778 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dbe36d1c42c3340e1b4fdb0bcc32a5ac.mp3 0de8f44af70f1f599749585a5301089e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/993a0284743ca0a1602d753c2b69aca6.pdf 0740458f6bebd4bafcc47a5dc71499e2 PDF Text Text Observing Sabbath: Celebrating Grace and Freedom From the series: The Sacramental Character of the Church Text: Deuteronomy 5:15; Colossians 2:20 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost VI, July 19, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Remember that you were a slave ... and the Lord your God brought you out ... Deuteronomy 5:15 If with Christ you died ... why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Colossians 2:20 The call to Israel to observe the Sabbath is contained within what we call the Ten Commandments: the Law. Sometimes the first five books of the Old Testament are called the Law. But that translation, “Law,” is really inaccurate in terms of conveying how Israel received that teaching. Torah was the word. The first five books were the Torah. Torah means “a way of life,” and Israel received that word as a gracious gift of God, an invitation to fullness of life, a way in which life could be lived most richly, and human potential realized most fully. But because the call to observe Sabbath is in what we call the Ten Commandments, the Law, there has always been that tendency among us to legalize that command as though it had a kind of compelling compulsion about it that forced us into a ritual of servants and we often failed, I think, to sense the gracious gift that was the Sabbath. The original Ten Commandments, is in the book of Exodus, the 20th chapter. There, as we noted last week, Israel was called to observe Sabbath in order to recall week by week the creative act of God, in order to be reminded one day in seven, in order to have their being permeated with the realization that the whole world was alive with the life of God, to understand that the whole reality was to be viewed as a sacrament, as a source of knowledge and a cause for worship, that the world, what we call nature, the cosmic expanse, was to be received as a means of grace. It is only in the last couple of hundred years, in the wake of the Enlightenment, that we have spoken about nature as something over against us and as a kind of self-contained reality that could exist on its own. The breakthroughs in scientific understanding and technological advance have tended to reduce nature to a realm out there, as though it had independent status and was a self-contained © Grand Valley State University   �Observing Sabbath; Celebrating Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 2   existence. How many hours haven’t we argued fruitlessly about whether or not there is such a thing as a miracle? Have you ever been in a heated discussion about whether or not “prayer changes things?” I think that those very questions are the wrong questions. They propose a model in which there is the whole realm of nature, with God out there somewhere, having to break in. We speak of intervention, breaking in, as though all of this kind of exists on its own and now and then, on occasion, here and there, God drops in but, if God would be involved, would impact, would influence, God must come as permeating, as breathing in, as the life of the cosmos being the consequence of the breath of God. “You breathe and give them life,” said the psalmist. The last couple of hundred years in modern culture we have lost that sense of the world as Sacramental. Israel was called to pause at the end of every week, to stop, to look, to listen and to delight in creation as the gracious work of the good and gracious God; to rest, to let go, to cease their ceaseless striving and struggle, their desire to control and to manipulate; to give them a sense that they were not after all indispensable for the sustaining of all things. God is quite able to keep the planet in motion and the stars in the sky. God is beyond us; God is in us, with us and in all things so that all things must become a Sacrament that points us to God. To stop on Sabbath and smell the roses and luxuriate in the prodigal goodness of God who made the world, whose intention is for us to live in the world as if it were a Garden of Eden, a place of delight - that is the call of Sabbath. In a wonderful essay entitled “On Common Prayer,” Catherine Madsen makes the point that there is a holiness there - there! It is a given. She makes the point that holiness, that otherness, is in us intimately, permeating every atom of our body. God can’t abandon us. God is with us, in us, permeating the whole of reality, holding all things together. And then she goes on to make this wonderful connection to that sense of God that haunts us whether we name God or not. That presence of God that permeates us whether we are conscious or not is that which gives rise to unrest and the dream of redemption. She writes that “there is something that loves you in the world. ...there is something that loves you in the world.” A voice that speaks to you within, in the worst despair, is not different than the voice that called the world into being. What makes your body give off heat? It is the same fire that sleeps in the rocks and is changed from light into matter by the plants. The fire that lights the sun and the other stars. Holiness is there and there is “something out there in the world that loves you,” and the world is a means of grace if we would pause to take it in, to give heed, to pay attention with a kind of regular, rhythmic discipline. Observance of the Sabbath – resting, pausing long enough to dream another dream, and to allow our imagination to connect us with that which is not simply beyond us but is woven into the very fabric of our being. But that raises a question for us. There is something that loves you out there in the world - how would one name that love? God created the heavens and the © Grand Valley State University �Observing Sabbath; Celebrating Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 3   earth, and so nature is not some independent existence but is in-breathed by the breath of God. But God is not only the God of our space, but the God of our time. Israel was called to observe Sabbath in Exodus 20 to be reminded of the spatial dimension of its home in God. But in the second giving of the Law, in the book of Deuteronomy in the 5th chapter, the verses we read a moment ago, Israel is called to observe Sabbath - not to remember creation, but to remember its liberation from Egyptian slavery. There God calls Israel to remember the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath in order to be reminded one day in seven that they were slaves one time and God set them free. The God of creation is the God of covenant faithfulness. The God of creation is the God of redemption. The something that loves you out there in the world – that which is intrinsic in the very fabric of reality – has a name and a face. It is a God who is for us, who would always liberate and set us free, the God who is gracious and who is on the side of God’s people. And so Israel was called every seventh day to stop, to rest and to worship. And in that pause, in that oasis at the end of the week, to have its perspective shaped once again. To know that it lives in the environment, the spatial expanse brought forth by the Word of God, and that it lived as a people graced by the God that would set all humankind free. The God of Creation. The God of Redemption. And we can see how Israel annually in its Passover Feast celebrated that release from bondage, from the slavery in Egypt – but not only annually in the Passover Feast, but every Sabbath. Every week in the rhythm of labor and liturgy, in the rhythm of work and worship it was called to remember and to hope. God is not only the God of creation, but the God of history, the God of our time. So Israel was called always to remember that the God of its past would be the God of its future, and Israel was the one who gave to the world a whole sense of history - of movement. The ancient Eastern cultures lived in the eternal cycle of the coming and return. Israel gave to the world the idea of a beginning, and an end, and a meantime, and in its festival celebrations, it remembered and it hoped. It had already received and it had a promise of more to come, and it lived always in that remembering and hoping. Christian worship is patterned obviously on that as well, for we are a people who come together weekly. We celebrate one great central event, when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We celebrate on the first day of the week because on the first day of the week God raised Jesus from the dead. We call the first day of the week the Lord’s Day. And we come together, not only on Easter Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection, but we come together Sunday by Sunday by Sunday, because every Sunday is a little Easter. Even the Sundays in the season of Lent are not Lenten days, they are Sundays in Lent, because in the inside of the church it was recognized that, after Easter, you cannot keep Lent on Sunday. You know I see how difficult it is for churches to make changes, but twenty years ago we changed our name to Christ Community Church. For twenty years pastors © Grand Valley State University �Observing Sabbath; Celebrating Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 4   have contacted me to ask, “How in the world did you do that? We had a “Name the Church contest and everybody got offended and we lost the whole thing.” I don’t know how we did it, but we did. But most of the time churches can’t do anything. Most of the time you can’t change anything in the church because it is all absolutized and made sacred as though it is God’s way once it’s done. And it seems the greatest blasphemy to violate the principle “we have always done it that way.” I would have liked to have been there in the early church when they moved the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Can you imagine the discussions around the table as they were breaking bread and pouring the cup? For centuries, for generations, it’s in the Bible, the seventh day. When I was a kid there was an old man in the north end of Kalamazoo who had a stake truck with big sides. It looked like that house over on Jackson in Grand Haven, where it’s written all over you know - verses, and you can read the news by going by the house. (Laughter) This truck was plastered with writing. I remember as a little kid that he offered so much money to the person that could prove that the church should move from the seventh day to the first day of worship. I always wanted to take up that challenge, but the prize wasn’t enough to validate the work. But I will never forget that, and I wondered about that