ongoing drama of Creation and human development, and is it the only response that is genuine response to the Mystery? To the second question, I answer "No." To the first "Yes" and "No." Yes, Christianity has been a faithful response mediating true insight and grace, but "No," in the sense that it has become frozen, absolutized itself and failed to continue to remain open to new knowledge requiring new symbols bearing fresh understanding of the Mystery that is God, the cosmic process, the meaning of human existence and the wonder of it all. Unless Christianity undergoes creative transformation, it will die. In a recent interview in The Christian Century, a Yale professor of the philosophy of religion speaks of the failure of Christianity any longer to provide the integration of all other elements of life. Louis Dupré contends, ... religion must in some way integrate the profane and the sacred. Obviously, Christianity no longer plays an integrating role in the life of modern societies. Certainly for most people in the West, especially in Western Europe, it has lost its creative, formative power. Christianity has become simply one element of civilization among many others, and by no means the most important. In the past religious integration was handed down by a tradition. But that tradition itself has lost its authority in the eyes of our contemporaries, including most believers. (July 16-23, 1997, p. 655) Dupré sketches a historical perspective much as we have been attempting in this series. Why, he was asked, is it especially difficult to be Christian in our time? To that question, he responds, Culture as a whole has become secular in a way that it has never been before. One may plausibly argue that the 18th century was the first nonChristian century. Most leading thinkers and artists, even if they were not opposed to Christianity, ceased to take their inspiration from it: secularization became dominant. Still, even at that time, Western culture was so penetrated by Christian values and ideas that one might mistake entire passages of Voltaire or Diderot as having been written by believing Christians. Eighteenth-century culture was still steeped in a tradition that had been Christian since its beginning, and it was extremely difficult for these thinkers to free themselves from a language saturated with religion. © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   The 19th century was different. It was an epoch marked by a virulent antitheistic campaign to clean the culture slate of all Christian traces. Yet these attacks were the work of an elite; culture at large retained distinct remnants of its Christian roots. Even today ties still exist between Christianity and culture in Europe and more so in the U.S.. But on a more fundamental level, the West appears to have said its definitive farewell to a Christian culture. Little of the old hostility remains. Our secular colleagues are happy to recognize the debt our civilization owes to the Christian faith to the extent that the faith, having been absorbed by culture itself, has become simply another cultural artifact. Christianity has become an historical factor subservient to a secular culture rather than functioning as the creative power it once was. The new attitude of benign atheism was, I think, prepared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the three most prominent secularizers of the time, Marx, Freud and Nietzche. The interviewer then asks: Why single them out? How did they differ from the earlier atheists you mention? For Marx, Freud and Nietzche, the idea of forcibly eradicating religion had become unnecessary. Religion for them was a passing symptom that was rapidly vanishing by itself. Already Marx had moved beyond the idea of atheism as a mere assertion of the unreality of God. For Marx, concentrating on atheism distracts us from the positive task of liberating humanity from social oppression. Lenin’s active atheism, in which he used the state to try to destroy religion, is actually a fallback to earlier attitudes about religion. Freud admitted that no one can be forced not to believe. But as rational thought shows nothing in favor of religion and everything against it, to persist in a faith because no argument can decisively refute it is for Freud the sign of a lazy mind. Nietzche preached a spiritual gospel, a new religion without God, beyond Christianity and atheism, that could still learn much from the old faiths. Moving further in that direction, contemporary secular culture, especially in its communications media, shows a surprising openness toward religion. But little suggests that this interest surpasses the purely horizontal cultural level. Culture itself has become the real religion of our time, and it has absorbed all other religion as a subordinate part of itself. It even offers some of the emotional benefits of religion, without exacting the high price faith demands. We have all become atheists, not in the hostile, antireligious sense of an earlier age, but in the sense that God no longer matters absolutely in our closed world, if God matters at all. © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   Further along in the interview, Dupré suggested what I believe will be essential if Christianity is to be renewed and find new and vital expression. He had spoken of the necessity of individual spiritual renewal and then the statement was made, Your view of the spiritual life seems to encourage interfaith encounter. He responded, In our age we have come to understand our faith within the context of the aspirations, desires and needs expressed in so many forms since the beginning of the human race. We have learned to respect these many ways of humankind’s longing for God in the light of our own faith. Some Christians have been inspired to integrate pious attitudes and meditative practices derived from other faiths within their own, without betraying Christianity’s unique identity. In doing so they are following ancient examples. Christians have received so much from the Hebrew mother faith of which they are no longer aware. Also from the fourth century on, Greek fathers generously borrowed Neoplatonic speculation to an extent that, via Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius and Maximum Confessor, late Greek piety has shaped the very nature of Christian mysticism. Why should we then not be allowed, as even the desert fathers were, to borrow meditative exercises that centuries of pre-Christian practice have left us? In fact, here also the analogy of faith urges us to see the existence of other religions in the light of God’s providence. Buddhist silence may help the Christian in deepening insight into the mystery of the Trinity where the Father is the silent source of the eternal Word. And how could God’s omnipresence in Vedantic Hinduism not remind the Christian of the Spirit, qui replevit orbem terrarum—who fills the entire world? Such analogies cannot be fortuitous to the Christian mind, and we do well to heed them as signs of a divine Providence that, with loving care, rules not only Christians but all humans. It would be wrong, however, to regard these analogies as justifying a syncretistic relativism that entitles each person to compose his or her own religious collage. This attitude, all too common today, shows a lack of respect not only for one’s own faith but also for those faiths one so casually dismantles for spare parts. It is yet another manifestation of that radical anthropocentrism, the main enemy of sincere religion, that tempts believers to bring the language of transcendence down to the level of purely human wants and choice. Without detracting from the providential nature of other faiths, Christians cannot ignore the fact that this same Providence has led them to a faith that is not a "choice" but, for those chosen to it, an absolute summons. To relativize faith is, I think, to subvert its fundamentally divine character. Here I think Dupré points to that which we have begun to experience - © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page 9   that encounter with other genuine faith traditions not only leads us to a new respect for the breadth of response to the Mystery in the broad spectrum of religious traditions, but also deepens us in our own faith tradition and enhances our own spiritual experience, enriching it and authenticating it as indeed revelatory and the mediator of grace. What we are recognizing is the distinction between faith as response to the address of God, the Mystery of our existence, and the structure of beliefs that are formulated in response to that revelatory encounter. Such a formulation of beliefs is the human construction of a religious tradition. The encounter is initiated from the other side. Religion is the consequence, a human activity of reflection and the attempt to give some shape to the experience of the Mystery. In the words of Charles Davis, The absoluteness of faith is the absoluteness of total demand and total response in an experience of unrestricted love in relation to hidden transcendence or mystery. Faith is the drive toward transcendence, the thrust of human beings out of and beyond themselves, out of and beyond all the limited orders and human certainties under which they live, in an attempt to open themselves to the totality of existence and reach unlimited reality and ultimate value. It is a total response to the felt reality of a total demand. That absoluteness of faith should not be confused with a certitude of belief. (p. 67) Faith, Davis points out, gives assurance of a lived relationship, not absolute intellectual certitude. The human construction of religion takes the form of concepts and propositions. These cannot give absolute certitude; they are human constructs, not to be identified with the Divine. They are pointers, gropings, partial, limited, in a word - human. As David claims, Faith has a paradoxical character. It is a presence that is at the same time an absence, because no positive experience can lay hold of the transcendent. At the heart of faith is a negative experience, an experience that seems like a non-experience, because it is the breakdown of every finite experience, of all our concepts, images and feelings. Faith follows a narrow path between idolatry on the one side and nihilism on the other. Much religion is idolatrous inasmuch as it absolutizes some finite experience or expression. When faith is not idolatrous, it is difficult to distinguish from nihilism, because the presence it mediates is as transcendence, an absence on the human level, its plentitude is a void or emptiness of finite reality and meaning, its love co-exists with a sense of abandonment. What distinguishes the negative experience of faith from the unfaith of nihilism is precisely the refusal of closure, the willingness to accept a world without boundaries, even though on the cognitive level that © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page10   demands the surrender of a stable truth, a fixed center, a final meaning of our religious texts and of our human existence. (p. 76) Is Christianity dying? In its present form, unless it undergoes creative transformation, "Yes." But, God is not dead; the Mystery continues to breathe through the whole cosmic process, enlivening all that exists, beckoning us toward fuller spiritual life. And the concretization of the Mystery in the humanness of Jesus, in which our faith tradition finds its center, still challenges us to humane existence lived in the Presence of God. This is the amazing possibility to which this incredible moment in our life together calls us; this is the opportunity of a lifetime. We are cut loose, set free, not to separate ourselves from our spiritual heritage, but to open ourselves to a whole new appreciation of the encounter from beyond ourselves, calling us beyond every limited understanding and formulation to wonders not yet dreamed of. Thus, Christianity will not die, but live, transformed, standing in continuity with the heritage of faith we have entered into, continuing to provide us with insight, meaning and confident assurance. Its authentication will be its capacity to connect with our ongoing human experience. No longer will authoritarian claims, whether of tradition, Church, or Bible, be submitted to. That is not to deny the reality of divine revelation; it is simply to recognize in Davis’ words, that The appeal to revelation belongs to a culture in which the important truths concerning human life and society are handed down by teachers having authority and are proclaimed for acceptance as sacred. Such a culture no longer exists for us. Post Enlightenment, the appeal is rather to critical rationality and that presupposes an open community of discourse in which all the members participate in seeking knowledge and in which any claim to acceptance must rest upon evidence and argumentation open to scrutiny and criticism by all. Biblical criticism will not be reversed. We simply know, as Davis declares, The typical biblical book does not come down to us all of a piece from some acknowledged prophetic figure or divine messenger, but as the documentary sediment of the history of a people, with originating factors too complex for disentanglement with more than changing probability. This has changed our understanding of the authority of a biblical text. It is © Grand Valley State University �Is Christianity Dying? Richard A. Rhem Page11   not that of an oracle from on high but that of an expression of the religious identity of a particular people. (p. 110) Nevertheless, what we find in the Bible are paradigms of faith, expressions of the total response of persons and a community of persons whose experience of having been addressed elicits the absoluteness of trust in the Mystery of grace. Habakkuk found himself in turmoil over the ways of God; his parochialism was shattered; he did not pretend to understand. But his encounter with the Holy One of Israel issued in that beautiful expression of trust with which his writing concludes. In a word, he says, "Strip me of everything, let disaster come; Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights. Such trust is absolute, even when life is confusing and answers to our questions evade us. Such trust is enough in life, in death. References: Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f). © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/db1c0b8c4e1d51a10971cd4c559cc50d.mp3 08823404cd64b316f074b5e2c0838f97 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 XII Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f. 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-0-19970810 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-08-10 Title A name given to the resource Is Christianity Dying? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 10, 1997 entitled "Is Christianity Dying?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38. Mystery Nature of Religion Pluralism Religion as a Human Construct https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/84fc3432cd7d686c979dc969e11969e9.pdf b2788abe144731cd1a0d154ef2074586 PDF Text Text Why Is There So Much Anger in Religion? From the series: Tough Questions; No Easy Answers Scripture: Jonah 3, 4; James 1:17-27; Luke 15:25-32 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan August 3, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon One of the fascinating aspects of preaching for me is the way questions, insights, and reflections that lead me to a sermon series that I create, sometimes lead me to deeper levels of reflection and to the analysis of a subject that I had not anticipated. Such is the case in this current series, "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers." On the surface, the tough questions are simply questions that arise as I reflect on the phenomenon of religious experience. But, I am finding myself with each successive question moving to a deeper level, thinking about religious experience itself or religion itself, its origins, its function in society, its potential for negativity leading to human bondage and oppression as well as its possibilities for human fulfillment and growth. Take the question raised in this message, "Why is there so much anger in religion?" That is an easily observable fact: anger seethes beneath the surface in the respective religions and in many religious folk. Once again this past week, terror struck in Jerusalem, bringing death and injury as suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded market, assured that such martyrdom would bring them immediately to paradise. In Brooklyn, a bombing plot was preempted by arrest before another tragedy was perpetuated. What is at work here is not simply religious fanaticism. Religion is often coopted by political opportunists, and cultural humiliation fuels terrorism. Nonetheless, religion is intertwined, often providing legitimation for such acts and, of course, rewards. In the three great Western religious traditions linked to the Bible, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there are powerful fundamentalist movements that are marked by violent means justified by the ends in view - the establishment of the righteous empire and the destruction of those viewed as the enemy of true belief and practice. © Grand Valley State University   �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   But, we need not go to the radical fringes of religious belief and practice to encounter anger which results in broken community, the erecting of barriers between people - even within families - and the exclusion of anyone who fails to pass whatever litmus test might be established for group identity. We see it all around us. Why? That is the question. Attempting to find an answer drives us once again to reflect on the phenomenon of religion itself. We typically think of religion as the mediator of meaning, of salvation or healing, of peace and comfort. Are we not taken aback when we realize religion is also a source of anger in its practitioners? We have become aware in this series of reflections that religion is a human creation arising out of the experience of death. The cosmic drama evolves to a point billions of years along where a creature we call human develops the capacity for consciousness, self-awareness and, thereby, the ability to "get out of his skin," to reflect back on himself, becoming aware that "all flesh is mortal." He will die. Those he values in his intimate circle will die. He develops with awareness the capacity to suffer; he encounters the tragic dimension of existence. He asks "Why? What does it mean?” In the wrestling with such ultimate existential questions with, we might say, life’s boundary situations, the human creature, human society, develops structures of meaning which become the means of coping with the mystery of life, of death, of tragedy, of joy. Existence is threatening; life is fragile; the human experience is perilous. Religion arises as a means of negotiating life’s passages. This was articulated powerfully in the 19th century, as we have seen, by the German philosopher/theologian, Ludwig Feuerbach, who was followed by Marx who sought resolution of history’s suffering by history’s transformation through class warfare; by Freud who saw religion as illusion and salvation by psychotherapy dissolving the power of the distortion within the unconscious and early childhood experience; by Nietzsche who proclaimed "God is dead" and who celebrated "the superman" and the will to power. Quite naturally, the religious world fought these thinkers who opened up the avenue of modern atheism and denied the truth of their claims. But, their claims made too much sense, had too much the ring of truth. The Church, to speak only of the Christian tradition, went into a defensive posture, simply denying the insight of the modern analysis of religion, failing to recognize that there was really only one issue that demanded denial if religion was to continue to be intelligently practiced; namely, that human religion had its source, not in the human creature, but in the Question placed in his experience from beyond, from his depths - that religions are human creations but created in response to an address from outside, beyond, the depths. Such a claim is grounded on the conviction that there is a Mystery, creative Source of all, that confronts, encounters, puts in question the human creature. © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   We might speak of it as simply the experience of God, of the Infinite One from whom all flows and to whom all returns. If we have such a conviction, then we can recognize the respective religions as the result of some founding vision which resulted in a teaching, a cultic practice, and a code of behavior. The teaching flows out of the particular vision or epiphany; the cultic practice directs the manner of worship and devotion; the code of behavior gives directions for living in a way congruent with the teaching, or conception of deity. Thus we have come to see Religion as a human creation, as response to an encounter with God performing a critical function: It provides Something to believe, A manner of worship, A way to live. Such a function is mediatory; Religion provides the means by which a person opens him or herself to the experience of the transcendent Mystery, the experience of God. Religious belief, devotion or practice is never an end in itself. It is rather the agency through which one comes into the presence of God that issues in the experience of love, of grace, of freedom. Religion functioning thus fulfills an extremely critical and positive purpose for the human creature for, as we have seen, there is a universal human yearning for some meaning in the face of life’s perplexity, some hope and comfort in the presence of human suffering and death. But, if this is the case, why is there so much anger in religion, or, why is so much anger present in religious communities? That is a tough question and I have no easy answer, but let’s think about it together. One of the most acute analyses of Religion of which I am aware is Charles Davis’ forward in his Temptations of Religion. Acknowledging the need of structures and institutions to bring some order to our human experience, Davis points to the fatal tendency of all such social structures and institutions to absolutize themselves, becoming ends in themselves rather than understanding themselves as merely means to a greater end - the experience of community or of the transcendent. Rather than understanding themselves as means to a greater end, as provisional, as relative, they become ends in themselves. They harden, grow rigid, inflexible; unable to allow new, more effective structures or institutions to replace them. In his own words, Davis claims, © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   I would stress the importance in human living of that consolidating function. Men cannot live without the imposition of some social, institutional order upon the flux of their experience. Nevertheless, all such orders and their components are relative. In themselves they cannot claim an absolute value or a universal necessity. To speak of a particular order as relative does not mean that it is the product of individual or group caprice. A good social order will be the result of creative intelligence and freedom, and designed both to increase the quality of human living and to release and foster the drive toward transcendence. But none of this makes the order with its prescriptions an unchanging absolute. This brings me to one of the most persistent and perhaps deadliest of the temptations of religion, the temptation I am calling the anger of morality. By this I mean the insistence upon an established pattern of behavior and thought for its own sake, so that it loses its mediatory quality and becomes a closed order as an end in itself. I call it anger, because psychologically the attitude I am describing would seem to be a hostile reaction that chokes love, a bitter rejection of what is free and does not conform, the sharp repulsion of anything that disturbs or threatens an enclosed self. Since the established pattern that may be angrily insisted upon is threefold, namely, ritual, ethical, and doctrinal, we find three similar forms of distortion. These are familiar to us as ritualism (in a pejorative sense), legalism, and dogmatism. All three manifest the same fundamental failing, that is, a restrictive insistence upon a particular institutional order, so that instead of facilitating the movement of men toward selftranscendence, it becomes a rigid framework that imprisons them. Here, however, I want to direct my attention to the working of this temptation in the area of moral values and conduct. Hence I have called it the anger of morality. But there should be no difficulty in applying my remarks to the other two areas. The anger of morality is more than the periodic inertia that defends an obsolete system and resists change. An underlying factor is the human fear of freedom, of love, and of self-transcendence. That fear can turn with hatred as well as anger upon those who manifest an openness one is afraid to allow oneself. It is the personal repression of self-transcendence that leads people to seize upon an institutional order as an instrument for suppressing the feared drive in others. Law and order becomes the cry of the repressed against the free. Rosemary Haughton, in her book Love, shows in some detail how the organization of human life so often suppresses love, a word she uses in the sense of the self-giving form of the drive for self-transcendence. In writing © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   of child-rearing, which after all is the process of socialization and thus shows the working of the social order, she says: "In fact the study of child care, both in the past and present, is largely a study of the restriction or suppression of love." Men fear the openness, the self-transcendence, the self-giving of love, and this fear often cripples the mediatory function of their institutions and of the code of behavior these demand. The anger of morality is a temptation for every social order and institution, even those making no explicit appeal to religion. It appears as the failure to recognize the inadequacy of any particular institutional order in relation to reality and human experience as a whole. Man is taken as made for the law, instead of the law as being made for man. Any movement that cannot be contained within the established order is feared and suppressed. But distinctively religious institutions are subject to more virulent forms of the temptation. Because of their direct concern with the transcendent absolute, when they turn in upon themselves, lose their openness and mediatory capacity and become closed institutions, they fall into a selfidolatry and claim an absolute value for themselves. They do so in effect if not in words. The consolidating function of the religious system in sustaining a stable, meaningful order is no longer complemented by its function of promoting the human drive beyond every limited order to reality and truth as transcendent. Why? Because the religious system cannot bear to be itself surpassed and relativized. Hence the order ceases to mediate and becomes so much dead weight. Temptations of Religion, Charles Davis, p. 79F. Charles Davis points out how religion in its respective forms claims finality, absoluteness. The institutional leadership makes the claim and shapes the mind set of the people forming in them a sense of the ultimacy of the respective religious traditions in their doctrine, their forms of worship and their moral code. Institutional strength and solidarity is sought by claiming absolute truth and absolute practice in devotion and life. Conformity to belief and practice is not left to persuasion and freely offered response; means of enforcement are developed and, where the system is challenged or appears vulnerable, coercion is applied. A movement that begins in spiritual explosion resulting from fresh vision and is marked by confidence, freedom, and joy moves toward normality and then sterility, and at each stage the demand for conformity increases and coercion comes into play. That’s a view from the institutional perspective. But, why do so many passively conform for so long? In other words, why do people put up with institutional coercion? © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Is it because we prefer order and predictability in our lives that are chaotic enough without too much freedom and openness in our lives? I think this is particularly true in the area of our concern - in our religious experience. I think it is safe to say that in no other area of life has the human creature been so passive, so conforming as in religious belief and practice. The institutional leadership has cultivated in the people an unthinking passivity and the people have traded a vital personal faith perspective for the ease and comfort of certainty. The problem is, of course, that such absolute certainty is a false certainty, for it is the very essence of human historical existence that absolute truth and absolute certainty are denied us. There is no possibility of anything more than a relative apprehension, always provisional, always tentative, always open to revision, of the Absolute, of the transcendent Mystery. But, that is not what we have been told. Rather, the respective religious traditions - some at least and ours certainly - have claimed absoluteness and played to the human lust for certitude. In these messages I have been repeating again and again my understanding of religion as a human construction. It is response to genuine encounter, but the response is a human creation, which means precisely that it is not to be identified with absoluteness that is to turn it into idolatry. Someone sent me a copy of an article that appeared recently in a hyper-Calvinist publication showing that my "heresy" stems from my failure to take the Bible, in the words of the Belgic Confession, as being "most perfect and complete in all respects." The author went on to claim "that the Bible is the infallible and complete written record of God’s revelation in Christ to His people." The article was appropriately entitled "God’s Way ... Or No Way." There was not enough selfawareness or humility to acknowledge that "God’s Way" is not the same as our limited human groping after truth that will always fall short in our attempts to reduce it to our little systems. Karen Armstrong’s in-depth study of 4000 years of the history of God provides a much broader perspective. She recognizes the creative role of human imagination in the forming of images of God, symbolic language that points beyond itself to the Mystery. And she views the present time as a time of transition when old metaphors have lost their power and new symbols are trying to emerge. She pointed to the English poet John Keats who spoke of the poet’s waiting in the darkness for the poem to write itself. This capacity to wait while the image was forming he called "negative capability ... [being] capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   According to Karen Armstrong, that is where we are in the present cultural milieu - waiting, but not anxious, as though we had to protect God or preserve a religious system. Newness will emerge; in the meantime, we trust. I was delighted to find in Kathleen Norris’ recent book, The Cloister Walk, a chapter entitled "Exile, Homeland, and Negative Capability." The citation above about negative capability was at the head of the chapter. In this chapter, she speaks of going into elementary classrooms to read poetry and to stimulate the children to write. Interestingly, she noted that the good students did not generally do well with this endeavor in creative writing, but often the traditionally poorer students who did not function well in the ordered disciplines showed great creativity and entered more happily into the exercise. Norris writes, Metaphor has been so degraded in our culture that it may be difficult for people to conceive of worship as a "metaphoric exchange." But as a poet, I am willing to explore the implications. How would it change our understanding of worship if, from the time they were small, children were taught to value and explore the possibilities of Keat’s "negative capability" in themselves? They might better understand faith as a process and church tradition as not only relevant but strikingly alive. It is worship, she contends, that gives rise to theological reflection, and not the other way around, and if this is understood, then on the analogy of writing a poem, we would see "that one might grow into faith much as one writes a poem. It takes time, patience, discipline, a listening heart. There is precious little certainty, and often great struggling, but also joy in our discoveries." Again, analogous to birthing a poem, one must not settle for a false certitude but embrace ambiguity and mystery. If the Church had had more of such an understanding - God as mystery, the ambiguity of human experience, the struggle for insight, the walls of faith as a process, the people would have been shaped with a different mind and heart, would have developed patience in the quest for God and compassion with their fellow pilgrims on journey to the Holy City. Instead, the religious institutions have been marked by arrogant claims to absoluteness, oppressive methods of requiring conformity, coercive means to eliminate spontaneity and freedom, and, consequently ,utterly failed to create space for the freedom of the Spirit’s brooding ministry. Pressure to conform, coercion used against the one who fails to comply - all of this creates rather a spirit of fear, suspicion, and anger. Within the biblical witness there are protests against the angry spirit that battles against an inclusive and compassionate spirit. © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   In the Hebrew scriptures, Jonah is the classic text condemning a narrow exclusionary spirit and calling for compassion. The story is in the form of parable - Jonah is called by God to go to the great ancient city of Nineveh, a center of wickedness, according to the story. Jonah is to preach repentance lest God visit the city with judgment. Jonah wants nothing of such an assignment. He cares not whether Nineveh is scorched; in fact, he would rather have it that way. Should he preach and bring repentance, he senses God would spare them and, in all honesty, he would rather they be damned. So he boards a boat sailing on the opposite direction. Well, you know the story; a storm arises. The ancient thinking said God must be angry because of someone on board. Jonah acknowledges it is he; he is fleeing God’s command. So, overboard he goes; the storm ceases; the boat and crew are safe. But, what of Jonah? A watery grave? No. He is swallowed by a great fish and survives being there for three days and three nights after which the fish spews Jonah on to dry land: Nineveh after all. He goes. He preaches God’s word. Nineveh heeds, repents, and is spared. Ah, just as he thought - God’s compassion will spare this alien people when everything in Jonah was saying - "God, damn them!" God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. Can you celebrate that, Jonah? Your preaching made a difference. The people are turning to God and God is full of mercy. No, not so. We read, rather, "But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry." He badgers the Lord. See! This is just what I expected! That’s why I fled to Tarshish in the first place because, "I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love ..." Jonah was so depressed by the wideness of God’s mercy that he wanted to die. But, God is not done with this prophet for this story is not about Nineveh, but about Jonah and the spirit Jonah represented - a narrow exclusionary spirit that resented the mercy of God flowing beyond the narrow limits of Israel. So, God queries, "Is it right for you to be angry?" No answer. Jonah heads for the hills to watch the drama unfold. He sat under a leafy booth he made to protect him from the burning sun. Waiting in the shade, there grew © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page 9   above him a marvelous bush that provided even better cover. Jonah was pleased very comfortable. But, the next day the Lord sent a worm that killed the bush as quickly as it had grown. And, you guessed it - Jonah was angry. Once again, he wanted to die. Now it was time for the lesson - God asks, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" Yes! But, Jonah, you didn’t have anything to do with the growth or development of the bush, which was here today and gone tomorrow; yet you grieve its loss. How should I feel about this great city of Nineveh - all the people and the animals? The parable makes its point - about as poignantly as the one Jesus told of a father with two sons - I need not rehearse the parable - only to say that when the prodigal returns from his fling in the far country, he is received graciously by the Father who throws a party. The elder brother reflects precisely the bitter spirit we just saw in Jonah. Jesus says, " ... he became angry and refused to go in." Think about it: Jonah, a parable in the Hebrew scripture that reveals the ugliness of an exclusive spirit that really does not want God’s mercy to be experienced by all, that is really angry that others who are different - in race, culture, ethnicity, creedal commitment or whatever are also loved by God. The parable Jesus told exposing the naked face of resentment that God’s grace is not a matter of performance, of merit, but offered to any open to receive it. What is operative here? Is it not perhaps a religion of obligation grudgingly practiced for fear that failing to do so would hold negative consequences now and eternally? Anger is seen to arise when the absolute certainty of one’s creed and practice is relativized; Anger is present when one views his religious obligation as an onerous task which he resents - and then sees some other one invited to the party while never having "put in his time." Lust for certitude that is not possible. Resentment at a grace that is offered apart from performance. There may be more operative in the anger present in much religion but these two causes are quite obviously major factors. What a pity. How many good people, sincere and well meaning, have not been crippled by an angry spirit because they were never told honestly that their religious system is relatively effective, not the one and only absolute way. They’ve been told their beliefs and practices "fall out of heaven" unmediated by human imagination and construction. © Grand Valley State University �Why So Much Anger in Religion? Richard A. Rhem Page10   Further, they have never been allowed a glimpse of the wideness of God’s mercy that will never be denied, never exposed to a grace irresistible that will never give up on the human family, all of whom are sisters and brothers because all the children of the God Who is Mystery, Who is Love. References: Charles Davis. Temptations of Religion. Harper & Row, 1974. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b1ee50b60fb460ecfd496ca1911745fb.mp3 068a35a3e159c8753aa3a3b794c650c9 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 XI Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Jonah 3,4, James 1:17-27, Luke 15:25-32 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Charles Davis, Temptations of Religions, 1974 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-0-19970803 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-08-03 Title A name given to the resource Why Is There So Much Anger in Religion? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 3, 1997 entitled "Why Is There So Much Anger in Religion?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jonah 3,4, James 1:17-27, Luke 15:25-32. Inclusive Meaning Nature of Religion Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/09bc57f989035914c584330e132eafc6.pdf 8098a707555493ff3e2f258bafd53c2f PDF Text Text Is Religion Really Escape From Life? From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture: Jeremiah 45:5; John 12:20-28 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 27, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon A question I often ask myself as a pastor, a teacher of this religious community, is whether I am an agent of human wholeness or of human weakness. Do I enable my people better to face life and cope with reality as I understand it, or, do I shield and shelter you from life and reality, perpetuating beliefs and ideas that are really at odds with what I believe to be true about the universe, the human experience and the nature of religion? We are considering tough questions for which there are no easy answers and in this sermon I raise the question whether religion is really an escape from life. By that, I mean whether our religious belief and practice may be an expression of human fear and weakness in the face of the reality of our human experience and, further, whether perhaps religion’s focus on another world and a hereafter becomes a detriment to the full engagement with and celebration of this world and this life. As we saw last week, religion is a universal human phenomenon; the study of the human species from the most highly developed societies to the most remote and primitive, manifests religious belief and practice of one sort or another. That is because religion’s origin lies in the core questions that reside in the human consciousness. At some point in the cosmic evolutionary development of billions of years, the energy of the Big Bang coalesced into inorganic matter that, over the stretch of billions of years, evolved into organic or living matter. The development eventuated in living matter, in the case of animal life, coming to consciousness. Self-consciousness, awareness of oneself and of the other. With selfconsciousness dawned the realization that death is universal; the human creature recognized the fact of mortality and the presence of suffering, anguish, questions that cannot be repressed finally, questions about the meaning of existence. It is out of such deep questions that religions arise in the multi forms of their manifestations. © Grand Valley State University   �Religion Escape from Life? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Our focus last week was on the question at the core - What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? I suggested that perhaps that was the core question of the core questions about human existence. There is, however, an equally anguishing question – the more human existence came under thoughtful scrutiny, and cumulative human experience became available for reflection – and that is the question of human suffering. Let me make it concrete; we need no long treatise on the mystery of suffering and how suffering defies meaning and reduces us to numb silence. Late Friday evening I was called and responded by making a midnight run to Grand Rapids, Butterworth Hospital, The Children’s Unit. Five-year-old Lydia Hatton had been brought in in order to try to bring excruciating pain under control. For 16 months she and her parents, Brett and Carla, have carried on a fierce battle against the killer cancer that refuses to be stymied and defeated. The child is beautiful, brilliant, adorable. And the child’s body is racked with pain. And the child is dying. A child. Wide awake at midnight, she counted to 100 for me. No stone has been left unturned to find a cure and health for Lydia. The suffering increases as the end approaches. What does one say to Brett and Carla? One best not say anything; I told them I have nothing to say. I was there simply to hug them and hold them as we wept together. Certainly, death consciously confronted raised the questions that gave rise to religion. And, perhaps, even more for us, who have become aware of the full scope of the human drama, suffering drives us to the questions of meaning and meaninglessness. Religion has been throughout human history the means by which, through which, people have responded to the reality of death and the painful aspects of life. Religion has provided a teaching, a cultic form for worship, and a way to live, or a moral code. Until the 18th century, God’s existence was taken for granted, however God might have been conceived. Worship, through cultic action, sacrifice, penance and prayer, was the means to gain favor, be in harmony with, appease or cajole the deity, thereby preserving life and securing blessing. Thus, fear, suffering, a sense of vulnerability and weakness before powers and forces beyond a person’s control were the origin of ritual, sacrifice and prayer - the ingredients of religion. Ludwig Feuerbach, to whom I referred last week as the source of the projection theory that led to the whole development of modern atheism, saw God as a human invention. This is what he meant by projection. Feuerbach claimed that religion is fundamentally a product of human instinct for self-preservation, of human egoism. The person projects an objective Being as real beyond him or herself and that Being possesses the powers, desires and wishes in ideological © Grand Valley State University �Religion Escape from Life? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   form which the human being finds in him or herself. The person then worships this transcendent Being, which is only one’s own idealized self. In weakness, the person depends on this supernatural being of their own construction. Feuerbach claimed, "What man wishes to be, he makes his God." Consequently, the idea of God is nothing but human fantasy born out of desire for this perfect being to exist in order to be leaned on in the midst of life’s trials, suffering and uncertainties. This, Feuerbach claimed, cultivated weakness in humankind. Rather than celebrating humanity in its infinite spirit, we worship a perfect being "out there" and miss the grandeur of this world. He saw it as his task, a task given even more radical expression by Karl Marx, to turn the attention of the human species from God to the human, from heaven to earth, from the hereafter to the here and now. In his critique of Feuerbach, Hans Küng in Does God Exist?, begins by recognizing much truth in Feuerbach’s description of religion and the role it plays in human experience. The evidence of religion as a human security blanket, as a buffer against the darkness, the pain and the suffering of human experience is too obvious to question. In the wake of the emergence of modern atheism, scholars from various fields have expressed the implication of a heaven devoid of God and an earth devoid of heaven. Eric Fromm in Man for Himself, has written, There is only one solution to his problem: to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness in a universe indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve his problem for him. The biologist Jacques Monod, in his Nobel prize winning work, Chance and Necessity, declares, If he accepts this (negative) message in its full significance, man must at last wake out of his millenary dream and discover his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. He must realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music, and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his sufferings or his crimes. (p. 160) Such expression of the consequence of the development of modern atheism has a chilling effect, but it does point out a major function that religion has performed in the human story. Fearful of being alone, of being powerless, a pawn of arbitrary and capricious cosmic forces, the creature come to consciousness devises a means by which to tame the powers, to appease an offended deity, to gain favor and blessing. No one surveying the human story and aware of the function of religion can deny that there is much truth in such an analysis. Before we rise up in protest and accuse those who have come to such a conclusion of godlessness and wickedness, we would do better to take seriously the critique, to recognize the validity of this description of religion’s role in the history of the race. © Grand Valley State University �Religion Escape from Life? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Having done that with as much candor as we can summon, we might then go on to inquire whether, having analyzed religion thus, that is all there is to say, or might there be something more? That religion can be used to deny the darkness and escape life’s harsh edge, to project to the future what is longed for and missed in the present, cannot be denied. To the question, "Is Religion really an escape from life," one can only answer - all too often. That religion as a human structure in its wide variety of forms is a coping mechanism for conscious creatures quaking before threat and loss is too obvious to deny. I have no argument with Feuerbach or Marx or Freud or Nietzsche on that score. To the degree that religion has, consequently, debased the person and dehumanized people, causing them to remain in infancy and adolescence rather than growing to maturity, taking responsibility for their lives and their world, working at transformation and the movement toward Spirit and shalom, I, too, would criticize it and distance myself from it. But, this I would claim against those who say Religion is nothing more than escape - might religion be universal not simply because of the universality of human death and suffering that has spawned its presence, but because of a response to an encounter from beyond or from the depths? Might not the human creature in his or her consciousness be aware of an inner dialogue with "Something" or "Someone," a dialogue in which the first word issues from the other side? And is there not evidence that religion has been not only a coping structure to keep the darkness at bay, but also a divine imperative to speak some word, to act out some conviction no matter what the price? Has not religion also been a force for transformation of society, challenging established orders that have become demonic and oppressive. I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, certainly one of the great human spirits of this century who was martyred 52 years ago as the Second World War was ending - a victim of the darkness spread by Hitler and the Nazi regime. He saw the underside of religion. He saw how religion appealed to human weakness. He saw how its institutional forms could be coopted by political power and how the religious institution sought to perpetuate itself by addressing the human being at his or her weakest point. I’ve included in the liturgy some citations from his Letters and Papers from Prison. But, one cannot read that spiritual testament without recognizing that it was precisely his spiritual center that enabled him to throw himself into the conflict, to risk and finally offer up his life in the cause of humanity which is, he believed, the cause of God. It was from Bonhoeffer that I learned of Jeremiah 45. In his thin volume there are over a hundred scripture citations, but five times he refers to Jeremiah 45. Obviously, it became for him a key life text. © Grand Valley State University �Religion Escape from Life? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Jeremiah’s secretary, Baruch, who recorded Jeremiah’s words, was in despair. When Babylon carried off the exiles, they left some Jews in the land, among them Jeremiah and Baruch. But now those who remained were going to flee to Egypt for protection. Jeremiah spoke against it, but was forced, nonetheless, to go along and it was true also for Baruch. In chapter 45, Baruch cries out in weariness and despair. God’s word comes to him through the prophet You sought great things for yourself. Seek not your advantage. Be true to your risky faith; ask no more. But, there is a promise I will give you your life. You will survive. Or, at least that for which you stand, that for which you have stood up - that vision, that truth - that will survive. Jeremiah’s life was taken in Egypt. Bonhoeffer’s life was taken by the Nazis. But, they lived, true to their vision. That is to live. And what shall we say of Jesus? As the crisis broke upon him, in the phrase of John’s gospel, "The hour," he said, What should I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Is religion really escape from life? Much religion much of the time is just that. But, that is not its truest, highest function. It can also be response to a word, a call from beyond, from the depths to commit oneself to an alternative vision. Sometimes, like Jesus and Jeremiah and Bonhoeffer, we are caught in the dismantling phase - to tear down and pluck up, to use Jeremiah’s call; sometimes we may die in the darkness with the exhaustion of Baruch, the dereliction of Jesus, "My God, why ..." But, if some truth has grasped us, some vision possessed us, then to be true to that vision, that word is to find life by losing life. Such religious passion is not escape; it is rather the catalyst to engagement with life - and that is the only life worth living. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ea7c5d5d927d588cb1c6ffc2439821b9.mp3 1207256c35e74632d0902a333b131287 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 X Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Jeremiah 45:5, John 12:20-28 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-0-19970727 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-27 Title A name given to the resource Is Religion Really Escape from Life? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 27, 1997 entitled "Is Religion Really Escape from Life?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 45:5, John 12:20-28. Nature of Religion Suffering Transformative Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0d518af25b919590d26babfaeaa06f29.pdf cbd1f85381ae05377cc8a54241bc8a69 PDF Text Text What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture: Romans 8:19; Luke 20:38 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 20, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon What lies beyond death’s veil? That is a tough question and there is no easy answer because the experience beyond death is beyond the limit of human experience. Ah, you say, but there is one who returned to demonstrate that there is life beyond life - Jesus, the resurrected Christ. And I must respond that that is the witness of the Christian faith, the conviction, the experience that was the catalyst to launch what has become the Christian religion. But, it is an affirmation of faith beyond the kind of verification that settles the matter. And in this series of messages I am simply setting forth what Christian faith proclaims. I am attempting to engage the core questions of human existence in light of a contemporary knowledge of the universe, the human being and society and the historical development of which we are aware. Religion is a universal phenomenon. In the last century when anthropologists gained access to all peoples of the earth, from the most highly developed societies to the most remote and primitive tribes, this was the discovery. The human being is a religious animal. And why should religion be a universal human phenomenon? Is it not because when that stage of the unfolding development of the universe was reached in which consciousness, self-consciousness, awareness first manifested itself, the human creature who could now get out of his skin and reflect back on himself came to recognize the fact that he was mortal? Members of his clan died. He would die. The human creature, that is, came to the consciousness of his own death. When I married Nancy I inherited a Siamese cat that I never really accepted, three kids whom I love and a standard poodle named Topaz. I loved Topaz, too, but he developed kidney problems and euthanasia was called for. Then there was Midnight, a black standard poodle whom we loved even though he was emotionally retarded. He, too, died and was given proper burial in a sand dune. © Grand Valley State University   �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Now there is Hershey, a chocolate brown poodle who is growing older but still acts like an incorrigible puppy. Topaz, Midnight and Hershey were (are) lovable, affectionate, manifest intelligence - all of that – but do not possess consciousness, self awareness. Consequently, they possess the life instinct, survival instinct, but not awareness of the transitory nature of their canine existence. Hershey never focuses his big brown eyes on me and says, "Pastor, someday I will die and I wonder why." I go into this at length to help you see that it is our consciousness, our selfawareness that raises the questions at the core of our being: Where did I come from? Why am I here? What is the meaning/purpose of my life? Is this all there is? What happens at my death? Nothingness? Existence in another dimension? It is the attempt to address and answer such core questions that gives rise to religion. It is the common focus and purpose of all religions, not just Christianity. We tend to forget this. Religion becomes an end in itself: its doctrine something to believe, its cultic forms providing ritual/worship, its moral teaching the way to live in light of its understanding of reality, God, human existence. Religion, then, continues to provide answers to the core questions, but at a step removed from where we live and wrestle with the questions. Religious doctrine tends to move from an existential answer full of passion to an intellectual discussion filled with arguments and rational discourse. And then I hear the physician’s diagnosis: "You are terminally ill; you have at most six months." Or the love of my life dies, or some other instance that creates shock, trauma, and blackness. Now, I am not satisfied with rational discourse or ancient dogma. Now I really need to know and I plunge into anxious struggle with the reality facing me. It is out of such angst, struggle, and fear that religion arises. It gets regularized, formalized, sterile. But then I face the darkness and the religious quest becomes intense. Now I seek some light, some meaning and understanding. Now religion comes alive in my experience; now it becomes very real. It is at the level of existential intensity that I raise the question, "What lies beyond death’s veil?" My purpose is not to give you an easy answer; there aren’t © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   any. Nor is it simply to affirm Easter faith in the resurrection. I’ve done that here for thirty Easters. Rather, I want you to come to understand the question in order to find your way into a place of faith that is your own. If we don’t really understand the questions that drive the religious quest, we may have all the classic orthodox answers but we may be devoid of a deeply personal faith that really brings us inner peace and confidence. So, to the question: "What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?" As I stated above, there are two basic options: Nothing, or Something More. The option, "Something More", was the nearly universal conviction of all peoples and religion until the 19th century. Even Buddhism and Hinduism, that speak of Nirvana as "Nothingness," view that not as negation of Being. But it is not my intention to attempt to describe such subtleties. Rather, I want to point out that the crisis of belief in some kind of ongoing existence after death is a relatively modern phenomenon and our own 20th century has been shaped by what can be called modern atheism, which can be traced back to the German philosopher/theologian Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach viewed religion as the result of human projection. God does not exist. God is a human invention created to meet human needs, fears and suffering, and then projected into another realm called heaven. For Feuerbach, religion is projection. Building uncritically on that assumption, we have the development of modern atheism. Karl Marx, following Feuerbach, claimed religion was the opium of the people, drugging the human race so it endured injustice and suffering in the hope of a better existence beyond in heaven. Marx thus turned from heaven and afterlife to the transformation of earth and this life, calling for the end of human exploitation by the powerful who oppressed the masses. Sigmund Freud took Feuerbach’s projection idea and claimed religion was illusion. No objective reality corresponded to human religions constructions - no God, no heaven, nothing beyond the veil. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, brought this train of thinking to its ultimate logical conclusion, to Nihilism: nothingness - no God, no meaning, no right or wrong. Nietzsche was not happy about such a state of affairs. This is the philosopher who cried out in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “God is dead; we have killed him,” and who, on the threshold of the 20th century, declared, "Nothing is true, all is permitted." His insight drove him mad. He spent the last twelve years of his life in an institution for the insane. In his work, The Hidden Face of God, Richard Elliott Friedman in a chapter dealing with Nietzsche entitled, "The ‘Death’ of God," writes, © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Nietzsche’s breakdown, and the elements that it reflected, really does fit as symbolically expressing a culture’s breakdown, or at least its arrival at a critical turning point. And at the summit of that culture was its God. This state of things had been in the making for centuries in that culture. The invention of the printing press made it possible for everyone - not just the priests and the wealthy - to have a Bible, and thus an opportunity to have informed doubts. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, new knowledge of the age of the earth, the triumph of science in general, all provided potent grounds for doubts. The development of the state as a challenge to the Church for worldly authority also impinged on the authority of the Church and ultimately God.... Open challenges to the claims of religion by respectable intellectuals of all backgrounds became possible (Hobbes, Spinoza, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, etc., etc.) Hegel could write of the death of God. Marx could call religion opium of the masses. Even with the Church, modern biblical criticism became acceptable and, in the formulations of Julius Wellhausen, the father of modern biblical scholarship, it became famous; it was the culmination of a process leading to a new feeling about the Bible, religion, and God. Philosophical, political, scientific, technological, and social forces all were challenging traditional religion and religious establishments in essential ways. (p. 195F) The spiritual crisis of culture in the West that Nietzsche brought to expression as the 19th century ended came to full bloom in the shaking of the foundations in our century. And if religion’s origins lie in the struggle to answer life’s core questions and the core questions about death and what if anything lies beyond its veil, then, given the crisis of Christian faith in this century, it is no wonder the traditional hope provided by the Christian tradition should be clouded with doubt and loss. As is so often true, the Church in its various forms and institutional structures, fought a rear guard action, affirming faith in life after life but failing to do so while taking the modern critiques seriously. Dogmatic declaration of faith’s content without wrestling with the enlightenment created by new knowledge and a revolutionary understanding of reality is a futile endeavor. Rather, the faith that can still connect with human experience must be shaped in light of a new conception of the universe, of the human being, and the inter-action of God with the world. Such an approach is taken by Hans Küng in his lectures entitled Eternal Life? He writes, The turning point to the modern age, the deepest inversion in the time after the birth of Christ, the dual Copernican turning point - from earth to the sun and at the same time from God to the human being - has to be taken seriously. That is to say, we are raising the question of eternal life at a time when a completely new scientific world vision has come to prevail and the blue outer wall of the heavenly halls as the scene of eternal life has begun © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   literally to dissolve into the air; when the postulate of the Enlightenment has penetrated everywhere and there is no longer any eternal truth that can evade the critical judgment of reason by an appeal merely to the authority of Bible, tradition or Church, while belief in eternity can no longer be imposed by authority or taken for granted as part of an ideology; when ideological criticism has laid bare the sociological misuse of belief in eternity, so that the latter can never again be made to serve as an empty promise of a hereafter or as a means of stabilizing unjust, inhuman conditions; when the political-cultural predominance of Christianity has ceased, with the result that the denial of an eternal life no longer involves mortal danger and the all-embracing secularization process has produced a shift of consciousness from the hereafter to the here and now, from life after death to life before death, from yearning for heaven to fidelity to earth. (p. 6) This is the context of our age; it is in this context that we must raise the tough question: What lies beyond death’s veil? Is there nothing? Is there something more? Can the "something more" be affirmed with intellectual integrity as well as the passion of faith? Let us acknowledge that such a conviction was, as indicated above, universally held until the 19th century and the spiritual crisis brought on by the modern scientific understanding of the world. But, let us acknowledge as well that much Christian teaching and preaching did point to the afterlife as consolation and compensation for the suffering and injustice of this life. We must recognize further that such a view did too often lead to passivity toward the wrongs of this world and to the failure fully to live and celebrate this world and our present human experience. We recognize also that confidence that there was "something more" beyond death’s veil is clearly a central proclamation of Christian faith. It was held by the Pharisaic party of the Jewish people during Jesus’ time and he shared that belief. We see this in his discussion with the Sadducees in Luke 20. They denied the idea of resurrection and put to Jesus the question about the woman with multiple husbands. In the resurrection life, whose wife would she be? Jesus claimed the question was nonsensical since what lies beyond is not simply the projection of our present human experience. He then went on to affirm his belief in resurrection reality with an interesting reference to the Hebrew Scriptures - At the burning bush, Moses spoke of God as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Jesus’ point is that Moses spoke of God as the © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   God of those ancient Patriarchs in the present tense - as he spoke. Thus, Jesus argues, Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive. I find that an interesting insight, an interesting use of scripture. Paul was a Pharisee and so he believed in resurrection but, even more vividly, he had been encountered by the risen Lord in a vision. Thus, in his letter to the Romans he speaks not only of the resurrection of Jesus by God’s spirit or breath, but of a future transformation of the whole creation. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. He speaks of Creation as groaning in labor pains until now - waiting, as it were, to burst forth into the fulfillment of God’s intention. Now, let me be clear; I do not think either Jesus or Paul had some divinely revealed understanding of our present scientific understanding of the universe. However, it is possible to make some sense of the hope, the claim they made in light of what we understand about the nature of humankind and the cosmos. Paul saw continuity between the universe and human destiny. To be sure, his was the old model of Fall and Redemption. In Paul’s view of things, it was human disobedience that cast the cosmos into bondage. Moral fault led to the disruption and decay of the physical universe. I have suggested that biblical model no longer gives an adequate reflection of the reality of the universe or of ourselves. Instead, I suggested last week a Creation model with the idea of Emergence taking the place of Fall/Redemption. But, it is interesting that Paul did see the intimate connection of cosmic destiny and human destiny. Paul expected the full consummation of the physical universe at the point of the redemption of humanity and he expected it all quite soon. But, of course, in that Paul and Jesus and the whole apocalyptic movement, Jewish and Christian were mistaken. However, in the model I scratched out in your liturgy last week I set forth in an ascending movement the cosmic reality that has been unfolding all these billions of years -The inorganic level; The organic level; The level of human consciousness; The level of Spirit: Energy coalescing in matter through duration of time, expansion of space moves from the inorganic toward the Spirit. © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   There are not really four "realities - inorganic/organic/consciousness/spirit, but one continuous reality that moves from one level to the next, not leaving the earlier level but enfolding it in the next. Where is it going? Jesus claimed the ancients were present to God. “... for to God all are alive.” If God as Mystery is the creative Source of all that is, might God as Mystery as well be the End point or Goal of all that is? Is this amazing cosmic drama, that has come to the point of producing human creatures of Spirit who have a sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful, simply arriving at a "dead end" in the death of the creature so wonderfully endowed? Hans Küng believes otherwise. After his analysis of the critique of modern atheism and his wrestling with the biblical tradition, it is his conviction that we die, not into Nothingness, but into God. I appreciate his modest claim as he faces the question, "What lies beyond death’s veil?" Putting it in terms of present human existence, he claims, "Not less, but more." That I believe is a reasonable claim in full light of present knowledge, but it is a faith claim. Thus, my answer to the question is not “Nothing” but “Something more” and I affirm Küng’s confidence, "not less, but more." Let me conclude with two comments. First, the Church has erred in stressing the afterlife at the expense of this life, heaven at the expense of earth, the future at the expense of the present. The time to live fully and celebrate this amazing human experience is now. And it is now that we are invited to live in the Spirit. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God ..." Eternal life is not a future condition, but a present reality. If one is living now with the consciousness of God present in one’s experience, then death is but a transition point, not a radical rupture. Secondly, understand that while we need always to be thinking our faith and setting our faith in an honest intellectual light, the "answer" to these tough questions lies not in our ability to reason ourselves to intellectual certainty. Faith lays hold of a reality beyond reason’s grasp. Finally, one must trust one’s heart. I see that so clearly when I walk through the experience of grief with people. There is a comfort of the Spirit, a blessed assurance that is more than any reasonable argument can provide. There are intimations of eternity that only the heart knows as it lives in the spirit in loving awareness, not in contrast to what is reasonable, but beyond reason’s limits. References: © Grand Valley State University �What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. Hans Küng. Eternal Life?: Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/672743906949f760b7d75541cc343281.mp3 7f4af35069e174df10fcb582591114d9 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 Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Romans 8:19, Luke 20:38 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Richard Elliott Friedman, The Hidden Face of God, 1995 Hans K 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-0-19970720 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-20 Title A name given to the resource What Lies Beyond Death's Veil? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 20, 1997 entitled "What Lies Beyond Death's Veil?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 8:19, Luke 20:38. Consciousness Emergence Nature of Religion https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b8d39b67042d470cabfd05debbdc3b33.pdf 903807a576789eda8603b8e2135b1928 PDF Text Text The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Text: Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 8:28-39 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 13, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon The title of this sermon, “The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?” raises a tough question for which there is no easy answer. And that is what I have named the sermon series I begin today. Tough Questions. By that, I mean questions that matter, that impact my life and society; questions that raise critical issues for ourselves and our world. These are questions for which there is no easy answer, no answer that can be checked by a scientific experiment or calculated by computer technology. So much hangs on the answer, but the answer will finally involve a commitment of faith because the nature of the question defies a clear and simple answer. We will open ourselves to some critical questions that most of us wrestle with some time or other, but often leave unspoken in conversation because we are not always ready to admit to the question or to face the possibility that some tried and true formulas of faith may need revising, which is scary. But a healthy faith, a positive spiritual life can hardly be possessed if there are questions that now and then surface but are pushed down and denied. And so, let’s raise some tough questions these weeks, seeking not easy answers, but honest engagement with the questions and hopefully a place to stand that provides freedom and confidence for our lives. That we have questions about some of the “answers” that our traditional biblical faith has supplied is not surprising. How could it be otherwise? The whole biblical story arose from 2000 to 4000 years ago. The human experience of God was portrayed in narrative, saga, myth, allegory and parable, which conceived of the physical universe and of God within the framework of an ancient picture which was believed to be the way things were, but not at all in terms of our present understanding of the universe, humankind, society, or historical development as we know it. © Grand Valley State University   �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   The ancients wrestled with fundamental human questions as we do - Where have we come from? Where are we going? Is there some purpose unfolding? Does it all mean something? Those questions are addressed in all the world’s religions. And the stories, myths, and teaching of all religions are attempts to find some clue to the meaning of Reality we encounter as humankind. The Bible is the cumulative religious understanding of Israel, culminating in the event of Jesus Christ, and the belief about God, the world, nature and history formed the framework within which the biblical answers to ultimate questions were articulated. But that framework no longer reflects the reality of the universe or humanity or God’s interaction with the world. I don’t think I have to belabor that fact; it must be obvious to any reasonable reflection on the ancient worldview. But then, if our whole understanding of the nature of the universe and humankind has undergone radical re-conception, is it still possible to believe the ancient answers to life’s tough questions? For example: The Providence of God: Is it wishful thinking? To engage that question, let’s look at the model or the paradigm from Scripture within which the providence of God was declared and proclaimed. But, first, let’s see what Providence has been understood to consist in. I had the Questions and Answers of the Heidelberg Catechism printed in your liturgy. These questions come in the second part of the Reformation Catechism out of the 16th century - the discussion of the Apostles’ Creed, the opening statement of which declares, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. QUESTION 26: What dost thou believe when thou sayest: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth? ANSWER: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil he sends upon me in this vale of tears, he will turn to my good; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father. QUESTION 27: What dost thou understand by the Providence of God? ANSWER: The almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   QUESTION 28: What does it profit us to know that God has created, and by his providence still upholds all things? ANSWER: That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love, since all creatures are so in his hand that without his will they can not so much as move. In the Catechism’s statement, the Providence of God is rooted in the biblical teaching of creation. The God Who creates, likewise upholds and governs. In consequence, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” In order to picture this biblical model of God’s interaction with the creation, I drew a diagram which still needs some work, but I think will make the point THE BIBLICAL MODEL - A THEISTIC SALVATION MODEL God is predominantly transcendent/omnipotent. God intervenes in nature/history. The biblical story is largely a redemption story centering in God’s saving action to redeem the human creature and effect God’s Kingdom. Creation is largely a stage area for the drama of salvation. This model does not deny God’s presence or immanence in Creation; the Spirit is present in Creation and Jesus is God’s presence in flesh. However, God’s transcendence predominates; God is “above,” other than that which God calls © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   into being by God’s Word. And what God creates is perfect, harmonious, “very good.” The Genesis story in the succeeding chapters through chapter 11 then recounts human rebellion, disobedience and the consequent corruption of the perfect paradisical state. The human creatures’ disobedience is spoken of in subsequent Christian teaching as the Fall and the human family is marked by that original disobedience, which moral failure is the root cause of all that goes wrong in Creation. The biblical story beginning with Genesis 12, the calling of Abraham and Sarah and the covenant of Grace constituted with them, marks the turn from the Creation theme to the salvation or redemption theme - the long movement toward the End of history with paradise regained - the Holy City, the new Jerusalem and the dwelling of God with humankind. In this scheme, which is the traditional biblical model or paradigm, the focus is the Divine-Human relationship; the stress is on salvation and the physical universe is simply the stage on which the redemptive drama is played out. God is outside but intervenes and really controls what happens, because God is Fatherlike, God can be trusted to turn even evil to good purpose, but all things good and evil, come from God’s “fatherly hand.” That is the picture, the framework, the model within which God’s Providence is affirmed in Scripture and has been taught in the Christian faith tradition. This understanding is held not only by folk in the churches, but finds expression again and again in popular conversation. This idea has permeated the consciousness of Western culture - “God has a purpose in it.” Over and over one hears it in the face of tragedy and suffering of every sort. It is not a reasoned conclusion on the basis of evidence; it reflects a deep, deep, uncritical response to life’s experiences. It must reflect a deep longing in the human heart that it be so. That’s why I raise the tough question - Is it wishful thinking? Is it something within us that craves such a Providence to be operative because we are aware of the fragile nature of our lives, how vulnerable we are to a hundred or a thousand perils beyond our knowledge and control? But if such “comfort” is posited on a conception of God and cosmos and human reality that we can no longer really believe, then are we only fooling ourselves? Simply believing something does not make it true. Well, how do we understand our reality? If not the biblical model of Creation in Perfection/Fall/Redemption, then what model might be more reflective of what has been discovered about our universe and our human reality? How might we conceive of God and God’s inter-action with the world? © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   An Alternative Creation Model: If you eliminated God as Mystery and the immanent Divine Spirit permeating the movement from Big Bang toward Shalom, I think those scientists who deal in cosmological thought, astrophysics, sub-atomic biology and the related fields would agree that this diagram reflects our knowledge of the physical universe and our total reality. All that was present in the Big Bang has been unfolding, developing from that micro-second to the present. Some scientists sense the presence of a Mystery; some deny any possibility of positing purpose and goal. But, the phenomenon of religion is a human response to some ultimate Creative Source or Force from which all reality derives, some purpose or intention - a movement toward a Goal. We have reflected on God as Mystery whose creative life-giving “Breath” or spirit permeates all that is, whose nature is given definition by the Word/Spirit in flesh in Jesus from whose life we see the nature of the Mystery as gracious. This is the claim of faith; it is not verifiable as are the echoes of radio waves from the Big Bang of 15 billion years ago. Such a claim is not provable by any means derived from the sciences. But, the question arises: Is such a claim consistent with a conception of the universe, our experience of God and our experience of being human? It is my contention that it is. Further, I would contend that the old model of Creation/Fall no longer convincingly explains our experience of ourselves, of God, of cosmos. © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   The Creation model posits by faith the Mystery that is God as the Creative Fount of all that is, claiming that that which sparked the whole cosmic drama of fifteen billion years was endowed with the whole potential that is being actualized; all that is was there “in the beginning.” The operative term for this model is Emergence, the continuous unfolding of the potential that was contained in the originating Creative explosion. Over 15 billion years the inorganic moved to the organic and there was life. Organic life emerged into consciousness, selfconsciousness, the pre-human, the human. And the human moves toward the level of spirit. And where will spirit lead? Will there be a level of spiritual community beyond anything our human community has yet known in its warring, despoiling, rapacious madness? Let me be clear; the model might suggest that it is ever upward and onward, but that is not necessarily so. Why? Because at the level of the human, the creature becomes co-creator, able to respond to the beckoning of the Spirit or to be dragged down by the pull of the lower from which he/she has derived. This is where the claim of the Providence of God must be re-thought. The old Creation/Fall model posited a God Almighty and all controlling, a transcendent/wholly other Being whose “life” was not really immanent within the cosmic process. That God, spoken of as male, existed apart from the cosmic drama, but rather directly governed, controlled all that transpired. Thus, the Heidelberg Catechism claims, “all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” The nurturing parental conception of God softens this claim and the positive value of such a faith is that one becomes patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, with good confidence for the future. But there are problems here. All things from God’s hand? The Holocaust? There are serious voices that claim we can never think the same about God after the Holocaust - 6 million of God’s special people? Or, what of the beautiful child living in close proximity to this church in a life/death struggle with cancer? And the instances that we encounter again and again are beyond number. Is it a comfort to believe all things come from God’s fatherly hand? And then, too, such a claim is contrary to the emerging, unfolding, developing, evolving reality of which we are a part. There seems to be no tinkering with the amazing universe about which we have learned so much. Further, such a view of God’s interaction with the world and our lives runs contrary to our own concrete experience. We do determine the course of history and of the cosmos in a very real sense. We can destroy the planet or we can nurture it. We can work for peace or create conflict, violence and death. We can © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   work for dialogue and mutual understanding among religious traditions or use religion as the fuel to warfare. We may wish it were not in our hands, but it is. So, then, is the answer to our question, “Yes?” Is trust in the Providence of God just wishful thinking? My answer is not an easy answer. It is not a simple “Yes” or a simple “No.” I do believe one can yet believe in the providence of God within the cosmic drama of which we are a part, but it will undergo a significant revision. The classic biblical story of God’s Providence is the Joseph story in Genesis. I cannot here re-tell that story. You can read it in Genesis 37-50. It is a story of human arrogance, meanness, grief and deep pathos. The family of Jacob is human, all too human. The brothers hate Joseph, their father’s favorite who himself is not wise in relating his dreams of superiority. In the end, Joseph becomes a powerful ruler in Egypt. Jacob sends his remaining sons to Egypt to buy grain because of a famine in Canaan. They are recognized by Joseph who puts them through tests and great stress. Finally, he reveals himself to them. They fear for their lives. But Joseph spares them. Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good... Joseph had a choice. He could have wiped them out in an act of vengeance. Rather, he forgave them, breaking the cycle of violence. In so doing, I believe Joseph was responding to the Spirit that beckons toward shalom rather than yielding to the impulse from below that would have satisfied the desire for vengeance and retaliation. Joseph discerned in the milieu of human conflict a way of peace that led to reconciliation; Joseph acted with grace. Paul is probably as responsible as anyone for the traditional conception of Providence. The 8th chapter of Romans is a statement of his conviction that all things are directly determined by “God’s fatherly hand” as the catechism claims. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. Paul believed God had pre-destined that we be conformed to the image of Jesus. He goes on to make an absolutely marvelous claim that whatever befalls us in no way can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. Can we translate Paul’s confidence in terms that reflect our understanding of our world, our experience? I think we can, but not as straightforwardly and simply as Paul claimed. The biblical model of God in direct control of all that happens so that nothing happens but that which “comes from the Fatherly hand” collided with the model of the universe that arose in the modern period - we speak of the Newtonian model - the great machine that grinds on its way according to ironclad laws of cause and effect leaving room only for a Creator at the beginning to get things © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 8   started and then from outside the system becoming an observer, perhaps on rare occasion intervening, tinkering with the system. This is a Deist conception - God the Supreme Clockmaker who creates, winds it up and lets it run on its own. This model left little room for God’s intimate involvement in the universe or in our lives. It collided head-on with the idea of Providence as conceived in Scripture and catechism. This understanding of the universe has dominated the last three hundred years and created the tragic gulf between religious faith and scientific understanding of the world. The conflict has been costly to both science and religion and is the cause of large-scale defection from religious faith by the intellectual leadership of the world. But, there are leading thinkers today in both science and religion who see in the more recent understanding of the universe the manner in which God’s continuous immanent creativity is operative in the unfolding drama influencing the course of cosmic development toward a goal according to a gracious purpose. As my thinking - the I that I am - influences the whole of my being, even to the most elemental physical processes, analogously so a God transcendent - more than the totality of all that is but not apart from any aspect of it – might influence the course of its development in ways that are life enhancing, creative, and increasing in complexity, moving the whole to higher levels of development. Computers remain a mystery to me, but I do know there is hardware and software. The hardware is mechanical; it functions according to physical law. But, the “machine” is useless without a program that determines how its myriad circuitry operates. The program is determined by a human mind with a purpose in mind. The program is encoded on a disk and inserted in the hardware equipment so that the desired result is achieved. Might God be the author of the software of the cosmos? And if God as Mystery is revealed to be mirrored in Jesus, then could we not trust in the creative, gracious intention written into the universe’s program of development? Finally, when we speak of God, we speak of mystery and when we think deeply about our own being, we run up against mystery, as well. All analogies break down; we come to the end of rational discourse. Yet, I believe there are resources in our faith tradition and in the amazing unveiling of the wonders of the cosmos that point to a God much larger than the old, biblical stories portrayed, but a God, nonetheless, full of grace with a purpose far grander than we’ve yet conceived of. The old conceptions gave confidence for the future and comfort for the present. Comfort is “com-fortes” - that is, enabling one to live with strength. I do believe that is possible, to an even greater degree, given what we are learning about the nature of our world. But there is this critical difference: in the model I am suggesting, we are called to be co-creators with God. We can thwart the Creator’s © Grand Valley State University �The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Richard A. Rhem Page 9   purpose or join in its realization. The dice of the universe is loaded, biased toward life and creative movement toward spirit and community, toward Shalom. But, it will not happen unless or until the human species catches the dream and forsakes its warring madness. The Providence of God - is it wishful thinking? If we see ourselves passively being played upon, waiting for God to unilaterally create heaven on earth, sparing us all harm and suffering -Yes. But, if we understand that providence as God’s continuous top-down influence nudging, beckoning, urging toward humane community - No. When we learn to react to our life situation as did Joseph, with humility and grace, then I believe we will experience the reality of what Paul expressed If God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the love of Christ?... nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Living thus, open, free, confident, I will see how God works all things together for good and, yielded to that overarching Divine persuasion, I will find my life being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, whose highest expression of human selfhood was the integrity of offering his life for the Divine Dream that drove him, praying, Thy will be done. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/063cf23767e2bedba7d37632acae5caa.mp3 5a72b8bd702c0a8ed24e2eb1cfa0f89b 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 Series Tough Questions: No Easy Answers Scripture Text Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39 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-0-19970713 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-13 Title A name given to the resource The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 13, 1997 entitled "The Providence of God: Is It Wishful Thinking?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 8:28-39. Mystery Nature of God Nature of Religion Shalom https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/083622944449da30898952d110778a3f.pdf dc1a770e5ec617765f48f8230f72f035 PDF Text Text Divine Improvisation – Human Wonder From the series: Cosmic Symphony Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 9; John 1:1-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan June 22, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Sometimes when I reflect on what I try to communicate to you by way of writing or preaching, I question myself. I realize that I am on a fascinating quest that never quits. Always, always I am trying to understand, understand the Mystery of God, the mystery of the human being, and then it strikes me that that is really the same quest. Do I not try to understand God, the nature of Reality, because I am trying to understand myself, my human nature, the meaning of human being? Sometimes I question myself for dragging you along on my quest. I cannot help myself - these questions stalk my every waking moment and obtrude from my unconscious at times during sleep. But, certainly not everyone is dogged with that drivenness to search the mysteries of life. When I doubt myself in the execution of my preaching/teaching ministry, I hear voices from the congregation say, "We really only want to know that God loves us and that in the end all will be well." And then I am struck by the realization that that is precisely why I carry on my quest - am driven by the need to probe, to discover. It is because, more than anything else, I want to be able to say with honesty and conviction, God loves you; all will be well. For that reason, I keep thinking and letting you in on my own reflections. We have inherited a faith tradition - the biblical story, Israel and Jesus, 2000 years of interpretive tradition - the Christian theological tradition. But all of it, the biblical story and the interpretive tradition, was shaped in terms of a conception of the world-creation and of God that we know is other than what is being discovered in our day. Our knowledge of the cosmos is exploding, it is awesome; it places the most brilliant scientists before Mystery. That knowledge, gained through the sciences, is always tentative, open-ended, constantly being confirmed or corrected, and that knowledge will not provide for us either proof or disproof of God and the mode of God's engagement with cosmic reality. But, what we learn from the sciences will make evident the conceptions of God and God's © Grand Valley State University   �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 2   working derived from pre-scientific ages that no longer speak to us, because they were based on an understanding of the world and its origin that has been rejected. The conception of the cosmic reality, which our best knowledge provides, does not give a proof either of God's existence or non-existence, but it is the context of understanding within which we must finally understand our experience of God. Images of God and God's working which do not accord with our knowledge of reality will not be convincing or adequate. Therefore, faith's understanding needs new language, new concepts, and new analogies. That is the task that drives me and, to the extent that you continue to tolerate me and even encourage me, I believe it is the gift we can bring to our world as a faith community. A biblical scholar, John Knox, wrote something that struck me when first I read it and continues to keep me at the difficult and risky task in which I am engaged. He wrote, For our hearts cannot finally find true what our minds find false. If they could, we should be hopelessly divided and any firm grasp of reality would be impossible. What we mean by "the heart" in this connection is not something alien or counter to the mind, but is the mind itself quickened and extended. The wisdom the heart has found, if it be wisdom and not fantasy, is the same wisdom the mind all the while has been feeling after, if haply it might find it. It is a wisdom which, far from bypassing the understanding, enters through the doors of it, fills and stretches the space of it, and only then breaks through and soars above it. The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, p. 1 Perhaps another way of saying this is that the "heart" cannot find rest in a story or a symbol which our reason shows to be out of sync with our experience and knowledge of reality - not in accord with the reality we know from observation and rational reflection, or, again, we will not "rest" in that which our common sense rejects. Given the fact that our knowledge of the physical universe, of the human being, of global human society, and of historical development in a global perspective has revolutionized our understanding of ourselves and the reality of which we are a part, our faith formulations must be translated into new language and conceptuality if they would continue to be compelling, convincing, meaningful and awe-inspiring into the Third Millennium. If you are of my generation, you can perhaps live and die with inherited stories, symbols, and faith understanding. However, it is not just for ourselves, but for © Grand Valley State University �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 3   our children and grandchildren that we must re-think the faith in order that they, too, might live in the assurance that God loves them and that all will be well. Finding new language, a new translation of biblical faith does not mean that the tradition in which we have been nurtured did not point us to and connect us with reality, with God, that it did not provide a meaningful framework for understanding our human experience. It did that for the Christian community for all these centuries and still does so