as a kid. But now I wonder about how they were ever able to do it. Can you imagine? Moving from Saturday to Sunday? And, obviously in doing that, they were moving to the first day of the week as the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead because they knew now that the center of their life was in Christ. “Your life is hid with Christ in God, if then you will be raised with Christ.” Their whole life was in Christ. The whole ball game was the new life, the new creation in Jesus Christ. And so they moved from that Sabbath observance to the observance of Sabbath on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, Little Easter, in order, week by week, by week, to remember. It wasn’t enough once in the springtime to come together in a great press of people in the resurrection. Once every week, the first day of the week. Every time we gather here it is because God raised Christ from the dead. And because he lives, you too live! Every week we come here in order to have confirmed again in the depths of our being “that there is someone out there that loves us,” that the God that we serve is the God of grace and liberation and freedom, who would break the shackles of every form of human bondage and servitude. The God whom we worship is a God for us, the God who brings us joy and springs forth from us - doxology and praise and hallelujah. The whole worship of the Church is celebration of Easter, and that was so overwhelming that they were able to break with that deeply imbedded tradition. Something written in the Word of God to observe the seventh day - moved to the first day, which shows that they were liberated. They were freed from religion. © Grand Valley State University �Observing Sabbath; Celebrating Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Oh, to be free from religion. Religion binds and cripples. Jesus was so angry at the religious leaders who piled legalism upon legalism, regulation upon regulation. He said, “You make these people seven times more the children of hell than when you began with them.” Paul writes after the resurrection and after Easter to those who were disturbing the Easter at Colossi. And he said to the believers, “Don’t let anybody upset you and deceive you with philosophies about don’t handle and don’t touch, and don’t taste. Don’t let anybody lay on you some kind of ironclad rule that says you’ve got to do this on Sunday or Saturday or on Monday or Tuesday. Are you not free? Have you not died with Christ and been raised again? If then you be with Christ, set your mind on the things that are above, while your life is hid in Christ with God. You are free by God’s grace, and don’t forget it.” The only way not to forget it is to observe Sabbath, to pause in the regular rhythm of one’s life. Instead of six and one it becomes one and six. And it is the same principle. It is that we might never doubt that there is a great, gracious life force permeating into the whole of reality and every molecule and atom of our body that could never abandon us. “Something out there loves you in the world,” and that love has a name and a face, and it has appeared in our midst as Jesus Christ our Lord, who was raised from the dead. As I was thinking about this I realized how important it is. I confessed to you last week and said that being raised as a kid amid the heavy legalism of Sabbath observance, I was tempted to kick the habit. Going into this profession that was difficult, but I did everything possible to convince myself that I wasn’t really still bound in that kind of legalism. Then I began to see that the observance of Sabbath was such a great gift and grace, and that the only way that the people of God have continued through the generations is that they have been a people who have never forgotten because they have always been called to remember. And unless there is a discipline and a routine and a rhythm in our lives, we will soon forget. It is easy to forget. God will not cease loving you, but you will cease being conscious of it. And what is it to be loved and not be conscious of it. And so we are called to take heed, to pay attention. So I grumble a bit about ugly Sundays, but as a kid I did know that there was a special day, and as a kid I did know who I was and to whom I belonged. The only problem is, I think in the western tradition of the Christian church, we somehow or other got our focus off Resurrection and Easter, and moved it to the cross and Good Friday and our sin and our guilt. You say, “Well isn’t that what the Bible says?” No. Not the only thing the Bible says. You say, “Well isn’t that Christian?” No. It’s western, medieval, Catholic Christianity that permeates our Reformed Protestantism as well. The focus of the Western Church – Roman, medieval, filtering into Reformation, Protestant – has its center in the cross. Its fascination is with sin and guilt as the major problem, and the atonement. © Grand Valley State University �Observing Sabbath; Celebrating Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Now if you were raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Istanbul, if you were a child of the Eastern Rite, you wouldn’t know all about that cross and heavy sin and guilt, and strong emphasis on atonement. You would come into this church and it would be foggy. You could hardly see me - and that might be a means of grace. (Laughter) But the reason that you wouldn’t be able to see me clearly is because there would be these clouds of incense. If you went to San Sofia in Istanbul in this marvelous, marvelous place you would see an old mosaic of the victorious Pentocrater, the triumphant Christ. And from the altar there would be billows of smoke going heavenward and there would be priests everywhere in all kinds of flowing garb. There would be all of the warmth and sensuousness of that which is human, poised and praising in Doxology the Creator who had raised Jesus from the dead. A totally different feel. A different focus. A different center. Which is right? Well, you need a little of both. But I would have to vote with the Eastern Rite because and this is my basis for saying that – in the Eastern Orthodox Church, with its focus on Easter, on Resurrection, on a risen Christ and Doxology as worship and praise, you still experience the original intention of moving off Saturday to Sunday, rather than moving off Saturday to Good Friday. Now I have never read that anywhere and I can’t swear it is true, but I wonder. Isn’t that interesting? In the instance of the infant Christian community, they did not make their sacred day Friday, they made it Sunday because the central thing is not sin and our guilt and the cross, it is the life-giving gracious God who raises Jesus from the dead and permeates us with life, who promised “because I live, you too shall live.” So Sunday is a celebration. It is a day for Doxology. It is a day for incense. It is a day for pulling out all the stops. For dancing and singing. (From the congregation “Amen.”) All right - I have been waiting twenty-five years for that. (Laughter and applause.) I’ll bet you I am right. I bet I’m right. And I’ll bet you church going wouldn’t be just a heavy obligation, a legalistic demand, if it were such that one came just one day in seven into this place and was lost in wonder, love and grace and praise, knowing that the whole world is resplendent and shot through with God’s life, that the something out there that loves one is the Creator and the Liberator, the God revealed in the face of Jesus. Then Sabbath observance would become the gift and the joy that I suspect that God always intended it to be. Paul said, “Don’t let anybody lay a lot of legalistic clap-trap on you, but don’t forget to remember.” As I said, I grumble a bit about all those ugly Sundays. They nearly killed me as a kid. But I’ll tell you what, parents and grandparents. You bring your kids here regularly Sunday after Sunday, bring them to the Eucharist Sunday after Sunday, kneel with them. Let them hear you sing and watch you pray, and they’ll be as hopelessly addicted as I am. The center of Christian worship is Doxology, and the central act is Eucharist, which is a Greek word for thanksgiving. And on Easter this past year I celebrated the bread and the wine as Eucharist for the first time in my life - I took Holy Communion on Easter and suddenly understood its true heart: the presence of the risen, living Lord. That that’s worship. That’s good, huh? I like it. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost VI Series The Sacramental Character of the Church Scripture Text Deuteronomy 5:15, Colossians 2:20 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-0-19920719 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-07-19 Title A name given to the resource Observing Sabbath, Celebrating Grace and Freedom Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 19, 1992 entitled "Observing Sabbath, Celebrating Grace and Freedom", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Deuteronomy 5:15, Colossians 2:20. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Creation Easter Immanence Love Sabbath Sacrament Worship https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7a01b6d7ec74d938529d4fe54d65516b.mp3 f221c3386adbd29284d9aef5ad26dfe4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost VII Series The Sacramental Character of the Church Scripture Text Isaiah 65:25, Ephesians 3:9-10 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19920726 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-07-26 Title A name given to the resource The Church: Sign of the Kingdom: Community of Shalom Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 July 26, 1992 entitled "The Church: Sign of the Kingdom: Community of Shalom", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 65:25, Ephesians 3:9-10. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ec41cbab3348fd9afa6de6e45f63bcf5.mp3 073037add5ad4c12340284b6b1948c03 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 The Sacramental Character of the Church Scripture Text Isaiah 43: 18-19 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-0-19920802 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-08-02 Title A name given to the resource Spinner of Chaos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 August 2, 1992 entitled "Spinner of Chaos", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 43: 18-19. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/44f39fc8aebeb20ab20308008e57c0e8.pdf 117fffe01d8ffe2c4dcccbbedfcaa401 PDF Text Text Abba From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Text: Mark 1:35 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost IX, August 9, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Images fill and shape the landscape of our lives. More than theoretical or abstract philosophical principles or statements of truth, we are shaped by stories, by pictures, by images, by metaphor. Metaphor is something with which we all live. We make metaphors constantly. Metaphor--the word itself comes from two Greek words. Meta is a preposition, which means across or behind or over. And pherein is a Greek verb, which means to carry or to bear. Thus a metaphor carries one across or over the gulf of unknowing. That which is not accessible to us in our ordinary understanding is made accessible to us through metaphors, which are created out of familiar experiences in terms of which we speak of the mystery beyond us. God is the great Mystery beyond us. The Mystery that confronts us, that embraces us, toward Whom we grope and yearn and long. We speak of familiar things, thereby to relate to the God beyond our experience. We experience God through the knowledge of those common things, analogies that help us to know something of the Mystery of God. Jesus spoke in stories and pictures, images, metaphors. In fact we might say that Jesus was God’s living metaphor, enfleshed. “The word became flesh and dwelt among us,” so that our hands handle him; our ears hear him; our eyes look upon him--the Word of Life. Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” Paul said, “We have seen the light of the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God has drawn close to us and drawn away the veil for us in the metaphor that is Jesus. It is the only way we can have true knowledge or experience of God: through an image or a metaphor. And so, in these next weeks, I want us to look at the images of God in the stories of Jesus. But I am not going to begin this morning with a story that Jesus told. I am going to begin with a portrait of Jesus that Mark paints for us - of Jesus before the break of day, in a lonely place--praying to God. As we see Jesus there, we see him embodying for us his knowledge and understanding of his relationship with God, of who he was for him. © Grand Valley State University   �Abba: Images of God Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Have you been to Palestine? Imagine the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Jesus slipping away quietly before dawn. Mark tells us that the previous day had been filled with ministry. In the old King James translation of the Bible, the Gospel of Mark has that word straightway . Straightway he did this and straightway he did that, and straightway he did another thing. In the RSV the word is immediately. Immediately, immediately, immediately. And if you follow long enough in the Gospel of Mark you are almost out of breath, because he takes you on such a torrid pace. And such had been the pace of Jesus that previous day. I’ve had those kinds of days. But after they are over and I am drained, I try to sleep in the next morning! Not Jesus. A great while before dawn he’s off. By himself in a lonely place, he prays to gather his thoughts and let the serenity of the place wash over him. Becoming centered, he opens his life in the presence of the Mystery that is God. He begins his communing with God very simply: “Abba.” It was, in Jesus day an affectionate address for a parent. Daddy. Papa. It was as a child’s word, and in Jesus’ day it was rather common parlance, an affectionate term for a father. What was unique was that Jesus used that simple unaffected word of address to address God. That was not common. It may in fact have been non-existent except for Jesus’ usage. The rabbinical devotion of Jesus’ day gives little indication that anyone in Jewish piety would have thought to address God simply as Papa. But the NT scholar, Edward Schilebeek, says that the whole essence of Jesus’ life and ministry is summed up in that word of address. That simple straight-forward, intimate, unaffected word of address, Abba. And although Abba is transliterated in our New Testament in only three places, (in the Gospels, the Gospel of Mark, and in the Garden of Gethsemanae: “Abba, Father, now is my soul troubled.”); nonetheless, wherever “Father” appears in the Gospel as an address to God, in the words of Jesus or the prayer life of Jesus, the word behind it was Abba. It so impressed the New Testament community that Paul, for example, says in Romans 8 that “the Spirit testifies with us that we are the children of God and we pray, Abba , Father,” and again “in the fullness of time God sent forth his son who has given us his Spirit whereby we cry Abba, Father.” The early church was indelibly marked by that simple, unaffected, straight-forward, intimate, personal address of Jesus to God. The word for Jesus bespoke a conception of God as the solid undergirding of life, the one who secures and guides and counsels, the one who nurtures and provides and sustains. Jesus in using Abba revealed the conviction that was the whole center of his life-that God was like a parent, a good parent who could be trusted. Abba. “Abba in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” “ Abba, now is my soul troubled.” “ Abba. Why have you forsaken me?” “Abba, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” “Abba. Into your hand I commend my Spirit.” Jesus’ understanding and relationship to God can be summed up in that simple word of address. His was a confident resting in the goodness, the compassion, the grace of God, related to as a loving, faithful, trustworthy parent. © Grand Valley State University �Abba: Images of God Richard A. Rhem Page 3   In his day Jesus was unique in using Abba, but he could point to a long, Scriptural tradition when he prayed thus, prayed intimately to God in that personal manner. Psalm 103 is one of the most beautiful expressions of such intimate relationship in the Old Testament. In verses 13 and 14 we read, “as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him, for he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust.” God doesn’t expect us to be more than we are. God knows what we are. To be human is enough. God loves us. The compassion of God is ours as a father has compassion on his children. The word compassion in the Hebrew is rechem and that word has a root that means “womb.” The description of God as a compassionate father is really a maternal image that comes from the idea of womb – the womb, that place that is warm and secure and life-sustaining. God’s compassion, God’s mercy is compared to the warmth and nurture of the womb. The 8th verse speaks of God as being merciful and gracious, the word gracious is also in the Hebrew a maternal word. Samuel Terrien, an Old Testament scholar, speaks of being in those biblical lands and talking to a sheik who was herding camels. He heard the yearning cries of camels off in the distance and he asked, “What is that cry?” The sheik answered that those particular camels had recently borne young and the young had forcibly been removed in order to wean them. The cries of those mother camels conveyed their yearning for their young. The word “gracious” used of God in Psalm 103, verse 8, is the same word as that used for the maternal longing for young that have been forcibly separated. The womb. The maternal longing. This is the imagery of the compassionate father who has mercy on his children. The Old Testament is really saturated with the intimate and personal images of fatherhood and motherhood--beautiful images. In Isaiah 49:15, for example, Zion has said, “The Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me.” To which the response is, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” A mother nursing a child whom she has borne, how could she forget? But, if she could forget, yet I will never forget. And in Isaiah 66, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. You shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” Images of a good trustworthy parent. Mother love. Father love. The nurturing, sustaining, life sustaining, guiding, counseling love and grace of a good parent is used as a metaphor to help us understand the nature of God. So in that quiet place, alone with God, Jesus says, “Abba.” Although taking privileges no pious Jew dare take, Jesus trusts the more ancient sense, and reflects in that word, the deep, rich Hebrew tradition of faith in the God of steadfast love -trustworthy, covenant keeping, full of grace. © Grand Valley State University �Abba: Images of God Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Another image, perhaps the most beautiful and familiar image is the image of the Good Shepherd. It is interesting to note that that image has transcended its locale of origin. How many of you have seen a shepherd? Well maybe you have; perhaps you have been to Palestine, and seen a shepherd out on the hills with a flock of sheep, guiding them to pasture, protecting, keeping. David, purportedly the author of the 23rd Psalm, records his powerful metaphorical insight, “The Lord is my shepherd.” He was using that which was most familiar to him out of his daily experience, and therein conjured up this beautiful image that still today moves us and will move future generations as well, thanks to Colette’s Worship Center, the fundamental image of which is the Good Shepherd. Rather interesting though, isn’t it? In a scientific day, technological society, a day of computers, computer chips, and space travel we can be moved by “The Lord is my shepherd.” A hundred years ago when I was in Sunday School they used to pass out Sunday School papers, and I remember the picture of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, with the lamb in the crook of his arm. I wonder if that is what causes me to feel warm when I think about the Good Shepherd? Whatever it is, that image, that metaphor has been able to transcend its time and its place of origin, and it continues to speak to us. To that extent it is a valuable metaphor, still a meaningful image. God isn’t a shepherd, of course, God isn’t a father, God isn’t a mother. But the imagery conveys God to us, in terms of the familiar that we know, communicates to us the Mystery beyond our ability fully to comprehend. We need to continue to find those metaphors and images that will move us. We could take all the metaphors and images of the Bible and scrap them--shepherd-father--mother--king--prince--refiner’s fire. We could scrap them all and we wouldn’t dishonor God. We wouldn’t detract one bit from God. We wouldn’t touch God. Because God is not the metaphor; the metaphor is only a figure of speech to help us to reach after and hopefully get in touch with God. But we could by rewriting the metaphors. And probably we should be about that--calling on new metaphors, out of our own experience, our own world. I wonder . . . I wonder if the masses have left the church because there’s a musty sound and smell, the language of Zion, all of it from another world, and another time. There is a minister