for millions. But the truth, the Reality to which our faith formulations point, is beyond those formulations and increasingly in the last three centuries those formulations have been shown to be inadequate; they no longer image reality as we are coming to know it through observation and scientific investigation. In this situation a serious error has been committed by both the Academy and the Church: both tend to identify the symbols, the interpretive story, with the Reality itself. Thus as Science images a cosmos that is contradictory to the biblical story and symbol, Science tends toward atheism or the denial of God, while Religion grows defensive and engages in a futile effort to disprove the findings of Science. Both efforts are wrong because both mistake the story/symbol for the reality itself. It is not the Reality – In this case, God - that is disproved, but simply the inadequacy of the interpretive story, the symbolic imaging, that no longer connects what we know from scientific investigation with what we experience of a transcendent reality as human beings. How many years ago was it that the Mackinaw Bridge was built? I vaguely remember that, soon after it was opened, a car pulling a mobile home was overturned by a gust of wind while crossing the bridge. The occupants of the car said they feared the bridge was collapsing. But, the bridge was just fine. The storm overturned car and trailer on the bridge. But one can identify with the initial fear of those folks - thinking bridge and themselves were plunging into the sea. So it is with our theological theories and explanations. New information shows them up as picturing the world or God or the human person in a manner not in accord with the reality discovered. But, that does not touch the reality of world or God or person. It simply calls for re-thinking, revising our conceptions, re-telling the old, old story. In the re-telling, the tradition will be mined for stories and nuances forgotten or overlooked. Certain language heavy with sacred association will be retained but given new meaning in a new framework. The dismantling of old conceptuality is not to destroy, to leave barren, but to find a more adequate expression that will be resonant with a fresh authenticity. Such an enterprise has always been going on and must ever continue. A reactionary defensiveness on the part of the Church always proves futile and © Grand Valley State University �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 4   dangerous as religious leaders have not often trusted the people with full knowledge of the best information available, thinking that, by shielding them from advancing human knowledge, they will preserve them in the faith. But to do so is dishonest and a disservice. James Fowler, the religious educator who defined the stages of faith development points out that often the Church itself is responsible for arrested spiritual development, keeping people stuck at the adolescent stage rather than calling people to maturity in Christ. To keep the people of God from maturity leaves them vulnerable to a David Koresh, a Jim Jones, to militant, violent fundamentalism. And if we do not continually re-think our faith formulations in light of ongoing knowledge available to us, when we are confronted with such knowledge, there is often anger, the rage of having one's core beliefs disrupted and perhaps rage and rejection of the institution that misled, that failed to pass on an honest faith interpretation in light of the best knowledge available. Let me add one more thought: Our traditional story has hints that point to the universality of God's grace, but we must honestly acknowledge that, in the wake of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, that early movement reflected in the New Testament documents shaped a religious tradition - Christianity - which has for the most part been exclusivistic. Once again parts of the Church will declare even now - Salvation by grace, but through Jesus Christ alone. But today in our global society, where we have come to know other traditions and the people who worship God in those traditions, we simply must recognize that tribal conceptions of God and narrow religious traditions can no longer be pitted against each other. Not only does a rigid exclusivism no longer make sense, it is downright dangerous. Our world is too small, too inter-connected, too interdependent to allow the volatility of religion to fuel tribal, ethnic and national conflict. If in the foregoing I give the rationale for my struggle to re-tell the story, I must move on now and attempt to speak of God in new imagery. I have been endeavoring to do that in these weeks since Pentecost, finding myself, as I've said, in an accidental series. In light of the fascinating story of the origin and evolution of our universe, how can we speak of God? On Trinity Sunday I confessed my surprise at finding myself imaging God in the threeness of the Trinity symbol: God is a Mystery beyond our comprehension, yet present to the Cosmos, which flows out of that infinite well of creativity as Energy, Matter, Time, and Space. All that is given existence by the Breath or Spirit of God. I borrowed an analogy from St. Augustine who imaged God as an infinite ocean, limitless, beyond knowing, and this whole universe, the whole creation as a © Grand Valley State University �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 5   sponge submerged in that infinite ocean. The sponge has limits, is finite, though vast and there is not a molecule or atom of the sponge that is not saturated with the ocean's watery reality. So, argues Augustine, God is infinite, beyond knowing - more than the whole of Reality, yet present totally to, in and with the cosmos, giving it existence and life. Interestingly, that image from the Fourth Century vividly expresses our best sense of the relationship of God to the cosmos - more than (Transcendent); God is more than the creation, yet present in (Immanent); God is intimately present in all that is. We have then gone on to claim that the nature of the Mystery, the Mystery's meaning, intention, and purpose is defined in a Face - Jesus is the human face of God; in his face we see the light of the knowledge of God; God gains definition as the Word becomes flesh. From Jesus' life and teaching we discover that devotion to God is the doing of compassion - creating a humane community, where justice is done, compassion is practiced, the hungry are fed, the oppressed set free, the homeless given shelter. That is the end of religion, the purpose for joining in a faith community. In that community we worship, being lifted beyond ourselves through liturgy, symbol, music and artistic expression, recite the story, nurture, and join in the action of compassion, following the way of Jesus. Can we do that honestly, with authenticity in light of what we have learned of this awesome cosmic drama of which we are a part and the experience of God in the biblical faith tradition, as well as that attested to in other religious traditions? I do believe we can. Not only do I believe we can re-imagine God in light of all we know and experience of our world, but I believe the wonder of that Mystery is more than our forbears could have dreamed of. Let me suggest an image of God and God's relation to the cosmos and to humankind that I find fascinating and profound. I take it from the British Biologist/Theologian, Arthur Peacocke, whom I quote in the back pages of your liturgy from his Theology for a Scientific Age. The image of God is that of a composer, indeed, of a jazz improvisor. The chapter title where this image appears is "God's Interaction With the World," and the subsection is "Models of God's Activity as Creator." Peacocke points out two classic ways of speaking of the activity of divine creation - the model of "making," and the model of "emanation." The maker model speaks of God as the craftsman, the mechanic. This is the most common biblical manner of speaking. However, the emanation model also finds expression - God from God's own being goes out to be actively involved in giving and sustaining the being of all that is. © Grand Valley State University �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 6   The "Maker" model lends itself to the idea of God's transcendence - God beyond the world. The "Emanation" model points to God's immanence in Creation God's presence in and with all that exists. In light of our knowledge of cosmic reality from the sciences and our reflection on God in the biblical tradition, Peacocke suggests the model of artistic creation as best imaging God's creative action and interaction with the world. It is in such a context that he writes the section that appears in the pages of your liturgy. I find the image of Jazz Improvisor fascinating and exciting - highly illuminating of the manner in which God might interact with the cosmic reality. I am woefully lacking in knowledge of music, music theory, tonality and all related matters. But I can follow Arthur Peacocke's argument - that the composer forms "cosmos" out of "chaos." I can create chaos on a keyboard; the result is noise. The artist uses the same instrument to create music, melody, harmony. And I can also sense that the execution of a musical score unfolds - the immediate moment following on what has preceded and flowing into what follows. It also makes sense to me that both chance and necessity are operative in a jazz improvisation. I spoke with the master of improvisation last Sunday - Ken Medema. I told him what I was going to attempt to do today. I said to him, " You are all over the keyboard with creative freedom; yet you know some things will work and some will not." He agreed. And I said further, "You are not sure just where you will end up nor how you will get there." Again, he agreed. That is the fascination of improvisation - the future is full of surprise; yet there are certain limits, parameters within which the creative artist must work. It also makes sense to me that creation is endowed with infinite potentiality which might be actualized in this manner or in that. I can see then that, if on the scene of an evolutionary unfolding of billions of years there emerges a creature like humankind with self-consciousness, awareness, being the vehicle of spirit, such a creature plays a very real role in the future of cosmic development. If the Creator took the risk of creating a creature in the image and likeness of the Creator, self-conscious, creative, free, then a whole new dimension has emerged in the cosmic drama. Now there is a whole multitude of composers determining scores of infinite variety raising the complexity of the whole to unimaginable heights. It makes sense to me, further, that the emergence of creatures of consciousness, able to become observers of the cosmic symphony and players in that symphony, would be the intention of the Creator Who delights in the cosmic play and delights in the delight of those who come to share that delight, to wonder, to stand in awe of it all. And then I love the manner in which God as Jazz Improvisor illumines the idea of the Creator's transcendence over the cosmos, but is at the same time immanent © Grand Valley State University �Divine Improvisation Richard A. Rhem Page 7   in its unfolding as the composer is in her music, so that in the playing of the score musicians are experiencing the very being of the composer. So, to be engaged in creative living in this cosmic drama is to know in intimate communion the Creator Whose Spirit gives life to all. The human creature, self-conscious, aware, attentive becomes the discerner of God's amazing creative work in its infinite variety and depth and also the actualizer of God's intention and purpose. And that actualization follows no rigid, ironclad form. Actualization will take place in a great variety of ways through the multiplicity of possible configurations. That is to say - now the creature becomes herself a jazz improvisor, bringing new patterns and forms to expression out of the infinite potentiality with which the Creator has endowed the cosmos. That points to the incredible responsibility and exhilarating challenge of being "co-creators" with God. In awe before the Mystery, creative fount of all that is, in adoration before the wonder of grace as revealed in the face of Jesus, in openness to the enlivening Spirit that breathes through our being, we worship full of wonder. The ancient Hebrew poet captured, beyond what he could have known, the paradox O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have established, What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crown them with glory and honor. In a cosmic symphony of such dimension, who are we - fragile, vulnerable, indeed, small. Yet it is we who have become conscious, aware, who are able to wonder, to worship and, with the Mystery Creator at the center, become cocreators moving the musical score toward humane community, spirituality, and compassion, actualizing the Eternal Purpose of God for cosmic harmony - a Divine Oratorio whose theme is "God loves you; all will be well!" References: John Knox. The Humanity and Divinity of Christ: A Study of Pattern in Christology. Cambridge University Press, 1967. Arthur Peacocke. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming – Natural, Divine and Human. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fd29781c32366d18e4cd4362e87e72fb.mp3 8f526b892d7d774d54518eab995f2bc4 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 Series A Cosmic Symphony Scripture Text Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 8, John 1:1-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References John Knox, The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, 1967 Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine and Human, 1993 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-0-19970622 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-06-22 Title A name given to the resource Divine Improvisation - Human Wonder Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 22, 1997 entitled "Divine Improvisation - Human Wonder", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 8, John 1:1-14. Compassion Nature of God Re-imagining the Faith https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee508445f3ec9c76c0dc8fc896362770.pdf 36e03de43a71ee64621553f7695f1916 PDF Text Text The End of Religion Text: Isaiah 58:6-7; Luke 10:25; Jeremiah 22:16 Richard A. Rhem and Ken Medema Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan June 15, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Ken, I'm going to rehearse for the people what we have been talking about these weeks so that you can come on board, and they might finally get it. It started off on Pentecost when we talked about the spirit of God and the breath of God or the wind of God that permeates the whole of reality - everything in existence exists because of the enlivening Spirit of God. And then, next week was Trinity Sunday, and we reflected together about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and we recognized that that ancient symbol was struggling to point to a mystery, and mystery not in the sense of something that maybe eventually will be able to be solved or dissolved, but mystery in the sense of that which is beyond our ability to comprehend, mystery in the sense of God being incomprehensible, as the old theologian said, incomprehensible to human understanding. So, we have a mystery that we cannot grasp, and yet the presence of that mystery, that life-giving Breath is present to all that is. I came across a wonderful analogy in the Confessions of St. Augustine, which I had never seen before. Saint Augustine, in a beautiful poetic expression, a prayerlike expression to God, said, "O God, You are like a vast, limitless ocean." And then he said all of creation, all that is, all creatures great and small, tables and pianos and stools - all that is like a sponge, huge sponge, yet a sponge with limits. All of creation, that 15 billion year old river of energy and matter and space and time, all of that as a sponge is submerged in that infinite, limitless ocean. The ocean, of course, is without limits, is more than the sponge, but there is not a molecule or an atom of the sponge that is not saturated by the liquidity of that infinite ocean. It's a beautiful analogy, I think. God more than, but a part of; not one thing exists that is not permeated, shot through with the life, the breath, the spirit of God. But, the mystery, Ken, still remains undefined. What is its nature, its intention, its purpose? For us in the Christian tradition, we find that the mystery comes into focus in a face, in the face of Jesus. In the prologue to John's Gospel we have that wonderful poetic expression, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, and all things were made by him and apart from © Grand Valley State University   �The End of Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 2   him was not anything made that was made, and that word was life to the world." And then a dramatic statement in the 14th verse - "The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld a face." Thus, in the humanity of Jesus, the mystery is enfleshed. So now, the mystery which is beyond our comprehension but which is experienced as the breath that inspires and radiates through all that mystery now has definition and specificity. It is the face of Jesus that shows us the intention of the Eternal One. That face of Jesus, that life of Jesus points us to compassion as the end of our religion, the purpose of our religion. And I say this on the basis of that parable which we already looked at last week, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Certainly the question of the lawyer coming to Jesus was right at the heart of things. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Aren't we always wanting to secure ourselves? And so, Jesus pointed him to the Torah, love God, love neighbor, etc. And then the lawyer, wanting to make that somehow within some reasonable bounds, said, "Who is my neighbor?" and Jesus, unwilling to set any limits, says to him, in effect, you are the neighbor. You are to be neighbor to all of those who come your way. The story of the Good Samaritan concludes with the lawyer having to say the one who was neighborly was the one who showed mercy, and Jesus said, "Just do it." That's the way of Jesus. That is the intention of the mystery that is God. Compassion is the end of religion - end, in the sense of purpose. When Jesus said this, he was being true to his Jewish tradition. Recently, when I heard Karen Armstrong, the English scholar, lecture on "The History of God," she made the point so strongly that all of the great religious traditions point, finally, to compassion. Compassion is the point of religion; it is to be the consequence of our devotion. Certainly Jesus was reflecting what Isaiah said in chapter 58. There was religion a'plenty, but the question is raised, "Is this the kind of fast I want? Would I want you to go around looking all droopy-eyed with sackcloth and ashes, carrying on a fast, going through your religious devotions, all the time still centered on yourselves? No," the prophet says, "All of your religious devotion is to no avail except it lead to compassion. Is not this the fast that I require, that you loose the thongs of wickedness, that you release the oppressed, that you take the homeless poor into your home and feed the hungry and clothe the naked?" Jesus, in the Good Samaritan story, or in the parable of the sheep and the goats, "Inasmuch as you've done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you've done it unto me" - points to compassion as the end of religion. Jesus was simply being true to his Jewish roots. Ken, my point this morning is that religion's end, its purpose, is compassion. It is doing good. It is loving, healing, helping, and if it doesn't issue in that, it is empty, without meaning and without regard to God. Does that strike a chord with you? Ken: Yeah, about 50,000. How much time do you have? (Ken plays & sings) © Grand Valley State University �The End of Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 3   So, here's a great, vast ocean And all Creation like a sponge And when I look into the water, it's amazing what I see. First, I see the face of the One who came to make it clear, came to make it known for all the world to hear. Then I look again - I can see the face of my neighbor and my enemy who lives here in this place, the people I've rejected, the people I've ignored, the people I've been closing out and setting outside the door. And in this water I can see them, crying in their tears, and I see them looking now at me and I know why I am here! And I see these faces reflected in the water of incomprehensible, mysterious space and love. And I know beyond the vastness of the Mystery, the great white sea. Everywhere I look I see the reflection of the faces of the people close and far and in my neighborhood who need my good. And I'm thrown on mercy once again and mercy I'm called to show again. And that's the end. That's the way. That's what it's all about. I think that's real close, and in my head I think I always knew that, but in the transformation of my own religious experience, Ken, I have come to see how, in my growing up and in my early ministry and in my preaching, I made salvation into a kind of cult. I made it into a kind of a cult that majored in personal salvation, the kind of "Me and Jesus." I wanted to be sure I was safe and secure and bound for heaven, and frankly, this life was something to be endured in order that we might really enter into life and light eternal. I suppose the greatest transformation in my own experience is to recognize that eternal life is now and here and God is now and here, and this life is the life to be lived. I can trust God for whatever else there is, but even though in my head I knew compassion was an obligation of the Gospel, I didn't take it all that © Grand Valley State University �The End of Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 4   seriously until I began to look at my own selfish, self-centered, egocentric, arrogant salvation lust. Not only did I make it a salvation cult but, in the organization and institutional forms of religion (and I've been a part of it all my life), I begin to see not much more than Trivial Pursuit. This is a time of the assemblies of the churches, and the newspaper is full of articles, great debates on such critical issues as whether to call God He or She, whether anyone else is going to get to heaven but those of us who know the formula, whether persons of different sexual orientation can be ordained to ministry, etc., etc. The media is full of articles about the fact that denominations are coming apart at the seams, and the more I look at it from the outside, the more I see how far we've missed the mark. How much we are concerned about things that are of trivial importance, and we fail to do the one thing needful, which is the whole end of religion. I believe that self-centered, arrogant religion is coming to an end. There's a great thrashing about now, the fundamentalist reaction is the last gasp of a dying movement. We were guests of Bishop Spong a couple of weeks ago. As we left St. Peter's parish in Morristown, New Jersey, a beautiful church, all that stone and stained glass, he said to me, "This is quite an institution. But down the street is another Episcopal parish. That's a different place." He said, "There, when a stuffy Episcopalian comes in, the rector says, 'You know, I think you'd like the parish down the block,'" because that parish is filled with all kinds of marginal people, black and white and Hispanic, straight and gay and all sorts in between, all shades of humankind. They run soup kitchens and they have diversity seminars and they are involved in the community and the city. He said, You know, as Bishop I have to go once a year and I take in members, I lay hands on members, and there are always some who go through the Episcopal rigamarole, and if Episcopalians are anything, they are really strict about their liturgy and their forms - so here's the Bishop taking them through their forms and lays his hands on them. And then the Senior Warden stands up and he says, "Now, are there any others of you who believe in this ministry and want to commit yourself to it?" And then a whole raft, another group, of people stand up who believe in the ministry. They don't really care about all of the rigamarole of the Episcopal liturgy and all of its ritual and all of its forms and the institutional form of the Church and the membership of the Church and the paper games that we play. But there are people out there who, when they see something authentic, when they sense there's ministry going on, when the compassion of Jesus Christ is flowing, they say, "Yes! I want to be a part of that." Ken, the old forms are dying, but there's something new emerging, and it's going to be a whole community of people of all stripes and sizes and shapes who are going to band together and say, "Enough church games. Enough theological niceties. Enough of all of that selfish, egotistic concern about one's own little soul, © Grand Valley State University �The End of Religion Richard A. Rhem Page 5   and let's begin to love the cosmos that God loves, and let compassion flow." How does that hit you? Ken: Holy Mackerel! Ah, Baby, we built ourselves this little boat 'cause we were frightened of the sea, built ourselves this little boat to put back the smokin' mystery. Went ashore where the waves were, so we put off this little sail, What you gonna do when your little boat starts to fail? We thought the boat would last forever, we thought we were so damn secure, And now we feel it tremblin' and there's water comin' in, Ah, now the dissolution does begin. So, we're gonna jump into the water. The boat will be gone. We'll have to jump into the water, like a sponge, swimmin' on and on, And we'll little by little we'll see the pieces of driftwood just floatin' away, As we jump into the water on a fine, fine summer's day, As we jump into the water as that old boat gets washed away. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/69e01d45914f9846f122f9c4736784b7.mp3 d71dc9751c370b48fab162d17a8498f1 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 Series With Ken Medema: A Cosmic Symphony Scripture Text Isaiah 58:6-7, Luke 10:25, Jeremiah 22:16 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-0-19970615 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-06-15 Title A name given to the resource The End of Religion Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 15, 1997 entitled "The End of Religion ", as part of the series "With Ken Medema: A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 58:6-7, Luke 10:25, Jeremiah 22:16. Compassion Nature of Religion https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cb0784e2989fa582da5eae187cb16636.pdf 159865f3537a710b2a149f7d9f553b5b PDF Text Text Love Enfleshed Text: Hosea 11:8; I John 4:16; Luke 10:27 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan June 8, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Those of you who have been around a while with me know that I like to preach in series; it helps to focus my own thinking and reading and reflection, and it keeps you in a rut. But, there are those periods of time when I don't have a series and I just sort of spot things in, and then sometimes I find I am in an accidental series, and that's where I am right now. I am fascinated with God and I think that happened when I began to reflect on Pentecost and thinking about the Spirit of God, in terms of the cosmos of which we are all a part, the fact that the Spirit of God is the Breath of God, that Breath of God that hovered over the Chaos of Creation's dawn, maybe 15 billion years ago, that Spirit or Breath of God that permeates the whole of reality, enlivening all that is, nothing existing apart from that inspiring, in-breathing of God's Spirit, so that the birth of the Church, the Jesus Movement that emerged into the Christian Church which we celebrate on Pentecost, is really not something new. It's simply another stage, another development. It is simply the continuity with that which has been true throughout all - the enlivening, permeating presence of God's breath, God's Spirit. Then, we come to Trinity Sunday and we recognize that God is a Mystery, a mystery beyond our fathoming. The old theologian spoke about the incomprehensibility of God, that we cannot know God. On Pentecost, we experience that Mystery as an ever-present enlivening wind or breath, and so we have a Mystery and we have that permeating life-giving power force. But, how do we give some focus to it? Then we discover a face, and in the face of Jesus we believe we see into the heart of God, so that that Mystery beyond our fathoming takes on some definition; the nature of that Mystery becomes concrete in that human form of Jesus who shows us the way to be in communion with that Mystery that we cannot touch nor grasp. And so, we have a face and an enlivening breath throughout all, lifting us to a Mystery beyond us. © Grand Valley State University   �Love Enfleshed Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Yet, we are meaning-seeking animals and that may be all well and good, but what does it mean for my life? We have those deep questions, because, as we have noted, the deep questions about God are really deep questions about ourselves. Whence have we come? Whither are we going? And what is the meaning of it, in the meantime? What does it mean for my concrete living today, in the concrete context of my life, this Mystery that is God that is focused in the face of Jesus and experienced as life? Well, I think it just goes to show that there is something deep within us that wants to know, that needs to know about the meaning of it all. The current issue of Life magazine has in bold print, "Why we are looking for the meaning of our soul in the stars," and then in bolder print, "The Rising of Astrology," and there is a rather main-theme article in that picture magazine about current stargazing and we are told that there is more interest in astrology today than in the past 400 years. The last period of time when there was a lot of interest in stargazing, palm reading, finding the alignment of the planets, was during the period of the Renaissance. And today, at this Post-Enlightenment era, when we have moved through all of the scientific discoveries and scientific methods and all of the rationality of the Enlightenment, we have a world that is more interested in stargazing than in the past 400 years. Well, that art goes back over 3000 years to Babylon and it's been with us ever since, some periods rather lean, some periods of popularity as at present, but it's amazing to me. People all over the globe are asking to have their destiny read out from the heavenly planets. We can scoff at it and laugh at it and yet, there's a rather fascinating tiein with astrology and the concepts of modern physics. One of Einstein's protegés, David Bohm, an English physicist and no mean scientist, has been very interested in the connection between the two. He speaks about cosmic reality as an unbroken entity inflow, and he speaks about matter and energy and meaning as the three manifestations of this unbroken flow of reality, and then he suggests that maybe there is that constant tug to check the stars because, after all, we are star children, we are stardust. He speaks of an implicate order of reality, an order which enfolds, intertwines - Bohm's word for the total interconnection of the whole of reality. Bohm uses an analogy - if one takes two glass cylinders, one fitting into the other, with just a little space between them, filling that space with some high-viscosity liquid, some heavy oil, and then into the oil drop a drop of ink, one can see that drop of ink through the cylinder walls. If the cylinders are spun in opposite directions, what happens to the drop of ink? It begins to make a circle around that cylinder, and if continued to be spun at a high rate of speed, eventually that line becomes thinner and thinner until it disappears and is actually absorbed into the liquid. One can no longer identify that spot of ink which once was so clear. Now, what happens if the revolutions of the cylinders are reversed, spinning in the opposite direction? Will the ink be gathered again, until finally it becomes that spot at which it began? © Grand Valley State University �Love Enfleshed Richard A. Rhem Page 3   He illustrates that there is an implicate order of reality in which every spot of ink, every thing is connected with everything else in an implicate order beyond our fathoming. There is an explicate order that our senses can observe, and it is like observing the tip of the iceberg. With our senses, we have accessible to us the tip of the iceberg of reality. The rest is Mystery. But, it is one totality, one continuity, and it is manifested in energy and matter and meaning So, the human person is an animal that asks deep questions. But, when we do that, it's not just an intellectual exercise. It is not an academic game. We are not playing with riddles for fun. We are asking the deep questions of our lives. What, then, does it mean to be alive, to be conscious, to be aware? What does it mean to be in relationship? What does it mean to be in community? What does it mean to be this human person caught up in this totality of reality? What does it mean for my life? Those are the questions that the Bible addresses. The Bible is not a book of theology. The Bible is not about theological questions, about who can be saved and where heaven is and a multitude of other things that preachers talk about every Sunday. The Bible is a whole cumulative set of stories of concrete encounter with God. That's really what we want. We want to experience God. Knowledge is fine, but it is experience for which we hunger. The Bible tells about people who have shaped us in our tradition, who have had an experience of God and tell the story, and in telling the story, they draw us into the story and prepare us to experience similarly in our own stories, and at the heart of the biblical conviction is that confidence that God is love. The title of the message in the liturgy is "Love Enfleshed," but I really didn't mean to write "Love Enfleshed." I really meant to write "Mystery Enfleshed." That's the way it appeared in the newspaper ads, and that's correct, because what I want to say is the Mystery that we cannot touch, we cannot fathom, the Mystery enfleshed, can be experienced. But, as a matter of fact, if John is right, who says God is love, then it amounts to the same thing. My point to you this morning is simply this: To experience love is to experience God. Mystery enfleshed, Love enfleshed is the experience of God. Hosea, the Hebrew prophet, has no equal when it comes to talking about the passionate love of God. The first three chapters of his prophecy which were not read this morning are about Hosea's own personal experience with an unfaithful wife who he has to bring back out of her unfaithfulness to a loving relationship again. Out of his own personal experience Hosea experiences the anguish of the heart of God over a people that God has loved but a people who turn their back on God, and so Hosea speaks of the marriage relationship as an image of the relationship of God and God's people. But, in the passage that was read, the image is that of a parent and a child. © Grand Valley State University �Love Enfleshed Richard A. Rhem Page 4   When Israel was a child, I brought him out of Egypt. I picked him up, I held him in my arms, I brought him to my cheek. The intimate, beautiful image of a parent and child, that deep, binding, bonding love - that is the image that Hosea has for the relationship of God to God's people. The child turns away and deserves to be cut off. And then, in the midst of that statement of the child's unfaithfulness, we hear these words: How can I give you up, O Ephraim? My heart warms within me, my compassion roils within me. I cannot give you up! I will not give you up, because I am God, not human. It would be human, it would be expected, it would be normal and natural to have you cut off, but I am not human; I am God, I am Love, I am passionate Love, I will not let you go! And, of course, this is what John was talking about when he said God is love. But again, John wasn't talking about some speculative theological preposition that appears in a creed. John was talking about concrete human experience, for he says God is love, and the one who dwells in love, dwells in God. John says, the one who dwells in love, God abides in that one, and that one abides in God. If someone should say, "I love God," but doesn't love his brother or sister, that one is simply a liar, that one is not speaking truth, for John says you cannot love God whom you have not seen if you do not love the flesh around you, humankind that crosses your path. Jesus is the supreme storyteller. (Ah, I hate to say this with my son here, but in Jesus' day also there were lawyers.) Lawyers who would put him to the test, so Luke tells us. And so, the lawyer says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" But, Jesus is equal to the lawyer; he says, "Well, what does it say in the Torah?" The lawyer says, "Love the Lord your God with heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said, "Right answer. Go do it." Ah, but lawyers. He begins to think about all of his neighbors and of the exhausting imperative, and, wanting to carve out a little more manageable space for himself, he says, "Could you define neighbor?" Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, the religious people on their way to General Synod who didn't have time, and the outcast Samaritan who met the need of the person. Of course, Jesus won't answer directly; he makes the lawyer answer his own question. Now, this is good. The lawyer asks, "Who is my neighbor?" © Grand Valley State University �Love Enfleshed Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Jesus says, "Who was neighbor to the one in need?" Nice twist, isn't it? I'm not going to go out there and tell you people who you ought to care for. I'm telling you that you are the person to care for any human need that crosses your path. It is in doing love that God is experienced. It is in the practice of the faith that the reality of God is known. It is in the action of love that the academic questions disappear and the reality of concrete human experience reveals God. As I was reflecting on this last evening, my contemplation was broken by a call from below; it was Nancy. She is the sports fan of the family, and she said, "Would you like to see history for a moment?" Knowing that her husband is sick, she is very patient with me, but she did call me down with a minute, 40 seconds left, and I was going to say, after that experience, the discovery of God, the experience of God is winning the Stanley Cup. I really did think about it. I didn't admit this to her, but I really was thinking about the sermon when I saw those thousands of people made as one, in communion, in community, in a moment of exhilaration, of pure joy! I saw them transcended out of themselves, pulled out of themselves. They didn't think about any problem they had, any ache or pain or anything that was going on in their lives. For a moment they were transported, they were transcended into one rejoicing, jubilant community, and I thought to myself, maybe the temples of the 21st century are the great sports palaces that now punctuate this land, and maybe it is in the sports arena that God will be found in the future. You laugh, but I'm serious. But, then I thought, the Red Wings, let alone the Flyers, after that ecstatic moment, this morning are reaching for the BenGay and those celebrating fans missed worship and are taking aspirin, because, you see, as really wonderful as that ecstasy is, as that moment of pure joy is, it fades. But, if you've ever held a child, if you ever loved a woman or a man, if you've ever been able to touch and heal someone in need, if you had a moment of love, you've had the experience of God, and it keeps getting richer. The Mystery is beyond us, but the experience is as close as the person at your side. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d94ace94adab39356577d8d8cf535acc.mp3 ca75db8011c61d71089b8c5c3f85cd63 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 Series A Cosmic Symphony Scripture Text Hosea 11:8, I John 4:16, Luke 10:27 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-0-19970608 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-06-08 Title A name given to the resource Love Enfleshed Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 8, 1997 entitled "Love Enfleshed", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hosea 11:8, I John 4:16, Luke 10:27. Mystery Nature of God Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6b9380d9f151674aab6496812d91858d.pdf cf5e0cee8926ae7ab201596357bb60a3 PDF Text Text Mystery’s Face and Flow Trinity Sunday Text: Job 23:3; 11 Corinthians 4:6; and, John 14:9 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan May 25, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon It is Trinity Sunday; the Sunday after Pentecost, and it's the time when we focus on God. It is God Who brings us together week after week, and we have many things about which to think and speak together. On Trinity, however, we go right to the core, to God, and to focus on that conception of God which has been shaped by the Christian tradition and has, indeed, shaped the Christian tradition, that conception of a Triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, One God blessed forever. God in the modern period has become a problem, and although high percentages of people affirm their faith in God, in the intellectual centers of reflection and deep thinking that eventually impact popular opinion, God has had hard times in the last two or three centuries. We no longer simply take for granted the existence of God, and the nature of God has been thought about a good deal. The religious quest will always be there. But, God has become a problem. That statement of the problem was probably set forth as profoundly and as critically as anywhere by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. You've heard me refer to Feuerbach, on occasion, over the years, because his critique of the idea of God goes to the heart of the matter. It is his idea that God is the projection of our human needs unto the screen of reality, after which we bow down and worship, that God is the consequence of human need and that God is a human construction or a projection. It is certainly true that when we ask about God, we are asking about ourselves. The questions about God are really questions about our own existence. Whence have we come? Whither are we going? And in the meantime, what is the meaning of it all? Is there any purpose? Is there any direction? The human situation is fraught with peril. We are threatened creatures; our human existence is perilous. At any moment we well know that we could be wiped out. We stand at the side of those we love, helplessly seeing them die. We, ourselves, are vulnerable to a medical diagnosis at any time that could be fatal. The human condition is one of contingency; it is a perilous life we lead, and the religious quest is quite a natural quest after some anchor, some place to stand, some place of comfort, some place to rest the soul. And so, when Feuerbach said © Grand Valley State University   �Mystery’s Face and Flow Richard A. Rhem Page 2   that God does not exist except as we have created God and objectified God and constructed God out of our own human needs, he was putting his finger on something that was true. He was roundly criticized, of course, and the Church rose up with great defensiveness at such a suggestion, that God is a human creation. Feuerbach, nonetheless, had looked at the human person and the human situation, had sensed the fearfulness and the anxiety and the fragility of human existence and detected within the human person a kind of weakness that longed for some strong source of support and comfort and strength. Feuerbach's mistake, which is a mistake all of us often make, was to absolutize his claim, that is, that God is nothing but... To say that God is nothing but the projection of human need is to say too much. But, his insight is telling and you must be aware, as I am, of that which goes on in your own soul and heart and you must observe as I do all about us those for whom God is a crutch, a safety blanket, a security measure. God, for many of us, is the God we need. But, that's not all there is to say. I point that out because we are downstream from that movement of modern atheism. From Feuerbach came Freud who said that religion is an illusion, Marx, who said that human life is nothing but economic determinism, Nietzsche, who said all is nothingness. The nihilism that is laced within contemporary society is the consequence of that conception of things that has ruled out God, that conception of a Feuerbach who saw so much of human need projected into God that he simply wiped God away. But, as Nietzsche said, God is dead, and everything is permissible. And I would say that the 20th century is probably a good example of the fact that, when God is dead, anything is permissible, and very soon the fabric of society begins to unravel. Karen Armstrong, in her lecture a couple of weeks ago, spoke of the future of God, and she alluded to the contemporary atheism that pervades the lives of so many, even though they might answer a Gallup Poll, "Oh, yes, I believe in God." But there exists a practical atheism, living without any engagement or any regard to God. Karen Armstrong, said we are in one of those periods of history when we are simply waiting in the darkness for some future image to arise. But atheism, she said, is not to be feared, for it is not a rejection of God, but it is a rejection of inadequate conceptions of God. And so, we are in this present darkness, waiting, confident that there will yet emerge that understanding of God that can call forth from us worship and commitment to the ways of love and of justice. We have had inadequate conceptions of God. We have archaic, naive and primitive ideas of God, which we have not updated with everything else that we know in our world. With all of the explosion of knowledge, we have not done much with our idea of God. Yesterday it was a nice day and I was beckoned out of the loft to contemplate God. I went out on the bluff to soak up a little sunshine, thinking that I could think there or not think at all there, and lo and behold, God got me there, too, for © Grand Valley State University �Mystery’s Face and Flow Richard A. Rhem Page 3   as I sat down there was a little table in front of me, one of those little, low tables. It was made of slats of wood and those slats of wood had little spaces between them, and as I contemplated the table, there was an ant. So, I will now tell you the story, "The Ant and I." The ant went all the way up one board to the corner, and then he made a left turn and went down the short side and got to another corner, came all the way down the long side, came to the corner, went up the short side. And I thought, "Now, what will you do? You've been all the way around the perimeter. Now, what will you do, little ant?" He did it all over again. Got to every crisis point, made his turn, in his case, always the left turn, and got back to the starting point. And then one time, as I was about to drift off, he came to the edge and he went down and he found the supporting board underneath which created a bridge for him to get to the next board. He came up on the next board and then he went all the way down on the board, across, all the way up, down, and he did that several times. And I thought, "You know, ant, you ought to give me some interesting plot to follow because I don't have time just to watch you continue to traverse all these boards." But, then I realized that God had placed me there in order to contemplate God, not the ant, for my contemplating the ant is that old image of God that we've grown up with that has come to us out of an ancient past where there was a heaven and an earth and the waters under the earth, the three-storied universe, where God was a being on the throne "out there," in heaven somewhere, and we were here, and God, although totally apart from us, would come down into our history and affect circumstances and then return back to heaven. I thought to myself, if I contemplate the ant, I am like that childhood idea of God which I had. Here I am, totally unengaged, just a spectator, observing. Now, I thought to myself, I could take a piece of dune grass and I could wiggle it in front of the ant, seeing whether or not I could influence the pattern of its peregrinations. But, I didn't do that. Then I thought to myself, I could crush that bugger! But, I didn't do that. And then I thought, I could help him. I could save him; I could redeem him from his dilemma. He is on the surface of a table and the poor dear really is trying to find the sand. He's trying to find the sand where there is sustenance, where there is community, where there is home. He's trying to find his brothers and sisters. I could actually pick him up and put him down on the sand. I didn't do that, either. When I left him, he had gone down into one of those deep valleys between the boards, he was down on that foundation piece which probably was a deep, dark valley of the shadow of death for him. I was half-tempted to pick him up and put him down, but I thought, "No, I think I'll just leave you there." Then I thought to myself, "I am like my old image of God, sovereign, absolute. I can do what I will with that ant. I can crush the ant. I could redeem the ant. I could observe the ant. I could get engaged with the ant. But, I'm totally apart from the ant, even though I have the prerogative of getting involved with it, but I live a separate existence far superior and beyond the ant." © Grand Valley State University �Mystery’s Face and Flow Richard A. Rhem Page 4   That's the God I learned in Sunday School. How about you? And then I thought to myself, "That isn't the God that makes sense of my universe at all today. That's not how I understand human existence, the world, the cosmos." Oh, I understand how that old system worked and if we wouldn't be literal about it all, it would still work for us because it tells us, according to Paul, of God Who said, "Let light shine out of darkness." In other words, the Creator God Who, in the fullness of time, shined into our hearts the light of the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And Paul, in his writing to the Corinthians, was talking about the fact how we even look at that mirror of Jesus mirroring God, and how we, as we contemplate that image, are changed into that image by the Spirit of God. So, I see what Paul meant. In the biblical material, I can understand that God, the incarnation of God, the Spirit of God shaping me into the image of that incarnate One according to the purposes of God. Or, as John witnessed, really quite simple. Jesus said, "I'm going to leave you." Thomas said, "We don't know the way." Jesus said, "I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me." Phillip said, "Ah, I've been wanting to talk to you about that. Just show us the Father and we'll be satisfied." It's that deep longing. I don't sense that Phillip was in any particular crisis. Job was in a crisis! Job said, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" In the midst of his burning anguish, Job was in a crisis, with the problem of suffering and of tragedy in the world that has wrenched that cry out of the human heart down through the centuries. Phillip? Phillip's just, well, still longing, though. He said, "Just show us the Father. Oh, if I could just know, if I could just see." Jesus said, "Look, how long have I been with you, you still don't get it. You see me, you see the Father. There's no other access. There's no other map. There's no other possibility except as you behold God in my face." So, Paul saw God in the face of Jesus. John saw in his witness to Jesus, God in the face of Jesus. I can understand that. But then, as I was thinking about the inadequacy of my King of the Universe model over against the ant, I realized that that old model wouldn't work anymore, because that table is not just a thing. That table is dammed up energy, because we know that for 15 billion years it has been a cosmic river of energy expanding time and space as it moves, and we know that that table is simply energy, for a time coalesced, gathered into material, but that material can as well be transferred back into energy because energy and matter are interchangeable; they're all one reality. It is not as though I have a life other than that ant; the life of the ant is the life in me, as well. It is God's Spirit, God's breath that enables the ant to live and me to live, and I am just a cut above © Grand Valley State University �Mystery’s Face and Flow Richard A. Rhem Page 5   the ant in that I am conscious of the ant and the ant is not conscious of me, but consciousness is that uniquely human capacity. But, the human, although having that consciousness, that self-awareness, that ability to observe the process, is not apart from the process, for that table and that ant and my body are all one reality, and all of it alive because of God. Nothing exists except God's Spirit, God's breath, God's enlivening presence. So, I have to do away with that old King model of a God, "out there" ruling, some sovereign Absolute Who can dip down, Who can save or damn. I have to get God, somehow or other, into the reality of my world, to see that my world is because God's breath is or God's Spirit is, and behind and beyond that cosmic drama there is a mystery, a mystery that we cannot fathom, that totally Other, that wholly Other, totally transcendent, Ultimate Mystery that is the Source. I don't know how to say anything more. And even to say that is an article of faith. There's no empirical proof that there's any Source! But, I cannot believe the marvels and wonders of the cosmic drama, except I think of a fountain of creativity that continues to pour forth and that the cosmic drama itself continues to be laced with that creativity as that develops in all of its diversity in a thousand directions with possibilities unlimited. But then, I think to myself, "So I have an Ultimate Mystery. But, what is the nature of that Mystery other than a creativity. And I have a cosmos of tables and chairs and bricks and bodies and everything existent, and all of that diversity what does it mean? What is the nature of the Mystery? And what is the meaning of the manifold diversity of my reality? And then I see a face. I see the face of Jesus. And suddenly I'm back at an old Triune God. Suddenly I see the Trinity with new eyes. Suddenly I see the Ultimate Mystery totally hidden from us, but totally present in all that is, defined in a face, the face of Jesus. That enables me to have a sense of the nature of the Mystery, to sense that that Mystery which is creativity is driving things toward an order of love and justice, because if that face, that representation in history, that concretization, that incarnation - if that incarnation of Jesus is really a reflection or a mirror of the Mystery, and as I reflect on that reflection in the face of Jesus, if I am being thus shaped like Jesus, then perhaps it is the intention of that whole cosmic drama that there be those who be human who are thus shaped, who are joining in those currents that lead to justice and to love. Suddenly I have a three-pointed God again. I have the Ultimate Mystery, the Source of it all; I have the enlivening presence of God in all that is, and I have a definition, I have a specificity, I have an image, an icon, a concrete shape that calls me to meaningful living. The way of Jesus. The way of justice. The way of compassion, moving, moving, I trust and hope, to the Kingdom of God, Shalom, the Cosmic Harmony in perfect pitch. © Grand Valley State University �Mystery’s Face and Flow Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Now I have a sense of my whence, although I cannot penetrate the Mystery. I have a sense of my aliveness, thanks to that breath, wind, Spirit that's been flowing now for 15 billion years, and I have a marker, I have a way, I have a face, and it's because of that face that we gather here, lost in wonder, love and praise, before the Mystery, and go out of here to live a certain way. My economic decisions are not just economic decisions. They are economic decisions that I make in light of my call to follow Jesus. My political decisions are not just arbitrary political decisions; they are decisions that I make in the light of the face that I see. The total way that I am is not arbitrary. It is a way of commitment, following the one whose commitment led him to death and resurrection, by the Spirit, moving, moving toward that final Kingdom. In the light of all that we know about that cosmic river of energy that now and again is dammed up into material stuff like chairs and tables and bodies, I can't believe that, caught up in that process, I still need three points of light, or a Triune God, or a God creatively present, concretely representative of that life to which I am called. The Church is a place where we gather where all lobbying ceases, all selfish ambition comes to an end, all personal advantage ceases as we commit ourselves to the cause of the Ultimate Mystery Whose clue we've found in a face. It's just as simple as that. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f5ee153b1d90bcd0f4e5fe453500b75f.mp3 f8469e813eebb54263761fe5fcf98317 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 Series A Cosmic Symphony Scripture Text Job 23:3, II Corinthians 4:6, John 14:9 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-0-19970525 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-05-25 Title A name given to the resource Mystery's Face and Flow Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 25, 1997 entitled "Mystery's Face and Flow", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 23:3, II Corinthians 4:6, John 14:9. Justice Love Mystery Nature of God Religious Quest https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bdbf8feb65f2ac2c464cfcf0c388e7c1.pdf 0fae8d580784c10584e0ad8b8e8d7e84 PDF Text Text Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Pentecost Text: Genesis 1:2; John 3:6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan May 18, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon The consternation in the heart and mind of a Nicodemus brought him to Jesus, confused as to exactly what was going on in the life and ministry of this one, this respected teacher of Israel. And so, he came to him, saying, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus responds with the claim that one must be born again, from above. Nicodemus' confusion only deepens. He says, "How can this be?" And I suppose that all religion arises out of those deep existential questions, from whence have we come? Whither are we going? And what is the meaning of it all, the purpose, the intention? What is our life? With Nicodemus, I think, from time to time we all say, "What does this mean? How can this be?" We keep ourselves busy for much of our lives, frantically pursuing our penultimate goals, but there are those moments that dawn upon us, maybe when we take a candle as a young person, maybe as a parent holding an infant at a baptismal font, maybe some moment with the bread in our hand; or at a moment of great fear, tragedy or loss, or deep joy and delight. Sometime or another, we ask, "How can this be? Whence have we come? Whither are we going? What does it mean?" Because we are human, and after a cosmic drama of 15 billion years, the likes of us have emerged on planet earth, able to wonder about it all, becoming when, how, who knows but, at some moment, conscious, selfconscious, aware, aware of the other, finding voice, having language, able to express deep thoughts. And before the mystery of life, its wonders causing us awe, its terrors causing us dread, we ask, "What does it mean? Where are we going? And what is this human existence into which we've entered?" That is the source and the origin of the wide diversity of religions, belief and religious practice throughout the ages and around the world. That was no less the case with the Hebrew poets and prophets. Interestingly, the clear statement of God's creation in Genesis did not arise until that people had a national identity for centuries. The creation account in Genesis arose out of the situation of exile, when that people in their alienation and estrangement had lost their confidence in their Yahweh God, believing as did most ancient peoples, that God was the God of the winners, or that the winner's God was God. Then, in the midst of that © Grand Valley State University   �Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Richard A. Rhem Page 2   rather despairing exilic community, there arose a voice, a poet, who stirred them to the depths, reminding them that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was none other than the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and he wrote that marvelous poem, "In the beginning, God ..." There was an earlier account, somewhat less sophisticated, that focused on the human person, the creation of humankind. In those stories we see a people orienting themselves and their lives around the sharp focus of a God Who spoke and called all things into being. Obviously, the conception of the natural world, the universe, the cosmology reflected in those Genesis accounts was representative of the understanding of the age in which the poet wrote. It was a three-storied universe, the heavens above, the waters beneath the earth, and God was the Great Mechanic, the Great Architect, the Great Designer, the Great Clockmaker, as it were. God was a being, a Superbeing. God was like us, personal, only bigger, more so. God was the Supreme Being Who, from beyond, out of the depths of eternity, decided to call into being that which was not, and did it like a designer, like a contractor, like one who constructs a model. There was a kind of naiveté about that account, as we look at it 25 or more centuries on. The world is not the world that was conceived of by the biblical writer. But, ancient people were not naive. Ancient people had all of the questions that we have. Those creation accounts are an attempt to give account of the reality of the universe and of the human experience. And there is a profundity there. The Spirit of God - in the Hebrew language, spirit, breath, wind are all translated by the same word, Ruach - brooded over the chaos. Over that soupy chaos, the poet tells us, the breath or the wind of God brooded or hovered, and out of the chaotic stew, through the brooding of the breath of God, came the cosmic miracle of which the ancient writer knew only a little. In the other account in the second chapter, you see the beautiful simplicity of this Creator God coming down to the earth that was created and scooping up a handful of mud, fashioning a body and breathing in life so that the man became a living soul. Such an insight saw the human person connected absolutely with the elements of the earth, but having something more, that spirit dimension that created the possibility of consciousness and awareness and attentiveness. Rooted to the earth but beckoned upward by the Spirit, the human person comes from the hand of the Creator God. The Psalmist sang about it, sang about it with delight and with joy. "Every living thing, the whole vast created order, all of it emerged at the behest of the Creator's Word Whose breath, whose Wind, whose Spirit enlivens it all. You remove your Spirit and we die. You bestow Your Spirit, and we live." The Psalmist sang about the God Who is life, the life of the world, the life of all that is. The Hebrew tradition out of which we have come is a tradition that is centered in that breath of God, Spirit of God, wind of God. Poets and prophets with vivid imagination envisioned a whole new world endowed with Spirit, looking for the © Grand Valley State University �Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Richard A. Rhem Page 3   day when one would come, filled with the Spirit. The story goes on to the point at which one was conceived by the Holy Spirit, according to the Gospel, Jesus by name, in whose life and ministry there developed that movement from which we stem, a Christian Church, celebrating the birth of that movement on the day of Pentecost, according to Luke. For Luke would have us see that that which happened in the wake of Jesus was nothing more than the continuation of that activity of the breath of God, the breath and the wind of God that swept upon that early gathering of disciples, empowering them, enlivening them, firing them to go out and to tell the story, the Good News of what God had done in Jesus Christ. So, on Pentecost we recognize that we are preeminently a people of wind, the people of breath, the people of Spirit, that it is Spirit that marks us as humans, that causes us to wonder, to raise those deep questions and to seek after God. Nicodemus came to Jesus in his confusion and Jesus confused him even more. "You must be born again," or "You must be born from above," or "from beyond." That new birth, if we were to understand it today, would have to be translated from the understanding of Jesus, because Jesus didn't know our cosmology. Jesus saw a distinction between the flesh and the Spirit, and we certainly understand what he meant. All of us know and of some of us it is true that we are dead while we live. And certainly that was the reality to which Jesus was pointing, the possibility of living a human existence without being human, being a human