in the United Reformed Church of Great Britain, Brian Wren, who believes the church can be transformed by poetry. God knows it can’t be transformed by theological debate. All we do is choose up sides and then shoot one another. You can’t argue rationally the truth of God. But images, stories they can change us. That is why Brian Wren says poetry can transform the church. And he’s done his best. We have printed a couple of his poems in the bulletin. We are going to sing one in a moment, and we have sung another one on occasion. On the cover of the bulletin you will find, “Are You the Friendly God?” I love it. Look at the second line, the image there: “Spirit of brooding …” At the baptismal font I spoke of the spirit that brooded over the waters of creation, and Brian Wren picks up that biblical image. But he brings it into our own experience. “Hovering wings,” again a beautiful, ancient biblical image, yet with a freshness that speaks to us. © Grand Valley State University �Abba: Images of God Richard A. Rhem Page 5   And the second line, “Are you the gambler-God…?” Now that should shock you! “… spinning the wheel of creation.” Can’t you see it? Wheel of Fortune! God spinning the wheel of creation. Giving it randomness. Do you recognize that word randomness? Do you read any of the esoteric physics, the cosmology of our day, the physicists who are probing the basic stuff of the universe? They speak about randomness, the randomness of atoms and electrons. Our cosmos is not a machine grinding on its way. There is a certain randomness to life, the physicists tell us. And don’t we know it? Don’t we know it in our own experience? Life isn’t all neat and cut and dried, predetermined. What will happen tomorrow? What decisions will you make? Do you have some freedom to go this way or that? You surely do! Randomness. The image immediately turns me on. This is someone who is talking about the God that is more like my present experience than even the shepherd to be honest with you. God willing to be surprised! “… taking a million chances …” But then the third stanza comes back again and reminds us of our deep covenant faith in a faithful God, a God of steadfast love. And how about line two of that stanza, “... quilting our histories.” Come to the Geneva Room on Tuesdays and watch the quilters making their beautiful patterns and see that metaphor enfleshed. “…patching our sins with grace.” Don’t you love that? And the final line, “… all of our ends are wrapped in love’s beginning.” The creator will be the consummator. All of the promises of God will come to fruition. On the next page, “Name Unnamed.” We’ve sung that one and you know I love it! The second stanza was last week’s sermon, “Spinner of Chaos, pulling and twisting, freeing the fibers of pattern and form . . .” Can’t you see God, as weaver? Don’t you see the tapestry under way? “Nudging Discomforter”--just when we thought we had all the answers, God raises another question. “Straight-Talking lover . . .” “Midwife of Changes . . .” “Dare-devil Gambler . . .” “giving us freedom to shatter your dreams . . .” Has God given us power to shatter God’s dreams? God knows we are able! “Life-giving Loser . . .” In a world that only worships winners, Jesus was willing to come and to be true to God--to lose his life. “…wounded and weeping . . . But not staying there . . . dancing and leaping . . .” in Resurrection’s power; “. . . sharing and caring that heals and redeems.” Ah, there are some images right out of today and this world. I suppose that one of the images that has been instrumental in transforming more lives in the last century than any other is an image that isn’t really very warm and vivid, but nonetheless it works - the Higher Power. And in the Twelve Step community, AA in its wisdom has refused to put flesh and blood on the Higher Power. It leaves it for people to flesh out individually--people--people like us all, although not all of us know it, but people who have said in all honesty, “my life is out of control.” We then speak of the Higher Power in concrete tangible form--metaphor--speak of the ways it has come to us. Perhaps through the gentle, open acceptance of a child, or in the sound of lapping waves, which seem to connect us with the heartbeat of One larger than ourselves. A metaphor of a © Grand Valley State University �Abba: Images of God Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Higher Power as friend, or captain of our Earth Ship, or director of our pluralistic choir. A Higher Power. The point is not the metaphor, it is the power of God, the experience of God. It is God touching our lives. That’s what we need. Never argue for a metaphor. Metaphors come and go. They are negotiable. They are transient. They are only good as long as they move us. I don’t think we are ever going to be able to reach back and rejuvenate, retrieve Abba. When we prayed it together, at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, as Jesus would have, it (Abba) doesn’t do it for us, does it? It did it for Jesus. But it doesn’t really do it for us in the same way. What will do it for you? What do you need God to be? God is --and a whole lot more. Find that image, that metaphor of God, in which you can rest and taste grace. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Scripture Text Psalm 103:1-22, Gal. 4:6, Mark 1:35 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19920809 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-08-09 Title A name given to the resource Abba Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 9, 1992 entitled "Abba", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:1-22, Gal. 4:6, Mark 1:35. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Compassion Mystery Nature of God Parable Trust https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3956bbade0484bff0099c8c106fe3f23.mp3 3a81f3e74afc2f97995a4635344e45e7 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e4010e64105211275e9974398b85a62e.pdf ddb217edffee798b7473eecc87c30e09 PDF Text Text Prodigal Love From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Text: Luke 15:20 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost X, August 16, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion, and he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15:20 It is very important to name things correctly because names give us a preconception of the reality of something. The parable that we just read has been popularly known as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” but, actually, that is a misnomer. That is an incorrect naming. To call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to put the focus on the son. Now there were two sons. But to name it the Parable of the Prodigal Son is to put the focus on the more exciting son, the one that would put a little raciness into the narrative. But it is not a story about the rascal or the rogue. It is a story about the father. And the father represents God. It is very important for us in this series of messages, in which we will be looking at the Images of God in the Stories of Jesus, to get the title straight. In titling today’s sermon, I’ve saved the word prodigal because I looked it up in the dictionary and found that it can have a positive as well as a negative meaning. Prodigal, in the sense of the prodigal son, means wastefulness, spendthrift, a rascal, using one’s substance on that which is not necessary or important, etc. But if you keep reading you will find that prodigal can also mean abundance, lavish, superabundance, profuse. So, in order to name the parable, I’ll save the word prodigal, but we’ll call it prodigal love. It is important to get that straight because images of God in the stories Jesus told are metaphors. And it is important to get the proper focus of the story in order to be sure we catch the metaphor. A metaphor, you will remember we said last week, is a figure of speech. The word comes from two Greek words - meta, which means behind or over or across, and pherein, which means to carry, to bear. And so a metaphor carries us across the gulf of unknowing in order that we might have some sense of that Mystery that is beyond us. In order that, in terms of things that are familiar to us, we might have © Grand Valley State University   �Prodigal Love Richard A. Rhem Page 2   some sense of the Mystery that is always beyond our comprehension. We can only talk of God in metaphors. We can only understand God and the deepest spiritual Mysteries in terms of poetic expression, and so, in this metaphor, this parable, we have an image of God as Prodigal Love. Jesus didn’t lecture those who were complaining to him and about him. He didn’t write a catechism. He didn’t try to get into a rational argument. He told a story. Jesus always told stories because Jesus knew that was the only way to communicate the depth of the Mystery to which he was pointing. You can only speak of God poetically. You can only get the feel and the sense of the reality of God in an analogy, in a figure of speech, a story, a parable. He told this parable in order to image God as Prodigal Love, because God is Prodigal Love. Isn’t that good news? Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that the news that has set our tongues singing and our feet dancing? “Why, of course,” you say. “Why certainly,” you agree. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you sure? Do you really buy that? Does that really make you feel good, comfortable? Are you at ease with that? God as Prodigal Love. I want to tell you, it will never make it in Houston this week. The Republican Platform Committee would never come out with a platform that had at its heart the theme that God is Prodigal Love. I’ll tell you, neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush could capture the White House this fall, campaigning on a plank of God’s Prodigal Love as the answer to our economic ills. I’ll tell you something more; there’s not a national church assembly meeting this year that would ever have at the center of its mission statement, God’s Prodigal Love. I’ll tell you something more; even in Christ Community we might not rest totally at ease with God’s Prodigal Love. I suppose making a provocative statement like that I ought to support it. I could see you were nodding your head “yes” all too soon and all too easily when I said it’s good news that God is Prodigal Love. Sure. But why did Jesus tell the story? Because the scribes and Pharisees were murmuring about the fact that the tax collectors and the sinners were coming to hear Jesus, and they were put off by the fact that Jesus was receiving them and inviting them to eat with him, which was the sign of hospitality and the acceptance of such a person. Luke sets the story of God’s Prodigal Love in the context of the murmuring of the scribes and Pharisees. And who were the scribes and the Pharisees? Well, they don’t get very good press in the Gospel because they are always set over against Jesus. They are always in the adversarial position, but, as a matter of fact, in all honesty, they were the best people in town. They were the serious people. They were the religious people. They were the pillars of society. They were decent. They were honest. They were hard working. With dogged determination and dedication they kept life going and institutions intact. They were faithful. They were devout. They were seriously good people. They were like the people who are © Grand Valley State University �Prodigal Love Richard A. Rhem Page 3   going to fill Convention Hall in Houston this week. I mean, that describes Republicans, doesn’t it? They murmured, “Who does he think he is? Look with whom he is associating.” Murmur. Does anybody murmur better than good religious people? We the upright and the uptight, don’t we murmur? Aren’t we always grumbling in our beard about how bad the world is and how everything is going to pot, and about our irresponsible neighbor? Folks, the scribes and the Pharisees were the kind of people who come to worship at 10:00 on Sunday morning. Good people. But they murmured. They were offended at Jesus living and acting out what he believed to be true and that is that God is Prodigal Love. Jesus acted out what he believed God to be. Jesus was transparent. He was a picture. He was a metaphor of God. Seeing into the face of Jesus, we see into the heart of God. And what the good folk saw… They. Did. Not. Like. You want another piece of evidence? This is still in Luke’s Gospel. If you go to the fourth chapter where Jesus begins his ministry, he came to his hometown crowd, his local congregation where you would have thought they would have given him a break. Remember? He preached from the Prophet Isaiah. He proclaimed a message of liberation - sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, the lame to walk, the prisoners freed. And his own people were so angry they wanted to throw him over the cliff. They wanted to kill him. And it was his consistent living out of that inaugural text that earned him the wrath of the best people in town. You want one more piece of evidence? How does the story of the Prodigal end? The story ends, not with the salty tears of the father over the son who came home, but with the faithful, obedient, hard working, dedicated, committed son who was always every day out in the back 40 plowing and hoeing and weeding. He comes home one night; he’s tired; he is satisfied, feeling that he has worked hard and put in another good day’s work. But, of course, his satisfaction is really riddled with resentment, because nobody really likes to be that good and that faithful all of the time. I mean if you are that good and that faithful all of the time, then you in all probability have a bit of resentment suppressed somewhere. It will inevitably pop up now and again. He said, “What’s going on?” The servant says, “Your brother’s home.” Dark clouds. The father comes out and says, “Your brother’s home, let’s have a party.” “No way! That no good joust-about, who’s wasted all your living?” he says to his father. Then he colored the story a little bit. He didn’t know for sure what the younger son had been doing, but he knew what he would have done, if he were out there; that’s part of his resentment. He said, “He was wasting your living on harlots and all that other kind of stuff, and you kill a fatted calf for him? I have slaved for you all these years and you never gave me a party.” Jesus is brandishing a vivid point to those to whom he told the story in the first place, to the murmurers. © Grand Valley State University �Prodigal Love Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Now to come back to the question I started with. Does it really sit easy with you that God is a God of Prodigal Love? Just think about the story for a minute. The younger son gets what he can get and scrams. Breaks his father’s heart. Breaks all codes of decency and honor. Enters into a self-destructive pattern of life. Finds himself in a real pinch, scratches his head and realizes the servants in his father’s house are better off than he. He devises a plan. “I will arise and go to my father.” He rehearses this speech: “Father, I am not worthy to be your son. I have sinned against heaven and against you.” I think he meant it. I think he had attained a certain amount of proper humility. But I don’t think he was changed yet. This is still just a strategy. He was going to come home. He was going to give his prepared speech. He was going to try to be one of the hired servants because he still is operating under the old principle. He thinks, “You know if the old man will give me a second chance, and I work hard enough, and I am dedicated long enough, if I follow my elder brother around long enough, maybe I can prove that there is really some good stuff in me after all. Maybe if he’ll give me a second chance I can still prove myself.” So he comes home and the old man is on the rooftop. He’s been up there every day since the kid left. He’s been straining his eyes looking down the road, hardly seeing because he is blinded by the tears he’s been shedding. And then he sees his son and almost leaps off the roof of his house. He gathers his garments around him in a way that would be considered shameful in that culture and in that day, and he begins to run down the street as no male over 30 years of age would run. He throws off proper decorum and proper behavior and doesn’t care who is watching, who is witnessing this kind of shocking display of emotion. He races, the text says, he races to his son and his son gets the first line of his prepared speech out, only to be smothered by the arms of the father, whose salty tears flow over the son as he kisses him effusively in a prodigal manner and restores him to sonship. That is a moving story isn’t it? It is a wonderful story. The trouble is we haven’t dared preach it that way in church, we haven’t let the story just be. We haven’t dared to just tell that story and say, “God is like that.” We’ve always hedged a bit. I am going to quote from a sermon given by a preacher, recognized as outstanding in our tradition. It is from a sermon on this parable: “These parables teach and depict in a pictorial form the basic message of the Bible that God is a God of grace.” (Good so far.) “God forgives sinners by grace. That is, he forgives sins freely and not by merit on the part of the person who has sinned. The word grace means unmerited favor. This, of course, does not mean that God overlooks sin or that he winks at it, or that he excuses it. God forbid. He is able (listen to me now) to forgive us freely because full atonement has been made for our sin in the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the Cross of Calvary. (I’ll repeat that.) He is able to forgive us freely because full atonement has been made for our sin in © Grand Valley State University �Prodigal Love Richard A. Rhem Page 5   the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the Cross of Calvary.” [Words in parenthesis spoken by Richard A. Rhem.] This is the way you’ve had the Gospel preached to you almost all your life. The cross of Calvary, the death of the Son of God, the Atonement. Did you really find that in the story? Where did that come from? Now this is a very fine preacher, and this very fine preacher knows full well that when one preaches one is supposed to preach the text. But he dragged the word about Calvary into this story didn’t he? It’s not in there. Jesus told a story about a son who went bad and came home and got loved by his father. He didn’t say anything about parole, or probation, or recrimination, or condemnation, or somebody else taking the rap for all of the grief the father had experienced. Where did it come from? It came from Paul, of course: Paul’s reflection, after the fact, a reflection back on the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. All of Paul is theological reflection. The problem in the Church is that we have never let the images of God in the stories of Jesus be heard in all of their potency, in all of their power. We have not trusted these stories. We have wanted to warn folks like you that what Jesus said in a case like this is not all that there is to say. This preacher was following a principle of interpretation that is taught in our seminaries, and that is that every text of scripture has to be interpreted in light of every other text of scripture. So you preached the text, but always in the context of the whole. Yesterday Nancy was doing some baking. Here she was up to her elbows in flour had the rolling pin out. She starts from scratch, that girl! I mean she’s good! She’s rolling out this crust until it is beautiful and smooth. There’s not a foreign particle anywhere, nor any kind of little lump. It is absolutely flat, uniform, homogeneous. You could take a hunk of that crust any place and you would have the real ticket. That’s what we have done with the Bible in all of its rich diversity, in all of the thousands of years over which it came to expression, and all of the different contexts into which it is spoken. We have taken a rolling pin and we’ve rolled it and rolled it. It reminds me of a soup I used to like when I was trying to lose weight. (I’ve, of course, gotten that weight down now where it is just right!) This was a soup that had all kinds of vegetables and when it was all done you couldn’t identify anything in that bland mush. You threw them into the blender and blended that thing until - well, there were carrots and onions, and celery and tomatoes, and potatoes and all of that. Sometimes I like to take a big bite out of a carrot and taste a carrot, or an onion, or a tomato or a potato. But if you get it all blended together, you can dish it out and it’s got a little bit of everything in it and it doesn’t taste like anything distinctive! And it doesn’t have any pungency or any punch. © Grand Valley State University �Prodigal Love Richard A. Rhem Page 6   And so in the Church we have hedged on the stories of Jesus just so you folks didn’t get the wrong impression. We are afraid you might think, as the preacher said, “God might wink at sin.” Or that God could just forgive us if God willed to forgive us. So we have, thank God, Paul who puts the damper on Jesus. But now just think with me for a minute. You are parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles. Is there a child you love? Can you imagine a child you love with all your heart and soul, that child breaking your heart? A son or daughter going wrong? Can you imagine every time the telephone rang your heart skipping a beat because you hoped it was he or she? Can you imagine going to the mailbox every