automaton without spirit, without consciousness, without awareness, without attentiveness, without that spirit dimension, that depth dimension. But we would have to say today, in the light of what we know about this amazing cosmic drama into which we have been caught up, that there is no such thing as flesh and spirit, for there is only one cosmic river of energy. Fifteen billion years ago there was an explosion, the Big Bang, as the physicists speak of it today; 15 billion years ago, Jesus, would you believe it? They tell us it's not like an explosion of TNT, but rather, the explosion of a musical chord, perhaps the most famous chord in all the world, Beethoven's Fifth. You know how it begins. It's "Boom, boom, boom, boom." That's it, you see, the Big Bang. It is a chord that begins to reverberate outward, outward, outward, and as it goes, it does not fill space, it creates space; it does not take time, it creates time, so time and space are expanding in resonant circles outward, outward, outward, for 15 billion years. Here we are at this late point of development in a cosmic drama, and we understand that we have been created with spirit that has become aware of it all. Fifteen billion years until there emerged the likes of us, who could ask "from whence did we come," and "whither are we going," and "what is the meaning of it all?" We have discovered that we are not flesh and spirit, but we are enspirited flesh, for we know that energy and mass are interchangeable, and that our mass is but dammed up energy, coalesced for a time and then released in another form. We find ourselves little whirlpools of meaning in that cosmic river that has been © Grand Valley State University �Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Richard A. Rhem Page 4   flowing for 15 billion years, and if we cannot discover the meaning of it, we have become those who can give meaning to it and create meaning for it. We create meaning in our lives in community with one another, trusting in that process that has been emerging, baffled by the mystery of its beginning, and being without a clue as to the manifestation of its culmination, but in the meantime, trusting God Who is spirit, Who enspirits, enlivens, fires the imagination and creates between us and among us human community. As you know, this past week Nancy and I spent a few days in New Jersey and we were privileged to hear the English scholar, Karen Armstrong, who spoke twice last Tuesday, in the morning on "The History of God." In 1993 she published her rather significant work, The History of God: 4000 years of the human understanding and conception of God. Then in the afternoon she spoke of "The Future of God," and she addressed, I thought, very profoundly the present state of the human family. We don't get a very good feel for that in Western Michigan, but the institutional Church is certainly in trouble, and the manifestation of the great religious traditions around the world that were once thought to be passé are experiencing a resurgence. There is confusion on every hand. Karen Armstrong is currently researching a book on Fundamentalism, which she sees as the desperate human attempt to resuscitate the God of the Bible, the God of that cosmology of the Genesis writer, that God "out there," that Clockmaker, Designer, King and Ruler. That conception was reflective of the understanding of the day but cannot carry the freight in our day. She said in all of the monotheisms, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, even in some of the Eastern religions, there is currently a fundamentalism which is a kind of a fanatical attempt to resuscitate an old conception of God, bringing that which is dead and to bring "Him" crashing back into history, the God that has long since been dead. Well, are we then in a period of atheism? Much of the world is, notwithstanding the resurgence of that fundamentalism manifest around the globe. In the long haul, where we are going is into the darkness of atheism. But then she said a most interesting thing, and I believe she's right. You don't have to worry about atheism, not even if you're making your Confirmation today, because atheism is not a rejection of God. It is simply a rejection of an inadequate conception of God. Years ago, J.B. Phillips, who paraphrased the New Testament, wrote a book whose title says it all: Your God Is Too Small. We are living in a period of time when the conception of God that has come with us out of the past is not adequate anymore to connect with our human experience. That conception makes no sense of this 15-billion-year river of energy that is flowing, God knows where. But, in the meantime, in the darkness it's as the poet Keats claimed: You don't just sit down and write a poem. You wait in the darkness. You wait in the darkness until the poem writes itself. And so, now, we don't know so much, and there are big questions afoot. But if we trust, if we have faith to believe, then we will not idolize those formulations and conceptions that have come to us. We will recognize where they are inadequate, where they can no longer connect with our © Grand Valley State University �Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Richard A. Rhem Page 5   experience, no longer give orientation for our human life. We will wait, wait in the darkness, trusting, not knowing what will be, but knowing what can no longer be. And I want to say to you young people, those who tell you so clearly all about God, don't know, because we don't know; we trust that Mystery, and we have seen the reality of the Mystery revealed in the face of Jesus and we have experienced the breath of God in community. Thus we know all will be well. Let God be God and let us with confident trust move into the future unafraid, for you see, Pentecost keeps happening. Pentecost is simply the presence of the Spirit. In the words of the poet, There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights of the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings Pentecost. Breath. Spirit. God. Wonder. Wonder! © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85ed5a1f0f1ac0262770bd0b2686d8af.mp3 a9ab35106c27c01007166902efee6b55 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 Series A Cosmic Symphony Scripture Text Genesis 1:2, John 3:6 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-0-19970518 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-05-18 Title A name given to the resource Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 18, 1997 entitled "Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, John 3:6. Community Consciousness Cosmic Evolution Spirit of God Trust https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/eed1bf5fb949e9309459bf2173cc753c.pdf 382d7a647e539fd2b86fd7337555cb79 PDF Text Text What Defines A Family? Mother’s Day Text: Mark 3:35; Acts 1:14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan May 11, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon There's a piece from The Atlantic Monthly, having to do with families of which I'll read only a paragraph. It's "Household Principles Concerning Food and Drink." Laws Pertaining to Dessert: For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or a total of six peas eaten where I can see and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But, if you eat a lesser number of peas and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert. And if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert. No, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity and I will know and you shall have no dessert. To the word of God that sometimes sounds similar to that, the Lesson from the Epistle, Acts 1:6: So, when they had come together they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" And he said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet which is near Jerusalem, a © Grand Valley State University   �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   sabbath's day journey away. And when they had entered, they went into the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. The Word of the Lord. Then reading from the Gospel, the third chapter of Mark and verse 19: Then he went home, that is Jesus went home, and the crowd came together again so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him, for they said, "He is beside himself." And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub, and by the prince of demons, he casts out the demons." And Jesus called them to him and said to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if the house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But, no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then, indeed, he may plunder his house. Truly I say to you all sins will be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." For they said, "He has an unclean spirit." And his mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they said to him and called him, and the crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you," and he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my mother, my brother, my sister." The Gospel of the Lord. Well, it's Mother's Day, that High Holy Day on the liturgical calendar. Who could miss it? Seems like we've been bombarded for some time now holding out all kinds of wonderful things that we can do for our mothers. A couple weeks ago, Nancy and I were in that cavernous paradise of consumer lust, Marshall Fields, down in the Chicago Loop, and, usually in order that she may pursue and enjoy her buying without harassment, she says, "Could you meet me in about an hour?" and we identify some spot. Of course, I always fail to remember whether we came in on Randolph or State or Wabash or where, so I was looking a bit dismayed. One couldn't go up in the aisle without being accosted by some lady with some wonderful merchandise to offer, and I tried to avoid contact as much as I could, but one caught me squarely and she said, "How do you do, sir?" She said, "Are © Grand Valley State University �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   you looking for a wonderful gift for a woman?" I said, "No, I'm looking for a wonderful woman." And she said, "Oh, someone like you shouldn't have any problem," and I said, "So they say." Later, Nancy and I did find each other and I managed to get out of there without buying too many fragrances that day but, as I said, Mother's Day is a day that has conquered America. Better said, Mother's Day hasn't conquered America; Hallmark has conquered America through the brilliant strategy of Madison Avenue, and so here we are in divine worship, talking about Mother's Day. There are some purists who would not deviate from the liturgical calendar, no matter what's coming down, and therefore on a day like this, there would be no mention of mothers because this is the last Sunday of Eastertide and it's Ascension Sunday, since we don't celebrate Ascension Day on Ascension Day which was 40 days after Easter, which was Thursday. And those purists wouldn't deviate from that liturgical calendar and would probably bore you to tears today with stories about the Ascension, and I'm not a purist, obviously. I deviate whenever necessary, but it's nice when you've been around so long you can find those little passages of scripture that manage to have both Ascension and the mother in one paragraph, and that's what we have this morning. It is Ascension Day and Luke, particularly Luke, wants to make sure that there is a hiatus between the historical ministry of Jesus in the days of his flesh and the ministry of the Church in the power of the Spirit. Luke has that sense of the historical unfolding, the stages of redemption, and we have crucifixion and resurrection, and then Luke is the one who tells us that there was a period of 40 days in which Jesus manifested himself, so to speak, to say, "I'm really alive. It is really me." And then that period of various and sundry appearances seemed to come to an end, by and large, and Luke even makes the Ascension an event witnessed by the disciples, and it is an important movement into the next stage which we will celebrate next week on the Day of Pentecost and the baptism of the Spirit of God. But, Luke does something interesting that's not altogether unimportant for Mother's Day, and that is that he gets Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers back into the family with Jesus. You know, Jesus and his mother had their tensions and their struggles. In fact, during this past Lent just a few weeks ago, I used that Mark passage that says that when Jesus inaugurated his ministry and was besieged by the crowds in that time of his popularity, that there were those who saw him as a threat and they said, "He's gone off the deep end. He's crazy." And he got into a confrontation with his critics and denied that what he was doing, he was doing under demonic influence. Rather, he was doing it under the Spirit of God. There was a sharp confrontation, but anyway, the word was out he's gone off the deep end, and Mary and his brothers, Mark tells us, came to where he was teaching in order to bring him home, because he was an embarrassment to them and I'm sure they were concerned about him. We can understand that. Haven't the newspapers and the media been full of accounts of families who have agonized over sons and daughters that committed the mass © Grand Valley State University �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   suicide, taking their cue from Hepplewhite, that the celestial sign of the HaleBopp Comet, said it's time to depart? And so, we've heard a lot of stories of alienation and estrangement, of sons and daughters that hadn't been in touch for years or perhaps some touch, and yet, the colliding and collision of ideology and of faith commitments, and so forth. During the season of Lent I preached on that text under the theme, "Love Hurts." Love does hurt. And Mary and her other sons went to bring Jesus home because they were concerned about him, because we do live under the pressure of community opinion, and there is a kind of conventional wisdom out there and an expected behavior, and when that's moved away from, we get very uneasy. Mary and her other sons couldn't get close to him, there were so many people, so they handed him a note: "Your mother and your brothers are here." Jesus' response was, "My mother and my brothers? Who are my mother and my brothers? The ones who do the will of God, those are my mother and my brothers and my sisters." I don't think that Jesus was meaning those that belong to my denomination. I don't think that was a narrowly religious kind of thing. I think that Jesus was saying that sometimes there is a vision of life, an understanding of its meaning and of its purpose. Sometimes there is that ultimate concern that moves one from the depths, and when that isn't shared, then it's difficult to bridge that fellowship. There is estrangement and there is alienation, and Jesus was saying there is a natural given family. But, he said, there is a deeper family, a community of ultimate concern and vision and commitment that transcends those natural ties of the family circle. That was a hard word for Mary. I linked it with the word from the cross in John's Gospel, where there is a hint that maybe that estrangement and alienation had been healed, because he says, "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother." I must have made that point rather strongly on that Lenten service because, when I got home for dinner, Nancy said, "I don't like Jesus." Now, that really makes me break out into a sweat. Of course, why couldn't he have just said, "Mother," at the cross? It's not comfortable, is it? There's something we would desire more from this mother-son relationship. But in the passage in Acts we get something more, because there, not without reason, not just as an aside, but I think intentionally, very purposely, Luke says following the Ascension, following the instruction of Jesus to go to the city and to wait for the baptism of the Spirit, to be empowered to carry out that mission of the Gospel, the disciples gathered in the upper room and they were praying and there were with them the women who were a part of that intimate circle, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Luke was saying that that given family had eventuated or had emerged into that deeper dimension of human community of shared value and vision, of shared ultimate concern. It's the last notice we have of Mary the mother of Jesus. © Grand Valley State University �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   But, his brother James became the leader of the Jerusalem Church. His brother James was the ongoing observant Jew who followed Jesus as Messiah. That's not easy to do. But he became the leader of the Jerusalem community and the Jerusalem community was that conservative Jesus community that was in tension with Paul who was that apostle called to the Gentile world. It's interesting to speculate on whether Jesus' own brother James got it right or whether Paul saw through even more profoundly than James the difference between that Jerusalem Jesus Jewish community and that developing Gentile mission. But, it is good to know that Mary and the brothers of Jesus were able to move beyond the givenness of family in which there was so much tension and estrangement to that commonality of vision and value so that they could be a part of that new family that Jesus formed, a family bound together more profoundly than any given natural ties can do. So, what is a family? A family is, obviously, to begin with, that given circle of parents and children where children are cared for and where they are nurtured and they are formed. And there's a great deal of discussion about the family in our society today and there can be no argument about the fact that that basic social unit has come upon difficult days. The family, ideally, is a place for care, for nurture, for provision, for the formation into a humane existence, and it can take different shapes and forms, but that function needs to be fulfilled, or a society will be in trouble, as we well know. I want to take a moment this morning to congratulate you on your families. These children that jammed this chancel this morning are beautiful, aren't they? Shining faces, ribbons in their hair, bouncing and bowing and singing their hearts out - they are beautiful. You've done well. Your children are marvelous, and we are committed to their nurture, with you, committed to the support of the family. I don't know of a place where it's happening any better, from the Worship Center kids right on up through, where they are being grounded in the biblical story and being invited to sing and to dance, bringing it to expression, where they are invited to wonder and to stand in awe, to raise any question and to pursue any angle or experiment. Your children are wonderful and here they are being given a marvelous support in their growing faith formation. Last Monday night I participated in the Elders' Meeting with the Confirmands who will be received here next Sunday. Those young people are outstanding; they're bright; they're free, they are open, they raise questions, they feel at home here, and to hear their word is wonderful. Congratulations on the job you've done in your homes in the shaping and the forming of your young people. And once in a while there's one or two brave enough even to engage me in a one-to-one, maybe in an interview or a conversation, not intimidated by this old man. We sit across the table from one another and I am always so impressed with your sons and daughters. They are the best and the brightest, and when you see them all scrubbed up and clean and serious, my goodness, they are impressive. I like them © Grand Valley State University �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   one at a time. You know, you get two or three or four together with a baseball cap on backwards with the sweatshirt that defies the possibility that there could be a body inside, the sleeves hanging down to the kneecaps, dressed in jeans where the crotch meets the kneecaps, and the legs mop up the landscape as they move. Now, they scare me. But, they're wonderful, and so I want to say this morning you're doing a wonderful job with your children and, when we hear all the horror stories about the youth, I have to say I don't see it. I don't see it here. That given family is absolutely critical for the formation of children and young people that will go out and launch themselves, and that's the second thing I would say about a family, it is of limited function, not absolute. The family is to form and shape and prepare and support and launch, and that's the tricky part. That's where the tension came in between Jesus and his mother. And it's so understandable, because we do love them. We do care about them. We hurt for all the potential pitfalls that are lying out there for their destruction. And yet, what defines a family? Not only love that cares and gets them started, but the trust to let them fly, the letting go, the taking off of the controls. Oh, Good Lord, it's scary. But necessary. Jesus could not go home with Mary. In the Gnostic Gospels, a group of manuscripts that was discovered in 1945 in Egypt, made accessible to us by the likes of an Elaine Pagels, she lifts up one of her favorite passages. The Gospel of Thomas, the scholars feel, is early, maybe even earlier than Matthew, Mark , Luke and John. It is a Gnostic Gospel. It is that alternative interpretation and understanding of Jesus. It's one of those interpretations and understandings that fell on the cutting room floor but, like Elaine Pagels says, you know, the winners write the history, eh? Well, anyway, here's the Gospel of Thomas, a statement from Jesus that says, "If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. But if you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you." That could be a sermon, too, couldn't it? If there is something in you that is intrinsically you, unless it comes to expression you will die, your soul will wither, and what does not come forth will destroy you. Jesus said if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you are being true to yourself (to thine own self be true), and allow that which is deepest in you, that passion, that vision - let it come forth. Risky? Life is risky. The family plays an absolutely critical role, but it has a limited function. There is a time for our sons and daughters to fly and for us to trust them and to love them, no matter whether the flight plan pleases us or not. What makes a family? Well, there's always that possibility of the tension dissolving and the alienation being bridged, and community established at a deeper level than ever. That's why I like the picture of Mary and Jesus' brothers praying in the upper room. Once again, not in a narrowly religious sense, but in a © Grand Valley State University �What Defines A Family? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   sense that they saw in Jesus that ultimate concern which they finally could come, as well, to embrace and to become a part of that new age, that new family, that new world. So, what defines a family? Good solid foundations given lovingly to nurture and form, to be sure. And a certain limited function, allowing the freedom to move out. But then always the openness to one another to listen, to change, to forgive, to heal and to move to an even deeper human community which is more than simply the given. They say that blood is thicker than water, and certainly it's borne out again and again. But, there is something thicker than blood. It is that shared community, that common, human community that binds us, soul to soul and spirit to spirit, into a family beyond anything that the given family can provide. This is family. This is a good place. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6f1c38a3a9fe906f6943766df33cb75.mp3 66b130b61c3b4d173f93797913786447 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 Mother's Day, Ascension Sunday, Eastertide VII Scripture Text Mark 3:35, Acts 1:14 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-0-19970511 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-05-11 Title A name given to the resource What Defines a Family? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 11, 1997 entitled "What Defines a Family?", on the occasion of Mother's Day, Ascension Sunday, Eastertide VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 3:35, Acts 1:14. Community of Faith Mother's Day https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/160b3a6001c0c3ef05d5385b7a7f0bf1.pdf 32ed49bb092b96ae948b8121d3ada3a5 PDF Text Text Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Text: Acts 17:17; Mark 2:22 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan May 4, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Neil Postman, whose article I cite on your liturgy this morning, begins that article with these lines from the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun, but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric. What an image. What a characterization of our day. The Information Society which can distribute the meteoric shower of data that inundates us day after day. Knowledge, knowledge everywhere. And the poet says it lies "unquestioned, uncombined," enough of it to leech us of our every ill, spun every day. But there is no loom upon which to weave a fabric, a fabric that could bring meaning to our lives and give us a sense of the big picture. And so, Neil Postman suggests that we live in a special time. Our times are not like every time. He speaks of our times as a darkening moment when all is in change, and we know not yet how to find our way. And in such a world, Neil Postman suggests, we need a story, a story that will provide the loom upon which we can weave a fabric of meaning, creating understanding, giving us confidence and some word of hope for our world. We can no longer, says Neil Postman, tell the tales that arose from tribes and clans and nations in ancient times, but neither do we need to invent a new story. Rather, we need to re-tell the story, looking at it with new eyes, seeing it from a new perspective, finding its truth and its treasures and bringing them to fresh expression so that there might be good news and a word of hope in our world. This is a fascinating time in which to be alive. Challenging, exciting, and also a bit threatening, because we do not see clearly the way ahead. But, Postman suggests looking to our stories, basically two stories, an ancient one, the biblical story, and a more recent one, the story of science unfolding the awesomeness of the cosmic that has been in development and evolution for 15 billion years. In fascinating © Grand Valley State University   �Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Richard A. Rhem Page 2   fashion in our day, there is the possibility of weaving those two stories and retelling them in such a way that we can bring some hope and give some confidence to our world that is marked by insecurity and moral ambiguity and spiritual lack. Not a new story, but re-telling the old story, having seen it with new eyes in new light, and bringing it to fresh and passionate expression. This is what Jesus was about. In the second chapter of Mark's Gospel, we have those conflict stories, very typical of Jesus' encounter with the religious understanding of his day. He was a Jew, a true son of Israel. He never went outside the riches of that tradition. He stayed within his own scriptures, his own story. But, he re-told the story in such a way that it was obvious that he was saying something new, which is characteristically resisted by an established society in an old tradition – differences about observance, fasting, keeping the Sabbath - those kinds of matters of religious understanding and traditional observance and practice. Jesus was bold in his declarations of what was at the heart of that old tradition. It does take some courage to say, "It has been written, but I say unto you ..." That is a challenge. But, sometimes it is necessary to say it that boldly in order to get the attention of the people, and Jesus again was not inventing something new, but he was re-telling that story, calling it back to its heart and to its soul. He suggested in that familiar image that there need to be new wineskins to contain new wine, the annual harvest that must go through the fermenting process will burst the old containers, losing the wine and losing the containers. And so, he says, new skins for new wine. We're so familiar with that, that it hardly strikes us anymore, and yet, it ought to strike us, for it is the articulation from Jesus of a profound principle, namely that we in this historical arena, this human experience, have an ongoing, cumulative kind of experience that cannot always be captured in terms of the stories that were once told. It cannot be contained in the containers that once did service to bear it to the world. Jesus was annunciating that principle of contextuality, where every understanding arises in a concrete context, which will shape it, which will form it, which will become its container. But, as the context moves, as the years go by, as the periods of history move, the contents must be examined anew so that new treasures can be mined from them and brought to fresh expression, so that the new announcement can have all of the passion and all of the comfort and all of the challenge with which that initial word issued forth in the beginning. Paul didn't knew Jesus in the flesh, but Paul felt the impact of Jesus' life and teaching, and Paul was of that strict, serious, committed group of the Pharisaic party who were determined to stamp out the way of Jesus, until he was knocked to his knees by a burst of light from above, from the ascended, living Lord, turned around in his tracks, and captured, made captive to the mission of Jesus in the world. Paul became the great apostle to the Gentiles; he became the shaper of the Christian movement. Paul structured Christian theological understanding. He was never anything but a Jew. Neither was Peter, James, or John. But, Paul had © Grand Valley State University �Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Richard A. Rhem Page 3   seen something that took all that was familiar and put it into whole new understanding. To use the overused word, overused generally, I suppose, and certainly here, Paul affected a paradigm shift. Paul didn't invent something new; Paul mined the treasures of his own tradition, but in such a way to bring to new expression God's intention, that intention that had exploded into the world through Jesus Christ, and once Paul became a follower of Jesus, he saw everything with new eyes, in a new light, in a new perspective, and shared that with the whole world. He came one day to Athens, the university city, the intellectual center of the western world, and such was his passion and his conviction that God had done something of cosmic significance through Jesus Christ, that he went right to the heart of the intellectual establishment and preached Jesus and the resurrection, at the Areopagus, in the company of the philosophers who spent their days, according to Luke, doing nothing but playing with ideas. (You wonder how they supported themselves; I would enjoy that myself.) But, they were happy to hear from Paul. "Tell us, what do you have to tell us that's new and strange? What kind of alien deities are you bringing to our city?" Not that that would have been offensive to them. As a matter of fact, Paul was offended himself, because he saw in that grand city of Athens temples and statues and images and shrines, and with his passionate sense that God's truth had come to full expression in Jesus, he was distressed in his own soul and eager to bring his message right to Athens itself. But, being a person of some style and class, he began by relating himself very well to his audience. He began by affirming them, for he spoke of the very temples and shrines that distressed him, saying in a positive note, "I see that you are spiritually hungry. I see that you are, indeed, very religious. I see that you are on a quest. I even discovered a statue to an unknown god. That God I will proclaim to you." Then he went back to his own tradition. Now, he could have gone to Isaiah who talked about Israel being a light to the nations, explaining why Paul was on this Gentile mission. He could have gone to Abraham whose call included the fact that God would make Abraham a blessing to all nations. But, Paul didn't do that, because nobody in Athens cared about Israel. They didn't care about Abraham or Moses or David or Isaiah. They didn't know anything about them. But, Paul still had some stories in his pocket. He went back behind Abraham, back to Adam. He went back to the beginning, to the Creation. He went back to that to which they could relate. It is a great sermon Paul preached. He said, "From one ancestor, God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for Him and find Him, though, indeed, He