day just in case there might be some communication from that son or daughter? Can you imagine a son or daughter whom you loved, seeing, clear as a bell, that they were on the road to destruction and not being able to do a thing about that? Loving them. Caring. Longing. Yearning. Weeping. And one day there is a rap on the door and there they are. What would you do? What would you do? Jesus said, “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more your heavenly father.” I think Jesus would say, “Don’t drag Paul into this story. I am trying to image for you God, who in Prodigal Love simply forgives freely.” It is an image of God who has to let the kid go because he will only love, and has no other plan. God who stands helpless even in the face of his “steadyEddie” elder son who complains, saying to that elder son, “All I have is yours. You are home. Come in to the party,” but can’t drag him by the hair. Jesus images God as Prodigal Love who loves and loves until one finally gets close enough to him to be embraced and to experience and to be lost in the abyss of that love. Jesus paid it all - I feel a little more comfortable - that’s the kind of world I can operate in. Then, Dad, take me back and let me prove myself. That feels better. But it’s not the Gospel, and it’s not the way God does it. The old Dutch painter, Rembrandt, captured the story and the poignancy of the parable in a painting that Peter owns, that he has shown me. It is the parable of the Prodigal Son, which we have renamed now the Prodigal Lover. Peter and I are going to show you the painting. I’ll be God. [laughter heard] Well I’ve got this beard. [Peter responds, “I get the party!”] [Dick embraces Peter and says:] This is the painting. Do you see the salty tears on the father’s cheeks? All God ever wants to do is embrace his children and have them home. You get the picture. Listen to the voice of God. “You are loved. You are home.” © Grand Valley State University � 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 Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Scripture Text Luke 15:20 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-0-19920816 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-08-16 Title A name given to the resource Prodigal Love Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 16, 1992 entitled "Prodigal Love", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 15:20. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Nature of God Parable Transforming Grace Unconditional Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/05c509aea9fd5dbebf11d8489e6239fc.mp3 4a8c341275569882e9dab07bc8970175 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/61a8ee56aaa113310746704a11002005.pdf 82087c20f5cc7f8dbad4bf3c7d2471de PDF Text Text Nothing to Pay From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Text: Luke 7:42 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XI, July 23, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Luke 7:42 How does one speak of God? I suggested last week that when Jesus spoke of God, Jesus did not leave us a catechism, but he told us stories - parables. Parables are extended figures of speech. Figures of speech enable us to deal with that which is beyond our experience in terms that are familiar to us. Metaphor comes from two Greek words, meta which means to carry over or beyond or across and pherein to carry, to bear. A metaphor carries us across the gulf of our knowing and enables us to have some sense of that Mystery that is beyond us. We deal with the unknown in terms of that which is familiar. Jesus told us stories. He didn’t leave us a catechism or give us a lecture on the nature of God. Thank God. But that reminded me that in our tradition we have certainly done a good deal of that. I pulled down a copy of the Westminster Confession, one of the great faith documents of our tradition, and the fourth question is “What is God?” Simple little question. The answer: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. Turn you on? Move you? Well, we could talk about all those terms I suppose, but it is interesting in all of the attributes that I referred to there is one glaring omission. Did you catch it? There is no mention of God’s love. Not the simple definition that we have in the first Epistle of John, where John writes simply, “God is love.” I don’t mean to put the catechism down. It is a faithful document coming out of its own historical context that has been used in a significant way. As I was thinking about the current series, “The Images of God in the Stories of Jesus,” and the contrast from the way that Jesus revealed God and the way that © Grand Valley State University   �Nothing to Pay Richard A. Rhem Page 2   we have subsequently dealt with the nature of God or theological matters. In general, we have tended to write catechisms. We have tended to try to define in an intellectual fashion. We have used reasonable discourse in order to probe the mysteries that are beyond us. And, as a matter of fact, you cannot probe a mystery rationally. You can only deal with a mystery through a metaphor. That’s why Jesus told stories. And we pick up the image of God. We get the sense of who God was for Jesus in the way he behaved, in the manner of life, and in the stories that he told. He conveyed the depths of God’s being through the images that come through in his teaching and his ministry. I want to suggest an image from God through Jesus that comes out of the morning lesson. There is a parable within a story. That story itself is very revealing and the story is the necessary context for understanding the parable. And the story itself was told by Jesus as an illustration. I should say the story was recorded in this context by Luke as an illustration of that which he was dealing. It’s the same thing we had last week in the parable of the Prodigal Son. There were those who were grumbling because Jesus opened himself up to tax collectors and sinners. Jesus ran with ordinary people. Jesus had a kind of inclusiveness about him, about his relationships, which ran counter to the exclusivity of the religious leaders of the day--the Pharisees and the scribes. As I said last week, the poor Pharisees were the best people in town and they get poor press in the New Testament. But this is because they are always set over against. They are always in that adversarial position, and in the case of Jesus they took offense because of his openness to all people and his refusal to discriminate against any, to draw lines and draw people out, and so they grumbled about this. He told the story of the Prodigal Son in order to deal with that. In this context, the discussion had been John the Baptist and Jesus, and in the 7th chapter in verses 29 and 30, Luke puts in a parenthesis and he says that the common people, all of the people including the tax collectors, had received John’s baptism, and to have received John’s baptism was to acknowledge that God was present in the life and ministry of John the Baptist. Just as to hear Jesus, Luke is saying, is to acknowledge that God was present in the life and ministry of Jesus. In the 30th verse of this 7th chapter of Luke, Luke tells us, by refusing to be baptized by him, that is John, the Pharisees and lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves. And Luke is saying similarly that, to refuse Jesus, to reject his message and manner of life was to refuse the purpose of God and then, as though to give an instance of this division between people – the ordinary folk who heard Jesus gladly and the religious elite who rejected him – Luke tells us the story of Simon the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner. And Luke doesn’t tell us that there was anything sinister here, but obviously Simon, one of the religious leaders, was interested to find out for himself who this person was and what he was about, and whether the rumor was true that this one seemed to be a prophet of God. © Grand Valley State University �Nothing to Pay Richard A. Rhem Page 3   And so Jesus came to dinner and as he was reclining at the table, as was the custom of the day, in a house that was open, which was also the custom of the day so that people off the street might wander in and wander out, while they were at dinner, a woman who was a sinner (The word probably indicates that she was a prostitute, a street-walker, a woman of the city.) came in and began to weep. Her tears wet the feet of Jesus. She wiped his feet with her hair and she had brought a flask of ointment and she anointed his feet in a display of emotion, which was quite out of line for proper decorum in such a setting. But something within her simply burst forth. This obviously was not the first time she had met Jesus. There had to be a prior occasion when he had looked at her, a prostitute, and communicated to her one way or another - through perhaps a word or a touch, or simply the gentle affirmation of his eyes, that she, a woman of the street, was a child of God, a person of worth to whom Jesus accorded a sense of human dignity. It was too much for her. She experienced full forgiveness, newness, self-worth because she was valued by this one who was a prophet of God, and seeing him again and having intentionally entered in order to be near him, she lost it. Simon obviously was a bit uncomfortable with this rather erotically tinged display of emotion, but at least he seemed satisfied that the purpose of a dinner party was satisfied, for he says to himself, “If this man were a prophet he would know what manner of woman this is, and obviously would not have embraced her and allowed this display of emotion.” So then Jesus, on the basis of Simon’s own criteria of what a prophet is, demonstrates that indeed he is a prophet. He reads his mind; he discerns the thoughts of Simon; he is aware of that turning of the wheels in Simon’s mind and so he says, “Simon, I have something to say to you,” and Simon says, “Speak on, teacher.” And he tells them the parable: Two debtors, one owing a huge sum, another owing a lesser sum, but alike in this: neither had anything to pay. And they were alike in this too: their creditor freely forgave them both. In that parable we have an image of God. In the King James Version, the version of which I memorized the Bible, the phrase, which is the title of the message, will be found. They had “Nothing to Pay.” They had “Nothing to Pay.” And before we get to the image of God, perhaps we should say that there is also an image of humankind. In the presence of God we have “Nothing to Pay.” Some of us have incurred a huge debt. Some of us need only a little bit of credit. We are not all the same. As Mark Twain said, “He was a good man in the worst sense of the word.” God save us from too many people who are too good. They are not fun to be with. But there are