is not far from each one of us, for in God we live and move and have our being. All of you, all of you since © Grand Valley State University �Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Adam - that is that commonality of humanity coming from the breath of God. He gives breath to all and life to all, for in God we live and move and have our being and even some of your own poets have said, 'For we, too, are God's offspring.'" Marvelous, Paul. I'm impressed. You really got to these philosophers. You were able to meet them on your own turf. You were able to embrace them in this Godcreation, this God Who is the Source of all life and all reality, of the whole cosmos. Now you've got them. Now tell them about what this God has been about recently. Paul goes on to speak of Jesus and the Easter miracle, and, of course, some balked, but some believed. It was a great effort, I think. Paul had a wonderful vision. He had a wonderful dream. Paul, this son of Israel, this Hebrew of the Hebrews, this one who had these stories down pat, going back and looking at the stories again could retell the story in such a fashion that he could bring to expression what he was convinced was God's intention, that there not be a wall dividing people, Jews on one side, Gentiles on another. As he wrote to the Church at Ephesus that in Jesus Christ, that wall or partition, was taken down, and that in Jesus Christ there was the creation of one new humanity. Isn't that a dream? Isn't that a thrilling kind of insight? According to Paul, that's what God was about. That's what he began to see in what God had most recently done in Jesus Christ, removing that particularity in order that there might be a new universality, in order that the humanity that God created in the beginning could be united in one community. Well, it didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? Was it a dream dreamed before its time? Paul was never able, to his anguish, to get his fellow rabbinical, Pharisaical partners, compatriots of the past, to see it that way. And,by the end of the first century, with an ongoing Jewish community under the leadership of the Rabbinical Pharisaic party finding its own way to a new spirituality, Paul almost couldn't win the day with a Jesus Jewish Movement. He had his tension with James. He had his arguments with Peter. But, he did win the day there and, consequently, the Christian movement became a largely Gentile movement. Paul had a grand dream. It wasn't realized. Paul was wrong about the timetable that God was on. Paul thought he was living at the edge. Paul expected the return of the ascended One very soon for the universal judgment. It didn't happen, of course. We're here 2000 years later. But, Paul was right about God's intention the creation of one human community. Two thousand years later, how would Paul retell the story if he were here today? How will we retell the story so that, in this volatile world of ours, so awesome and so threatening, God's intention for human community will be realized? Neil Postman says it will not do simply to chant our tales louder or to silence those who are singing a different song. It won't do. © Grand Valley State University �Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Richard A. Rhem Page 5   I just completed Karen Armstrong's book, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. If you want to almost give up on religion in general, read the book. One city, three faiths, and yet the irony is we're not talking about faiths east and west, Judaism and Buddhism, Christianity or Hinduism. We're talking about Islam, Judaism, Christianity. One city, three faiths, all professing faith in the same God, and, because they all claim Jerusalem as a holy city, we can see that as a microcosm of the world, and if you read the account by Karen Armstrong of Jerusalem, you will read of a city that for 2000 years has bled and died and been devastated. It is an incredible story of three religious faiths claiming one God, the same God, the God of Abraham, in this case, devastating each other. And there may have been a time in our world, horrible as it was, that it could happen without destroying the world. But, not in our world, because that earlier image of a global village has become a reality. Paul said God assigns certain people certain time periods and certain places and sets their boundaries. Well, I got to tell you, Paul, there aren't any boundaries anymore! Ask those who have circled this globe and see it as a unity, interrelated totally. No boundaries. No longer any island continents. The electronic media reaches into every home and hovel and village and valley and mountain peak of planet earth. We need to re-tell the story so that it again brings to expression God's ultimate concern for the creation of a human community in which the respective religious traditions bring their gifts to the altar, enriching one another and enhancing one another and complementing one another, alone, individually incomplete, but at the altar of God, embracing one another. Richard Elliot Friedman, in his book, The Hidden Face of God, says this is the remarkable time, sort of similar to what Postman says. Friedman says that, with the science story of this awesome cosmos, we are, ironically, on the brink of discovering the Divine Reality and, at the same time, we are on the threshold of planetary catastrophe. If we don't destroy ourselves, we might destroy our planet. It is a time when it is urgent that we move toward community through the retelling of the story that captures the old, old story of God's love and intention for one humanity. Friedman says we are in a race. We are in a race toward discovery or destruction. Christ Community will play to the tune of discovery, for in this time of the National Hockey League playoffs, with Danny Bylsma returned from the wars, no longer in pursuit of the Stanley Cup, I get reminded that once he played with the great Wayne Gretzky, who said, "One ought to skate where the puck is going, not where it's been." That text from Gretzky summarizes everything I want to say, with the closing image from the revelation, the story began in the Garden and is completed in a city where, from the throne of God, flows the River of the Water of Life, pure as crystal, on whose banks grows the tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. There's an image. There's a loom on which to weave a fabric of meaning, of wonder, and of hope, as we move into the future, not quite sure how to find our way. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0d97440c4a112c580b928aec2ce0a80a.mp3 b4b8eed4af98fcce050f2ef5c40187bb 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 Acts 17:16-34, Mark 2:18-28 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-0-19970504 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-05-04 Title A name given to the resource Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 4, 1997 entitled "Re-Tell Me the Old, Old Story", on the occasion of Eastertide VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 17:16-34, Mark 2:18-28. Divine Intention Global Community Meaning Re-imagining the Faith https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/341452f085bac8d63bb25d1dc74a70f6.pdf f0273bcd2c2c12ae6fed468f9e375d51 PDF Text Text That’s the Answer; What’s the Question? Eastertide Text: Acts 3:12, 16; Acts 4:12 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan April 13, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon I suggested to you last week that, in the wake of the resurrection, the Jesus Movement was dynamic, alive, confident, joyful, vibrant, and on the move, spreading across the ancient world like a burning fire, and that the Jesus Movement had eventually become institutionalized and that we are, down the pike 2000 years, a part of the institutionalization of that spirit of fire that broke out in the wake of Jesus' resurrection. Spirit needs form. Movements always become institutions, and institutions initially flourish and then they flounder and fail. They have a period of youthful exuberance, of middle-aged mediocrity, and finally weariness and defensiveness. They become sick of soul. It can be traced in all sorts and conditions of human organization and institutional life, and we just happen to be at the tail end of what was a great story - the story of the Christian Church. Israel had its story, its day in the sun. The Christian Church has had a 2000-year run. There's something breaking and the future form isn't yet evident, but out of the ashes of the Church's present sickness of soul will arise the Phoenix that will have a luster and a glory far beyond anything of which we have yet dreamed. I announce it ahead of time. How else could I be a prophet? The authorities, the guardians of the tradition, the temple crowd thought that they had gained themselves some time and some peace. They weren't bad people and they weren't really into crucifixion but, if need be, they would let Jesus die in order that the status quo might be maintained. Like the High Priest, Caiphas, said, "Better that one man die for the people that the nation be spared." Spoken like a true pragmatist. The kind of thing that you would expect some wise, old head in the councils of power to say. Not really wanting anybody to bleed, but better that one bleed that the status quo might be maintained. Institutional leadership is a burden. You sort of carry the whole world on your shoulders. You're responsible to keep everything together, responsible to keep the natives from getting restless, that life can go on with a modicum of civility and decency and comfort. And so, sometimes you have to make tough decisions. © Grand Valley State University   �That’s the Answer; Question? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   "Jesus? Well, Jesus will have to die, and then we can get on and this uneasy tension with our occupying power, Rome, and particularly those of us who are in the clergy, high priesthood will be able to maintain our position and our privilege because the perks aren't what they used to be, but they still aren't bad." So, Jesus dies and then, lo and behold, that crowd is convinced that he's not dead at all. They experience his presence and they say to one another, "The Lord is risen!" And they begin to experience a new transformed understanding of life, reality - that God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God Whom their forefathers and mothers worshipped is a God, obviously, Who is not into death but into life, and will not tolerate the darkness but will affect the light, and the end, obviously is not death, but life, and power and joy. The presence of the living Christ transforms that dispirited band of defeated disciples into flaming evangelists filled with good news. Luke, who tells us the story of Jesus in the Gospel by his name, tells us that he has researched the sources. Writing now several decades later, when there is already the early institutional Christian Church, Luke writes volume II, the Book of Acts. After telling about the day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the power of the Spirit of God, the spirit of the Living Christ, he relates the incident that we read a moment ago - Peter and John approaching the temple, still practicing their Jewish prayers, three o'clock in the afternoon, a beggar at the door seeking alms, his only means of livelihood. He is a cripple from birth. Peter and John say to him, "Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have, we give to you." (I usually say that, too. Silver and gold have I none. such as I have I give unto you. Here's a sermon.) But, Peter and John say, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" They grab him by the arm just in case he didn't believe them, and he feels the strength come into his limbs. He walks, he begins to leap and to dance and to praise God, and, well, you would have been surprised this morning if you would have found a bag person out there with a hand out suddenly come down this middle aisle, dancing and praising God. I trust the ushers would be present to usher him out because we do things decently and in order here, we don't want too much frivolity or praise or dancing or leaping for joy. Right? But, all the people, obviously, are amazed, astounded. So, they come crowding around and Peter and John say, "Look, this is no big deal. What do you think? Do you think we did this? Do you think it's through our power or our piety that this man stands before you, healed? Not at all. It is the name of Jesus. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has anointed his servant, Jesus. That is, Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is God's anointed one, that connection between heaven and earth. He is the conduit of divine power. It is through Jesus, the name of Jesus that awakened faith in this man, that caused strength to seep into this man. This man stands before you well, healed, full of health in the name of Jesus, not us." © Grand Valley State University �That’s the Answer; Question? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Peter never missed an opportunity to preach, so he gave his witness to the resurrection, and that, of course, was the sore point, so once again the authorities have to move in. They thought they had done away with this pest. They thought they had gotten rid of this threat to good order, mediocrity and boredom, but obviously, they still had to deal with the problem. So, they arrested Peter and John. What else do you do? When you're in authority you just throw them into the holding tank overnight, let them cool off and think about it. But in the morning, they arraign them, they bring them before the whole high priestly family. Now, you've got a lot of vested interest here, and they say once again, "By what name, what power, what's the secret?" How did you do it, in other words? Peter, not always known for a sense of humor, but I think this time with a little needle, (even Christians needle once in a while; they confess it the next morning), said, "Oh, so we are arrested for doing a good deed?" Someone gave me a lapel pin the other day that says, "I got caught doing something right." Well, Peter and John got caught doing something right, and the irony, of course, wouldn't be lost on those in authority and so, once again, at the drop of a hat they preach Jesus living, risen, powerful, healing, and they conclude with that old declaration that was the very heart and center of that Jesus Movement which was a movement of Jews who believed Jesus the Messiah. They said, "The name of Jesus. It was in the name of Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven given among humankind whereby you can be healed. In the name of Jesus, because Jesus is God's conduit to history. Because Jesus is God's anointed one. Jesus was that one conceived by the spirit of God, filled with the Spirit of God, living in the power of the Spirit, crucified and raised in the Spirit." This is post-Pentecost stuff, and Peter and John give testimony to the fact that the eternal God, the God that Israel knew, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - that God of power, that God Who creates and Who makes alive, that God, through Jesus, made that man well. And there's no other way to be made well, because there's no other God, and that God is the God of life and of wholeness and of living. The word for salvation is a word that also has out of its root, salve. It means healing or wholeness, and it is interesting in this context that we have this man spoken of as standing there full of health, in full health, and then in the 12th verse of the 4th chapter, the word salvation is used, because often in the New Testament salvation was used as a word that pointed to that total restoration of the human person - physical, emotional and spiritual. And so, Peter's testimony is that the eternal God Who is connected to us in the bridge person, Jesus, is the God of life and of healing, Who creates wholeness and there's no other way to get it. Not through Moses, not through David or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Peter or John. It is through Jesus' name, Jesus who is the historical embodiment of the eternal © Grand Valley State University �That’s the Answer; Question? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   God, that's the way of healing and wholeness and health and salvation, life. That's the answer. Now, what's the question? Well, obviously, the question is whether or not a Buddhist can be saved, isn't it? Wouldn't that be the logical question that would fit that answer? I read all the commentaries I could on the passage and it didn't say anything about Buddhism or Hinduism or Muslim faith or whether or not other world religions had any true knowledge of God or mediated any grace of God. There wasn't any reference to this "burning issue," this burning question. Commentaries, good scholarly commentaries, some liberal and far-out, some conservative and ignorant, the whole spectrum, is what I mean to say, wherever you want to look. No one addressed the burning issue - is there salvation in any other than Jesus Christ? This text spouted everywhere, as though once you've said Acts 4:12, you've solved the thing, there's nothing more to talk about, and the Bible commentaries don't even address it! I wonder what's wrong with them? Or, might it be that the Church in its soul-sickness is so mesmerized by a nonproblem that it missed the whole point of the passage? The answer is that Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God, the conduit of grace and healing, the one through whom life comes and life is transformed. What's the question? The question is - How can I find wholeness? How can I be healed? How can I be transformed? How is this world going to be transformed? How is creation going to be mended? That's the issue. In that early movement of Jesus people, if you had said to Peter, "Can a Buddhist be saved?" Peter would have said, "Who?" "What?" I mean, Peter makes this bold declaration in this conflict situation. Do you think everything being said between the Israeli negotiators and the Palestinian negotiators is right on the mark, measured carefully in these days? Netanyahu and Arafat make statements, they look at each other and they talk to the press, don't they? They're in a conflict situation. The future of Jerusalem is at stake. The future of Israel is at stake. The future of the Palestinian state is at stake. The whole complexion, the future of their lives is at stake. Why do you think we have to go back there time after time after time to broker the peace once again? Why do we have to go back again and again and throw them together? Why do we have to force them into a room and lock the door and make them talk? Because their whole life, their whole future is at stake! Do you think they're rationally sitting back and carefully calculating the whole dimension of reality? They are so focused on that issue which is like a pyramid set on its head, their whole life is determined by what happens in these days, and they are making statements and claims and counter-claims, and so was Peter and so was John and so was Caiaphas and so was Annas. They were in a life © Grand Valley State University �That’s the Answer; Question? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   and death conflict situation. They were talking to each other, making their boldest declarations. Two thousand years later, in the cool of the situation, we take that statement that was made with hot blood, rip it out of its context and make it an answer to a question that wasn't even being raised. Our old friend, Krister Stendahl, says the right answer to the wrong question is always wrong. And I even hesitate to deal with these biblical texts because, you know, I can prove anything to you from this book. There's enough stuff here on the one hand and on the other. So, it is not enough. It is a sign of a weak, defensive, dying institution that it goes crawling through these pages looking for a text to say, "Ah! You see? You see what it says?" Dear friends, we've got to use our heads, to think. Because if you want to use Acts 4:12 as an answer to the wrong question, then I'll use Acts 10:38 as the right answer to that question. Peter's now in the house of Cornelius. Cornelius is a Gentile. Peter comes into that house expecting lightning to strike him dead because he's not supposed to be in the house of a Gentile. He's not supposed to have a ham sandwich with this man. And suddenly, he says, "Oh, I see. God shows no partiality, but rather, everyone in whatever nation who fears the Lord is acceptable to Him." Well, in Acts 4:12, Peter, you said this. Acts 10:38, Peter, you said that. What are you, nuts? What are you, Luke, trying to confuse us? Luke would say, "Look, folks, use your head. Think. Think. For God's sake, think!" Jesus of Nazareth, God's reconciling presence in the midst of the world. Jesus of Nazareth, full of grace. Jesus of Nazareth who touched lepers and caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, Jesus of Nazareth who put his arms around the world - we've made him the one who draws circles that leave people out when he's the very one who drew the circle that brought people in. Question? What is the question? How will the world be transformed? How will the kingdom be mended? How will creation come to wholeness? How can I find peace with God? How can I find grace in my life? How can I have the forgiveness of my sins and the removal of anxiety and fear? How can I come to find meaning and purpose in my life? The answer is Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus, who was the embodiment of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel, the only, only God Jesus, here, historically in our midst, becomes the beacon, the sign, the pointer. Jesus who calls us not to worship him, but to follow him in worshipping God, and following in ways of justice and compassion and with all others. The answer is Jesus. © Grand Valley State University �That’s the Answer; Question? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   I have no other answer for you. That isn't even an issue. For here and there, now and again, more often I'm meeting others who speak about that same God, that same sense of peace and grace and worship, devotion, and I say, "In what name?" They have some other name, because there was some other particular revelation of that One Universal experience of Grace. And then I say, "Well, you didn't come my way," and then they quote Jesus to me, who says, "Those who are not against us are for us who are also doing good things." Then I realize that it's so important, when I've experienced the answer that is Jesus, that I learn the question. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aa684086cf1d4b2412653378b07c51c8.mp3 560c975b467777cd820fe93cdd5226e2 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 Scripture Text Acts 3:12, 16, Acts 4:12 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-0-19970413 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-04-13 Title A name given to the resource That's the Answer; What's the Question? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 13, 1997 entitled "That's the Answer; What's the Question?", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 3:12, 16, Acts 4:12. Compassion Inclusive Grace Pluralism https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e44487514c6a36c8dd97cc8de23ea6a2.pdf 2867cd20f3a929ab0582891e44326fd1 PDF Text Text Good News of Cosmic Dimension Eastertide I Text: I Corinthians 15:22; Matthew 28:19 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan April 6, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Easter is focused on Jesus. That's quite understandable, because Jesus is the one who was raised from the dead, and so our liturgy, the music, the anthems - all of it is very much focused on the risen Lord. That's understandable. But, I want to say to you this morning that Easter is not so much a matter of Christology, that is, the doctrine of Christ, as it is theology, that which is about God and that which God has affected. Resurrection was God's mighty act. Resurrection was God's sign, a sign in the midst of history of cosmic significance and eternal dimension. Easter is good news. Good news for the cosmos about God's intention, God's "Yes" to life, God's "No" to death, God's "Yes" to love, God's "No" to hate, God's "Yes" to light, God's "No" to darkness. It is understandably a story that lifts up Jesus, but it is more profoundly a story about God. Jesus died. If you followed or participated in the drama of Holy Week, if you were here on Maundy Thursday when the sanctuary grew dark and the altar was stripped and we left in silence, if you were here in the meditative, somber mood of Good Friday, if you came to the Easter Vigil and saw the sanctuary engulfed in darkness, then you know that Christian faith acknowledges that Jesus died. Jesus died a human death. Jesus as a human person entered into the powerlessness of death. As far as Jesus was concerned, it was over, which is why the brightness of Easter Sunday is not because of something intrinsic in Jesus, but of something intrinsic in God, the Creator, the One Who will not allow death to reign. God's way is life. That is Easter. It is a theological affirmation. It tells us something about God and it is the good news that in the end, there is life ! Paul understood that. Paul was one who was absolutely gripped by that vision of the risen One whom he knew had been crucified but now knew to be still living, and who had called him to tell this good news, particularly to the Gentiles. After he founded the Church in Corinth, he kept in touch with them via letters, like the two epistles to the Corinthians. They were raising some questions, and so, in his letter, the one we call First Corinthians, he deals with this matter of resurrection. He cannot express its truth, its mystery. He stumbles and stammers around as he tries to give expression to it, but of this he is quite convinced - that the whole of © Grand Valley State University   �Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the Christian Gospel, the "Good News" has to do with the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead. He tries to explain the magnitude of what has happened by borrowing from the Genesis story, the Creation Story, the story out of Israel's tradition where, through the disobedience of one man, Adam, death came upon all. He says, as it were, Jesus is the new Adam, the second Adam, and as death came to all through one man, so life comes to all through one man. As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Notice that the Hebrew thinking was always corporate, always concerning the total community. So when he said, "in Adam all die," he meant all humankind die. There was a commonality of the human story, which was under the sentence of death. In the light of God's action, raising Jesus from the dead, Paul saw a sign, a sign that that sentence of death was not ultimate. Rather, the ultimate, final, last exciting word was life. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive. It is as inclusive on the one hand as it is on the other - and here is where we sense Paul's strain of universalism. For what he is saying is that God's action in Jesus has implications for the whole human family. This Good News, the raising of Jesus by the power of God was a sign, a light, an indicator, a marker, something that could be laid hold on and believed in and hoped in for all of us. Paul had had a particular revelation, but he understood it to have a universal application. A transformation of the whole of reality, which he understood to embrace the whole of humankind. Now Matthew had a similar understanding of the momentous transforming power of the resurrection. Matthew's Gospel is the only Gospel that sees Jesus' ministry, pre-crucifixion, as focused strictly on Israel. Did you know that? The reason we don't know that is that we don't study these Gospels as units having their own context and their own message. We throw them all into the blender and pour out a homogenized Gospel. We pick up a little of Matthew, a little of Mark, a pinch of Luke and a dash of John, and we get one blended picture. But, Matthew has Jesus, pre-Easter, interested only in Israel, the Jewish people. He only talks to two Gentiles in Matthew's Gospel. One is that Syro-Phoenician woman. I love the way Krister Stendahl talks about that story. He tells it as one of his students preached it one day. Jesus and his disciples needed a retreat, so they journeyed into the countryside, beyond the precincts of Israel. A woman approached them there, pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter. The disciples said, "Go away. We're on retreat. The master said if we don't do this once in a while, we'll burn out. Go away." Well, she was not going to take their "no" for an answer. They said to Jesus, "Do something about this woman." So he says, "Look, I am sent to none but the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Can you imagine Jesus, meek and mild, shunning this woman, saying, "Look, it's Israel, not you"? She said, "But I have a great need." He said, " I can't give the food on the table to the dogs." This is Jesus, now, referring to the woman and Gentiles as dogs. She was quick. She responds, "Look, under the family table there are crumbs which © Grand Valley State University �Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem Page 3   the dogs may eat." Jesus is taken aback and replies, "Woman, that's some faith. I have never found such a faith even among my own." And he healed her daughter. There was one other exception he made, and that was for the servant of a Centurion who was ill. He healed that servant. That Centurion also demonstrated great faith. If you read in Matthew's Gospel, you will find the story, but you don't find the reason that Jesus responded to that Centurion. You have to go to Luke for that. But, it's obviously the same story. Luke says, when the Centurion came, the elders of the synagogue came over to Jesus and they whispered in his ear, "Help him out. He paid off our building debt." True. True story. Luke 7:1, you can read it yourself! Two times only he addressed Gentiles in the book according to Matthew. For the rest, the pre-Easter Jesus was interested solely in Israel. When he sent out the disciples on their missionary journey, he said, "Go through the cities of Israel. Do not go any place where there are Gentiles." He said, "You're going to have enough to do before the end comes. You won't get through all the cities of Israel." Yet it is this Gospel, Matthew, that concludes with what the Church always calls The Great Commission: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, to the nations, to the Gentiles, teaching them, healing, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." That's the conclusion of Matthew's Gospel, post-Easter. Now remember, this book is written six decades down the line. There's already now a Christian Church, a Christian community. I think we have to admit that the resurrected Jesus did not gather with those disciples and say to them, "Go to all the world and teach the Gospel and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." If that had been done, if it had been that clear a few days after Easter, there wouldn't have been such a struggle in the early Church to find out who they were and what they were supposed to do. Obviously, Matthew is taking the whole story of Jesus and then he's giving a distillation of what now is his understanding of the resurrection, what the implications were. For Matthew, the implications of Resurrection were that this one who had been focused strictly on Israel had now, by the power of God, been raised up to create good news for a broader community. Now was the time to break out of Israel's particularity and to create a community universal and inclusive, of all the nations, of all people. This Good News had universal implications for the building of another community. Krister Stendahl likes to say that Israel was Laboratory One. God's Laboratory One. Israel understood itself as a particular community that was, in its life, to be a light to the nations. And now it was time for Laboratory Two; now it was time to break out of that narrow community and to have, well, Gentile time. It was a broadening, a building of a new kind of community that was inclusive, that was universal, that was for all. Stendahl also notes that the Jewish people believed itself to have a particular revelation of the one true God, and the truth that it understood was the truth that © Grand Valley State University �Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem Page 4   impinged on all people, but what Israel never expected was that all people would become Jews. Israel was content to be Israel, to live in the light of its revelation, to witness to that revelation, and to let the positive effects of its witness wash off on the world, but