good people. And then - there are the rest of us. There is a whole spectrum of righteousness, or morality, or goodness. Jesus is not lumping the whole race in one pit of guilt and sin, but he is saying this, “The human condition is such that we are universally in debt and universally we have © Grand Valley State University �Nothing to Pay Richard A. Rhem Page 4   “Nothing to Pay.” We don’t bring our record to God. George Bush is going to run on his record. But if you try that with God, that’s the very reason you are in trouble. It is a record. We have “Nothing to Pay.” But the parable for our purposes this morning is also an image of God and that is where I want us to put the focus. The one who owed a great deal and the one who owed very little both had “Nothing to Pay,” but the creditor freely forgave them both. The word for cancel the debt or forgive the debt is carisomi. You are familiar with that Greek verb I am sure. I only display my erudition because, if you will listen carefully: carisomi, caris. The root of that verb is caris, and as you well know in this congregation the Greek word caris is grace. There is only one word really, isn’t there? Grace. When neither had anything to pay, the creditor graciously, freely canceled the debt. Now that’s an image of God. The image of God that comes through in that story is very similar, it is exactly the same, as the image of God in the story of the Prodigal Son, which is not a story of a prodigal son but of Prodigal Love. As I said last week, in that simple story that Jesus told there is an image of God who simply waits to receive the child that will return - freely embracing, loving unconditionally. And so I want to take the phrase that refers to the debtors, “Nothing to Pay,” and play with that. Let’s turn it around. Let’s now make it the requirement of God. If we have “Nothing to Pay,” let me suggest that, as far as God is concerned, there is “Nothing to Pay.” Oh, that sets the Gospel on its head in terms of the way you’ve always heard it. Hear me now. This is pure, undiluted heresy in terms of the way you’ve generally heard the Gospel preached, because you’ve generally heard the Gospel preached through the focus of Paul. And we have always used Paul to dampen Jesus. The radicality of these messages is that I am suggesting to you we ought to simply listen to Jesus once, without dragging Paul in, with all his metaphors with Roman law and the Roman court system and the transactions. Now, if I am going to try to make this point in a sermon, I’ll tell you I have to go through the hymn book and really be careful about the hymns I pick because almost every hymn, almost every prayer, almost all the liturgy, the whole tradition of the Christian church conveys the idea that Jesus paid it all! Now, what if there is “Nothing to Pay?” A friend of mine, Ernie Campbell, who used to be the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, edits a little quarterly newsletter for preachers in order to help us out when we get in a tight spot on Saturday and don’t have an idea. Ernie writes this: A couple of times in the last two months I have heard grace defined as “God’s riches at the expense of Christ.” I have not been able to track this definition to its source. Perhaps one of our readers could help in this regard. © Grand Valley State University �Nothing to Pay Richard A. Rhem Page 5   “God’s riches at the expense of Christ.” I find this description of grace deeply troubling. What are we to make of the phrase “at the expense of Christ?” Are we to assume that God would be indifferent to us but for the intervention of Christ? And why the need to reach for a “transaction” metaphor: this for that, as though God were trapped by the accountant’s logic and could credit us only if he could debit Jesus. And are we saying that, because we have received grace through Christ, grace is not available to others under different auspices? Must grace be mediated? Is God not free to directly lavish grace on any or all out of the fullness of the Divine Nature? If grace is to be understood as exclusively Christ-related, how do we explain the lovingkindness of the Lord toward Israel? The definition that most of us learned years ago is still valid. Grace is “the unmerited favor of God.” The unmerited favor of God. Period. Christ did not have to win it or earn it on our behalf. It was always there. Christ did not come to make grace possible but to make grace visible. Richard Niebuhr was right: “Most of our miseries come upon us because we cannot believe that God is as good as Jesus said He is.” “Nothing to Pay.” We have “Nothing to Pay.” And God says there is “Nothing to Pay.” Just open your life to my love that is always there; be valued, given worth. Let your heart be broken by my unconditional love that requires nothing but simple access. Simon had an image of God and lived out his image of God – because we do live out our image of God. Our image of God is probably the most shaping factor in our attitudes and our manner of life. Simon had an image of God and his image of God is revealed when he sees Jesus allowing this woman of the street to have this display of emotion, and receives her and accepts her. Simon’s image of God is this: God withdraws from the likes of that. If this man were a prophet of God he would act as God would act. He would put down a barrier; he would erect a wall; he would separate himself from this ordinary sinful human being. Jesus lived out his image of God, and that was that God never erects a barrier, never builds a wall, never turns the back, but is always simply waiting - longing to do just one thing: to love us, to give us value. God’s love is groundless and infinite. God does not seek value. God’s love creates value. The son in the far country came into a pinch and began to strategize how he might go back and start as a servant and prove himself, prove himself, prove himself. He wasn’t transformed in the far country. He simply had started on the way back home. It was the salty tears of the father, the embrace of the father that changed the boy and got him out of that servant - servile mentality, enabling him again to be a son. The woman in the parable, too, was transformed by an unconditional love. What image of God do we as a community convey? Let me suggest to you that, by and large, the Christian Church in its attitude, spirit, body language and decorations conveys an image of God much closer to Simon’s than to Jesus’. © Grand Valley State University �Nothing to Pay Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Is there not a certain level of morality that is necessary in order to be a part of this community? Is there not a certain expectation, a certain living-up-to, a kind of standard? Is there not some kind of qualification to be considered a people of God? Do we not have barriers and walls, subtly suggested criteria communicated nonverbally by our very body language? And how about you - are you still doing your darnedest to show yourself worthy? Have you ever let down your guard as the woman let down her hair and wept in the face of a love that will never quit and only waits to be experienced? The image of God in this story of Jesus is a God who says to the likes of us, who so love to pay our own way, “There’s nothing to pay.” © Grand Valley State University � 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 Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Scripture Text Luke 7:42 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19920823 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-08-23 Title A name given to the resource Nothing to Pay Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 23, 1992 entitled "Nothing to Pay", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 7:42. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness Inclusive Nature of God Parable Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/86dafa1e6f64f141ac3ecc6123625878.mp3 ef978fbad5dc87cf041d144443e9141e https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4b30db162876bbff8328bc60c959fe51.pdf b5ee4e540bcdf19b9ba81ec91a139e75 PDF Text Text God’s Mercy For the Asking From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Text: Psalm 130:3-4; Luke 18:13-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XII, August 30, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. Psalm 130: 3-4 God, be merciful to me, a sinner! I tell you this man went down to his hour justified …. All who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 18:13-14 There is more mercy in God than sin in us! There is more mercy in God than there is sin in us! I think I will have you say it with me: There is more mercy in God than sin in us! End of the sermon. Let’s receive the offering and go home. (Charlie, that was not the time to applaud.) O.K. I’ll say amen . If I could send you home this morning with that thought indelibly written on your psyche, imprinted deep into the depths of your being, it would be worth the offering. It would not be a Sunday morning spent in vain. There is more mercy in God than there is sin in us. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you. That happens to be a favorite statement of one of my favorite preachers. It is true and it is Good News, and it is something that ought to set our feet to dancing. It is something, I’m afraid, that has not come through clearly enough often enough. We talk about Gospel, which means Good News. That is the message of the church. I am sorry that the church has been identified by so many, though perhaps justifiably so, as a place not of good news but a place of bad news, a place of gloom and doom, of a kind of repent or perish syndrome that casts a shroud over the human experience. For as a matter of fact the truth of the Gospel is that there is more mercy in God than sin in us and, therefore, we are invited to place our hope in God - not in our past achievements, not in our future prospects, but in God. Our hope alone can be in God. Psalm 130, a poignant prayer, a scream, a primal scream from the depths: “Lord hear my cry,” is a straightforward statement full of candor about one person’s experience of the human condition. “Oh Lord, if you should track my record, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.” Or, in more biblical nuance, “Lord, if thou should mark iniquity, Lord, who could stand?” But then we read an expression of © Grand Valley State University   �God’s Mercy For the Asking Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the faith of Israel at its very best: “But with thee there is forgiveness.” Doesn’t that move you? Oh there are many times, I know, when one can hear that and not be moved by it because one’s existential situation at the time has not overwhelmed one with one’s own flawed, frail, human situation, but there are times . . . Aren’t