not everybody was supposed to be a Jew. There was never a movement to make the whole world Jewish. They were a particular community with a particular revelation and a particular understanding of salvation, and they shared it far and wide, but people could receive that light and remain in their respective communities. Stendahl believes that Matthew had the same kind of an idea for the Christian movement. Once again, it had a message, a particular message, a particular revelation, and it had universal implications. It was for the broadening of that community of faith, but it was not as though now suddenly the whole world would have to become Christian. The whole world should be told the good news and the Good News was for the whole world – Good News, that is, that God, the Creator, is a God of life and not death, that God is for us, that God has an intention for the cosmos. And all of that was and is enough to make you dance and sing, because the news is so good. That in this world where death and decay are all about us, the ultimate word is life and light and love and community! So, go tell the world! With the Christian movement, that's very likely the way it began. Now, the news was brighter. Now there was an exuberance, there was an excitement, there was a joy, there was a confidence, so that, in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, a movement developed. Have you ever been part of a movement? Movements are spontaneous. Movements are powerful. Movements are confident. Movements are passionate! And in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, recognizing now that this good news is about God Who says "No" to death and "Yes" to life, this good news was to be spread everywhere. It was for everybody. It was for the whole world. For anybody who would hear it and heed it and become a part of it - it was an open community now. But, that movement was so powerful, so full of fire, it gained such ascendency that within two or three centuries it became a force to be reckoned with. And as it gained in dominance, it became domineering. Then, contrary to the model of Israel that shared its witness but didn't force everybody to become a Jew in order to have access to God, the Christian Church linked its particular revelation with a universal mandate to make everybody like we are. Eventually it gained great power in its association with the state, with the Roman Empire. And over the centuries, for 2000 years, it has grown, it has become powerful, and in its wake we have a tragic history that I think as a Church we've never fully owned up to the Crusades and its brutal intolerance; the Inquisition with its burning of heretics and forced baptisms; pogroms, anti-Semitism, creating the soil for the horror of the Holocaust. Why? Because a movement became dominant, powerful. It had this wonderful vision of God, the God of life; it had this vision to share with all, but rather than remaining a witnessing community, it became a domineering © Grand Valley State University �Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem Page 5   community, coercively using its power to enforce conformity to its particularity as though that particularity was to be of universal application rather than simply a universal witness, an invitation. And now, after almost 2000 years, the Christian Church, which has been so dominant, is tired. The Church is sick at soul today. Its shrill rhetoric only betrays its lack of confidence. In those early centuries, it was a movement of joy, it had power, it was soulful, it was exuberant, it was strong, it was empowered, it was open, it was excited, it swept the world! But, it's not a movement anymore, not really. It's an institution. It still has a lot of resources, it still has a lot of wealth, it still has a lot of numbers, and it can linger perhaps for a long time. But, it's not a movement; it's not strong, it's not vibrant, it doesn't have soul, it doesn't have passion, it doesn't have joy unspeakable, full of glory! It is a skeleton of itself. Its life is a denial of its message and a betrayal of the one who is its founder, who reached out in compassionate embrace to all. But, I think we're on the threshold of something new that's breaking. I think there's going to be a groundswell in this old world of ours. It's breaking out because good news cannot, finally, be kept under. And the good news is that the dream is bigger, that the cosmos is one and that all people belong together. There is underfoot something that will transform the face of the earth. And God knows if it doesn't happen, we'll destroy each other. Witness our history of divisiveness, violence, war and devastation. But, we're learning. Here and there, there's a straw in the wind. Last Sunday evening we finally made ABC News. Perhaps you've heard. We were linked with Mohammed Ali, this noble human being who can no longer articulate for himself. But there he sat, his wife next to him, who said for him, "Muslim, Jew, Christian - they're all God's children." And then we came on, 9 ½ seconds! We, too, articulating that the eternal embrace is inclusive. That it is arrogance to proclaim otherwise. Then later in the evening I caught the last half of the film, "Gandhi," and I was deeply moved again as that man of India who was so impressed with Jesus said, "I am Hindu, I am Muslim, I am Christian." And single-handedly, through a spiritual power, changing the landscape of that nation with all of the chaos and all of the death that ensued, nonetheless, affecting a transformation through a kind of spiritual vision and methodology that he learned from Jesus, among others. And, of course, Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King and there was in this nation a significant address of the evil of racism. And, as the second millennium is coming to its end, after 2000 years, this dynamic movement of Jesus People which has become a tired institution, wondering if it can survive, will yield up its arrogant exclusivity and there will be a joining of heart and hand, of all people of good faith who believe in God the Creator of all, Whose intention for all is life and not death, love and not hate, light and not darkness. Now, there's good news! It is news of cosmic dimension and eternal significance. And when we catch it again, the passion will return, the © Grand Valley State University �Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem Page 6   confidence will return, the joy will return, the power will return, and the world will be changed! Alleluia! © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/72d150ea76bf119172e7c096ee95f092.mp3 a9e6a71dcac5909f8b355f5377d5bf80 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 Scripture Text I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19 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-0-19970406 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-04-06 Title A name given to the resource Good News of Cosmic Dimension Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 6, 1997 entitled "Good News of Cosmic Dimension", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19. Eastertide Global Community Inclusive Universal Grace https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fe64d97f43b710847ebdd052f6d1d362.pdf 3f0e0971dc365a40934d48443bf08740 PDF Text Text Disciples at Second Hand Easter Sunday Text: Luke 24:30-31 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan March 30, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Soren Kierkegaard, Danish theologian, philosopher and prophetic voice of the 19th century, speaks of disciples at second hand - those who live through an experience only through second hand information. They are not really there; they only hear about the moment, the wonder, the real thing. And who are these disciples? They are Peter and James and John, Andrew, Nathaniel, and the rest of the twelve - those who traveled with him, listened to him, ate with him and finally abandoned him. Well, you say, that is a strange twist. I would have thought they were the disciples at first hand who encountered him in the flesh and witnessed to their experience in order that subsequent generations, indeed we ourselves, reading their witness, might become disciples at second hand. And that, of course, is precisely the reaction Kierkegaard was hoping to elicit in order to make his fascinating assertion that being a disciple at first hand has nothing to do with historical or physical proximity, but rather with the insight of faith that is the gift of the Spirit of God - an insight that was more likely to be the experience of one who walked with him in the flesh in the first century than of one who experienced him through the Spirit's fire in the twentieth century. Let me ask you - if you could choose to have been present during the days of Jesus’ flesh as opposed to the experience of him here and now through the Spirit - which would you choose? Not, would you choose to live in the first century as opposed to the twentieth just whether you would choose to have been present, on the scene, when he was teaching and healing in the days of his human, historical existence, or to experience him in a moment of revealing - a spiritual encounter, a burning sensation of present grace and love and beauty. Which would you choose? Unless freed to think deeply about this, I suspect the immediate response would be for most of us that we would choose to have been there. And if so, it is not © Grand Valley State University   �Disciples at Second Hand Richard A. Rhem Page 2   surprising, for Christian piety has conditioned us thus. For example, take The Old Hymnbook, #460 - "I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old," a children's hymn, vs. 1: "I should like to have been with them then;" vs. 2, "I wish that His hands had been placed on my head;" That, however, is not possible; however..., vs. 3: "Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go." That I can do now and, "If I now earnestly serve Him below, I shall see Him and serve Him above." Now do you see there are two golden ages, so to speak? The days of the flesh, now out of the question, and Heaven, still in the future. And in the meantime, this inbetween time, prayer is a present possibility, but something less than past reality of physical presence, or future reality in Heaven. My experience tells me that has been a rather persistent and consistent Christian perspective. To be a disciple at first hand requires either being present with Jesus in the days of his flesh, or some day, "Face to Face," but now the best we can be is Disciples at Second Hand, reliving the stories of the past - imagining the glory that will be - but stuck in history's ongoing development with prayer our only access. Now, let me say clearly that is to miss the reality of Easter. Easter is to be experienced here and now, ever anew in the community of faith that lives in the Presence of the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of the Living Christ. That is the message of the Easter Gospel Lesson - the story of the encounter with the risen Christ on the Emmaus Road. Luke alone tells this resurrection story. Two disciples are leaving Jerusalem on Easter afternoon. They are dejected, discouraged, disappointed. Their world has collapsed, their hopes crushed, their dreams dashed. As they walk along the road to their home village of Emmaus, the Risen One joins them, but to them, he seems a stranger. He sees that they are sad of heart and inquires as to the reason. They cannot believe anyone could be ignorant of what has just transpired. They tell him of the death of the one they had hoped would redeem Israel. The stranger chides them for their foolishness, their slowness of heart to believe the Scriptures concerning the destiny of the Messiah. They approach the village and the stranger appears to be going on, but they invite him to join them as it is eventide and the day is far spent. The stranger accepts, enters their home, joins them at table and then assumes the role of host. He took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly their eyes were opened and they recognized him; it was he, Jesus, alive and present. And just the moment they recognized him, he vanished from their sight. Then, on reflection they say to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking to us on the way! Evening or not, they left the evening meal which had become a Eucharistic Feast, and returned to Jerusalem with the exciting news. The Lord has risen indeed! He was made known to us in the breaking of the bread. This is a beautiful Easter story. Its meaning is that being a disciple at first hand has nothing to do with historical, physical proximity to Jesus - whether the Pre-Easter Jesus, or the © Grand Valley State University �Disciples at Second Hand Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Post-Easter Jesus. It has to do with recognition, with eyes opened by the Spirit, with the experience of a Presence that makes the heart burn. In a lecture at Oregon State University a year ago, the New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg, host of a conference entitled "Jesus at 2000," quoted his colleague, John Dominic Crossan, who claims "Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens." Borg writes, "Emmaus happens again and again. Or, to echo the title of one of my books, Emmaus is a story about meeting Jesus again for the first time. Easter is about the Living Lord who journeys with us whether we recognize him or not. But, there are moments when we become aware of a Presence. There are moments when we know he is with us. That he lives. That we, too, are gripped and grasped by life, the gift of the Living God who again and again shatters the darkness, breaks the chains of oppression, overcomes the worst that evil can do. The God Whose light broke forth on Easter morning and shines and will shine until all is well." The aisle down which you will walk to this table set with bread and cup is the Emmaus Road. This moment, as every moment, is potentially the moment of fire and recognition, of burning heart and sheer joy when suddenly we know, we know a gracious presence enveloping us. We entered this Holy Season around the Table that is at the center of the Christian worship experience. Table fellowship was the hallmark of Jesus' ministry - the ministry of the Pre-Easter Jesus. All were welcome. All sorts and conditions of persons came; open table fellowship was the sign of the unbrokered Presence of God - the God Who is accessible to all - in a sanctuary, or at the seaside, with or without a priest or rabbi. On the night in which he was betrayed, he gathered his intimate friends around the Table, took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. We entered this Holy Season around our Lord's Table and I suggested, in spite of the architecture which does not lend itself to table fellowship, nevertheless, we look at the Faces Around the Table - into the faces of one another - brothers and sisters with whom we have joined in this pilgrimage of faith, in whose faces we see God's Presence and experience God's grace. I made the point then that the Kingdom of God is not "up above us" in some heavenly realm, nor "out ahead of us" in some future age, but here and now. God's Presence is present to us in present experience as we look into each other's faces. In the intimacy of table fellowship, in the intimate connection with the other, we experience God's Presence as the Other. Have we not had such moments ... Can you not remember immediately such a moment full of fire and the reality of recognition when you knew more deeply than concept could contain or words explain - that God is - that Grace is - that all will be well, all manner of things will be well - perhaps a sense of comfort in the midst of deep grief, of calm in the midst of great danger, of overwhelming love in © Grand Valley State University �Disciples at Second Hand Richard A. Rhem Page 4   the embrace of another, in a child's face, the peace of a craggy countenance of one breathing her last. Moments to remember because they are moments of recognition. Moments we would grasp and freeze and hold forever, but moments only, not once for all, but again and again, as grace breaks over us. That is Emmaus - that is Easter. They recognized him in the breaking of the bread - at a kitchen table in a Judean Village, and sad and faithless hearts leapt for joy in flames of deep knowing and trust . No weariness can contain them - they run to the city to proclaim, The Lord is risen! © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2a11f18544ab9b3a9926938a24a0aff1.mp3 575f801bd74ca55e8c2f6b93172279ab 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 Luke 24:30-31 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-0-19970330 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-03-30 Title A name given to the resource Disciples at Second Hand Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 30, 1997 entitled "Disciples at Second Hand", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:30-31. All Will Be Well Easter Grace Presence of Spirit of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e056a3f21a2a356bf978dbb8c3a56778.mp3 6f3c10e429a2bf12ca70fe77a54fcb4b 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 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-0-19970327 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-03-27 Title A name given to the resource Were You There? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 27, 1997 entitled "Were You There?", on the occasion of Maundy Thursday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/18757b624cfc9a7131b8a65883554e6d.pdf 88b55107ca8783bb58991d0eb22cf5cf PDF Text Text Endless Love From the series: Faces Around the Cross Text: Matthew 27:55-56; Matthew 27:61 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Palm Sunday, March 23, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon The year was 1970, and the song by Tim Rice, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, was recorded. In 1971, Broadway was rocking with Jesus Christ Superstar, the rock opera whose centerpiece was perhaps that marvelous solo just sung so sensitively, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," ... "I want him so, I love him so, he scares me so." It was the year that I returned from Europe. In the year 1960, in this congregation, I was ordained. You remember the 60s? I don't remember the 60s because I was immune to them. I was inoculated against all that was happening in the social upheaval of the 60s, a period of time in which there were tremendous insights gained and great progress made in human transformation and the transformation of society, an era from which we have also reaped some bitter fruit. The 60s - that revolutionary time whose real impact will have to be sifted and sorted out for decades to come. But, I didn't live through the 60s; probably I was too old to be a flower child. But, had I even been the right age, I wouldn't have lived through it with any kind of depth or experience because I had been so traditioned in the piety of a Jesus who was a heavenly being and, at best, a divine intruder into this historical human scene. My Jesus, the Jesus of my nurture for which I will be eternally grateful, was, nonetheless, not a Jesus that I would have been able to recognize at all in the song of Mary Magdalene, for he was this heavenly being who dipped down into history, coming in order to die to bear the sin of the world, providing salvation only to return to the glory that was his with the Father before all time. That was my Jesus. And so, I would have been well insulated against the upheavals of the 60s and, as I returned here in 1971 and Broadway was rocking with "Jesus Christ Superstar," I was conscious of the criticism that was being fired at that rock opera, and yet in my own existential journey, having come from Europe where I was beginning to learn a Christology from below, I have to tell you, the words of that song got to me and I do believe that song was the catalyst for a long trek from that heavenly being who was a divine intruder to the flesh and blood Jesus who is my brother, one that I need © Grand Valley State University   �I Don’t Know How To Love Him Richard A. Rhem Page 2   not so much revere as one I could begin to love and honor, one before whom I could stand in awe. "I don't know how to love him," because, you see, there was that ethereal, eternal dimension, that transcendent reality, that presence of God that was in him so obviously, but he was my flesh and blood brother and I began to experience Lent and Holy Week and Good Friday as never before, as though I had never understood in the slightest what it was all about. Mary Magdalene knew. She is the face upon which we focus this morning, our final Face Around the Cross in this Lenten journey. Mary Magdalene, who really didn't know how to love him, who loved him so, wanted him so, and was so frightened at that which she was experiencing over against this one who was every bit human in her presence and yet, something more that she couldn't quite put together. Mary Magdalene is the most prominent woman in the New Testament. She is the most prominent person in the Gospel story of the life of Jesus. We read various references to her in the four Gospels. Luke tells us, in the eighth chapter, that she was a part of those women who joined the disciple band and was supportive of the disciples. Luke tells us that Jesus healed her, casting out seven demons, in the terminology of that day. We read that she was with the mother of Jesus at the cross. She was at a distance witnessing the burial, and she was the first one to the tomb on Easter Sunday. There was something about Mary Magdalene - the love and the devotion that comes to expression in the Gospel that causes me to think that she understood the reality of endless love, a deep, human, intimate love. It scared her so. She didn't know how to love him, but she loved him so. The story that we read in John's Gospel is the story of the anointing that happened in Bethany outside of Jerusalem in preparation, as it were, for Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week that John would record in subsequent chapters. In the Gospels, if you read all four of them, there are basically two anointing stories. They may be reflections of one event, or there may be two events. The details of both events are mixed up in the four stories. That isn't important. We read in Luke 7 of another interesting anointing - a woman off the street, a prostitute who barges into the Pharisee's home during a dinner party, weeping over Jesus, her tears falling at his feet. She lets down the tresses of her hair and wipes his feet, drying her tears. Jesus speaks to her a word of forgiveness with those immortal words, "She has loved much, and the one who loves much is forgiven much." Luke doesn't say that was Mary Magdalene. In John's Gospel, the anointing before Holy Week, it's Mary, Martha and Lazarus' home, but it doesn't say Mary Magdalene. That Mary may be Mary Magdalene, she may not be - it doesn't really matter. This morning, I'm going to use Mary Magdalene because she was the preeminent feminine presence in the Gospel story, and in that act of anointing, she gave expression to the very central core of discipleship, according to the Gospel of John. That kind of loving devotion, that kind of action, that kind of extravagant expression of love gets the affirmation of John. He © Grand Valley State University �I Don’t Know How To Love Him Richard A. Rhem Page 3   doesn't use the words that Mark uses, talking about the same incident, when Mark says that Jesus said to the critics of Mary for this extravagance, "Leave her alone. And I tell you wherever this Gospel is preached, this story will be told in remembrance, in memorial of her." A strong affirmation of prodigal love, of an extravagant expression of love, of tangible, concrete love, of the love of one human being for another. Mary Magdalene - the most powerful feminine presence in the Gospels, gives us the supreme expression of discipleship in this act of extravagant love. As we reflect on it this morning, I want to suggest a couple of thoughts that come to me as I think about that scene, the anointing, that loving expression of Mary of Magdala. In the first place, I want to have us recognize how uneasy we are with that kind of wholesome expression of love. In the Church we do not handle well that deep and intimate expression of love, one human being for another, and when we find it even in the Gospel story, we hedge it in with all kinds of safeguards. The Church has done a great disservice to the world in our understanding of human love in its full expression. Jesus Christ Superstar was protested by the Church because, traditionally, we in the Church have been very, very tense about the possibility of bringing him down, making him flesh and blood like the rest of us. Even more recently, at the showing of the film based on the novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, by a Greek author, people picketed outside the theaters, saying it was blasphemous. In that scene in which the novelist, as an artist, tries to get into the head and the mind and the being of Jesus - Jesus who, if he was flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, must have struggled with his vocation Jesus who, if he was really one of us, must have found his obedience only in the wrestling with his true humanity. In that film, Mary Magdalene again plays that role of a potential lover, maybe even wife or partner for life. In the Church we have not wanted to deal with Jesus, a real human being, and all of the implications of that human reality. The big word for love in the New Testament is agape. When I learned about agape in the seminary, it was a love that stems from the lover and flows out to the one loved, but the one loved has no loveliness at all. There is no reason in the one who is loved that he or she should be loved; it is simply the love that bubbles up within the lover. This is the love of God. This is the word used in the New Testament over and over again. I was so thankful this fall when Krister Stendahl was here, who is no mean New Testament scholar himself, who said we have misused and misunderstood agape. Agape love is love that esteems the other, that finds that which is valuable in the other and, therefore, it is not simply the outpouring of love from the lover falling upon one who has no reason at all to be loved, but it is the esteeming of the other. But, nonetheless, that is only one word in the Greek language for love. © Grand Valley State University �I Don’t Know How To Love Him Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Another word is the word Eros, and you won't find Eros dealt with in the Church. It is the Greek word from which we get the word erotic, and so you will understand that we can't talk about that in the pulpit. But, actually, the meaning of Eros is that yearning for the human person, it is that drive for union and that drive for union within the human heart and soul is no different in its longing after God than in its longing after the other. And there is no longing after God that does not find expression and concrete experience apart from the loving of the other. Ah, there are a few special souls down through the centuries, mystics, we call them, who got lost in some kind of ecstasy in contemplation of the divine in splendid isolation. But, it doesn't work for most of us. Most of us need another, another for whom the soul longs, whom the arms would embrace, the other body that is the embodiment of the other which, in the experience thereof, brings with it that dimension of the holy, the transcendent, so that in the horizontal realization of union there is the experience of that vertical dimension of the one who is in us and beyond us. We haven't done very well with that in the Church, even though the Gospel story makes Mary Magdalene the most flesh and blood woman in the Gospels, the preeminent feminine figure in the life of Jesus. If you read the writings that come from the early Church fathers (and they were fathers), you will be aghast, honestly. You will be aghast at the distortion of human sexuality. Marriage is a compromise to the weakness and the lust of the flesh. The brilliant Church Father, St. Augustine, even suggests that marriage is for procreation without passion. Incredible! But that strain of asceticism, that rejection of the body, that distortion of human sexuality has so permeated the life of the Church that, in all honesty, there is probably no group of human beings anywhere, in any other organization or society or institution who are more fouled up in the handling of human sexuality than the Christian Church. We are scared to death of it, and not without reason. It is so powerful. And in the 60s, when the flower children threw off the oppression and brought about the revolution, they also reaped the whirlwind and the tragedy that follows in the steps of the abuse of that marvelous gift. But we have to be honest. Mary Magdalene said, "I don't know how to love him. I want him so. I love him so. He scares me so." That is more honest than anything you will read in any Church Father for 2000 years, and probably more helpful in gaining an insight into Jesus Christ. That brings me to my second comment, and that is that, if Mary Magdalene in that intimate relationship, was moved off into the wings immediately in the Early Church we can understand why. Isn't it remarkable that the preeminent feminine presence is not heard of again? Instead, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is exalted to the place of preeminence. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned at the gathering on Pentecost. Mary, the mother of Jesus, becomes the feminine symbol for the Church, and, for those of you who have some feeling for the Virgin Mary, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but in all honesty, if it is a male-dominated clergy that is setting up the ideal of the feminine, is it at all surprising that Mary © Grand Valley State University �I Don’t Know How To Love Him Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Magdalene is removed out of the place she has in the Gospel and replaced by the Virgin Mary who is marked by submission, passivity and obedience? And in the Church still today the feminine is put down and there is injustice to a Mary Magdalene and there is the exultation of the Virgin Mary who, in the Gospels, gets an ambiguous press, who didn't really get it, who had to be distanced by her own son. The Virgin Mary, for all of the femininity she brings into the divine and into the godhead and all of that, all of the beauty of her intercession, her openness to sinners - all of that which has been used positively and is understandable - nonetheless, it is not the Mary of the Gospel. The Mary of the Gospel is Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is the model of discipleship. She was the last at the cross; she was at the burial; she was there on Easter morning. It was Mary Magdalene who in her expression knew the secret of endless love, and it was because her life had been transformed and she loved him so, and she wanted him so, and he scared her so. And it was that love, that endless love, that has the affirmation of Jesus Christ. Maybe we are about to turn a corner where we'll see not the domination of the feminine, but the reciprocity and the mutuality of the masculine and the feminine and the honoring of both and the honoring of the Eros that is the yearning within us for union, in which union we experience something more - something more, indeed - the presence of the Endless Lover. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6745af0be2c4e814ad7ea8e20b431f61.mp3 2089b4e1a33ed36b99c00e168cf1c853 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 Faces Around the Cross Scripture Text Matthew 27:55-56, Matthew 27:61 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-0-19970323 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-03-23 Title A name given to the resource Endless Love Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format 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 23, 1997 entitled "Endless Love", as part of the series "Faces Around the Cross", on the occasion of Palm Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 27:55-56, Matthew 27:61. Palm Sunday Prodigal Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/41655169c6ae5cfbbaf238c779194c93.mp3 9cb80ed67861b308ba7b134f4deaf512 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 Lenten Service Scripture Text Luke 19:41-48 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-0-19970319 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-03-19 Title A name given to the resource Anguish, Not Anger Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 19, 1997 entitled "Anguish, Not Anger", on the occasion of Midweek Lenten Service, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 19:41-48.