there times? Have you had times when the words of a Psalmist were music to your ears and gave you just the words you needed from the heart to say, “Oh Lord, out of the depths I cry to you. Lord, hear my cry. Oh Lord, if you should mark iniquities who could stand?” But there is forgiveness for you. The Psalmist believed that there was more mercy in God than there was sin in him and, therefore, despairing of himself, he trusted God. But not all in Israel followed in his example and took him as a model. There were those in the days of Jesus who trusted in themselves, believed that they were righteous, and despised others. Those two things often go together. Trust yourself that you are righteous and check yourself. Very often the other side of the coin is the despising of others, a contempt for other humankind. But Jesus, in order to crack that armor, in order to break through to those who trusted in themselves, told this parable, a parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. The parable is very familiar. Just a brief little vignette that makes a powerful point that there are really only two kinds of people in the world - those who go it alone and those who trust in God. So the Pharisee came into the temple and began to pray a prayer of thanksgiving to be sure, but really a prayer of praise of his own virtue, reminding God of all the good things that the Pharisee had done. Now, as I have said in these last two or three weeks, the Pharisees do get a bum rap in the New Testament. They get a bum rap because they were the over/against people. They were the critics of Jesus. They were the established religious authorities who were being threatened by what Jesus was proclaiming, but they were good people. They were the best people in town. I don’t put much stock by their fasting, but I certainly do like the fact that they tithed! Christ Community could use a few Pharisees in its midst! I would put up with your supercilious righteousness if I could get your money! (laughter) They were good people. The things that the Pharisee recited about himself were true things, and he was a good man, and the last thing in the world that I would want you to do would be to go out of here and say, “Thank God, I am not like that Pharisee.” On the other hand there was a Publican. A tax collector. Not such a good person. Religiously, he was unclean because he had dealings with the Gentile Roman authorities. Therefore, he was ceremonially judged unclean. He was despised by his own people because he was a collaborator with the enemy. He sold his soul for a buck. In that cruel and corrupt tax system, he collected the money for the Roman oppressor, oppressing his own flesh and blood. He was not a good person. But the point of the parable, as Jesus juxtaposes the Pharisee and the Publican, is not to say that there are good people and bad people – really, good people and people not quite so good – the point is not to distinguish two kinds of people. The point of the parable is to distinguish two kinds of spirit, two kinds of attitude, two © Grand Valley State University �God’s Mercy For the Asking Richard A. Rhem Page 3   kinds of approach to God. As far as Jesus was concerned, this was not an issue of whether the Pharisee was pretty good and the Publican not so good, but the fact that the Pharisee, in all of his virtue, was running on his own record and finally trusting himself. The performance principle was his game. And the Publican, despairing of himself, cast himself on the mercy of God. Jesus says the Pharisee went out still garbed in his own virtue, and the Publican went out garbed in grace. Now we could well spend some time on these two people, but that’s not the purpose of the messages in this series. Rather, I am treating the stories obliquely because I want to ask the question now: What is the image of God in that story of Jesus? It is probably not as obvious as in some of the stories that Jesus told, but I think that you would agree with me that behind this story was Jesus understanding of God, the God Jesus knew, the God that Jesus proclaimed. Would you agree that the image of God in the story of Jesus is an image of God who likes people? Or, if that’s too bland, a God who loves people as human beings? A God who accepts us in our humanness and affirms that humanness? It seems to me that’s the image of God behind this story told by Jesus. Jesus is not saying there are good people and bad people, and God loves good people and doesn’t like bad people. Jesus was saying, God loves human beings. God loves people. God loves people in all of the contradictoriness of their human existence. And the only thing that God is looking for is an openness to God’s mercy, that resting in God rather than oneself. A preacher had a class of children before him, Ernie Kurtz says in his recent book. He said to the children, “If all bad people were red and all good people were green, what color would you be?” Little Linda Jean thought mightily for a moment and then her face broke into a great smile. She said, “I know! I would be streaky.” An answer far beyond the question. The wisdom of a child who knew that, if she were forced to put herself in the camp of the good or the bad, she couldn’t fit in either place because she was a combination of both. And is that not precisely our human condition? Are we not beast and angel? Are we not light and shadow? Are we not full of turbulence longing for serenity? Torn apart looking for wholeness? In your bulletin there is a paragraph from Carlyle Marney, who describes the human condition vividly and poignantly. It pictures the propensity to evil that rests in us all. I was reminded of this last week when I heard the zookeeper of the Miami Zoo interviewed. They said to him, “We hear there are dangerous animals on the loose in the wake of the hurricane.” And he answered, “Well, they are not dangerous, unless they get cornered or become afraid. Then they are dangerous.” And isn’t that true of us as well? Aren’t we for the most part civil and decent folks? Aren’t we for the most part people who could identify with those wonderful deeds of compassion and kindness that come to expression in a crisis like Hurricane Andrew, where neighbors become neighborly? Is there not the milk of human kindness in us all? But are we not at our best when we are responding to that? Are we not capable of glory and gore? Scare us, get us in a corner, elicit our © Grand Valley State University �God’s Mercy For the Asking Richard A. Rhem Page 4   defensiveness, put us under threat, accuse us, condemn us - the hair bristles on the back of our neck and, if necessary, we will kill. Are we evil? I don’t think so. But we are capable of every evil deed the world has ever known. Are we not a common lot of those who go through life fractured - fragile – afraid? Most of us at our worst are simply scared to death. We are not evil, but we do evil things. We are not destroyers, but we live with self-destructiveness. At heart we are lovers, but we can become lions in the den. Ernie Kurtz, who I mentioned a moment ago, wrote a book whose title is worth the price of the book. It is entitled The Spirituality of Imperfection. The Spirituality of Imperfection. Ernie Kurtz was here last year and will be back here in October. He has written a definitive study of the history of AA and its philosophical and theological roots. And he has done a lot of research into the history of the wisdom literature of the peoples of the world, and has wonderful stories that he has gathered together in this book The Spirituality of Imperfection. The Spirituality of Imperfection is the lesson that the AA community has to teach the Church, just as the Church at one time taught the AA community. In the last few decades with the membership of the church going down, the membership of AA has gone up and that is not because there are so many more people recovering from alcoholism or substance abuse. It is because there are so many more broken human beings out there who have found in that fellowship what they have not found in the church – an acceptance of the fact that they are human. Are you human? You smile, you blush, you say, “Oh, yes, I’m human - all too human.” All too human? No. Just human. To be candid, that’s all we are! And I would suggest to you that’s what God intends us to be. I love Psalm 103. “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him.” God remembers our frame. God knows our frame; God remembers that we are dust. God knows us. God knows what we are. And God has mercy upon us. In the wisdom of the Creator we were not created robots on a string. We were not created machines that could be turned with a crank and just go on our way perfectly. We are people full of contradictoriness. Torn apart. You want another good word like murmur? Think of the German word zerissenheit. William James, the philosopher, translated that word as torn-to-pieceshood. Can you identify with that? Have you ever felt torn in a dozen directions? Have you ever felt fractured? Have you ever felt that your whole being was coming apart? Have you ever looked up in despair - to the heavens and said, “I simply don’t have it all together.” Well, join the human race. God made you that way. “But,” you say, “isn’t that a bit too simple?” Well is it really? God loves us as human beings. Struggling. Persons in process. And in our freedom and responsibility we are capable of grandeur and groveling. That’s who we are. And the reason people are finding healing in the AA community is because there they are finding an honest admission, © Grand Valley State University �God’s Mercy For the Asking Richard A. Rhem Page 5   acknowledgement, ownership of the human condition. And that admission means that one needs God, along with all the mercy that God has to give. In his book, Kurtz makes a claim that seems to be my own experience as well that, in response to the modern age of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Church has moved toward perfectionism. Not an acceptance of the contradictions of our being, but a push always to perfection. I was schooled in WORM theology. That is, “such a worm as I.” And I think, probably, to denigrate the human person in that way is as wrong as to exalt the human person as did the Pharisee. My preaching is skewed because I’m screwed up, and so you have to filter everything through that recognition. A person only talks about what they need to talk about for their own survival. That’s why I always talk about Grace and Mercy. I could sum up my impression in the center of my being about what I am about and what God calls me to be in the little poem that was written by my fourth grade teacher in the book of autographs at the end of the school year: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until the good is better and the better is best.” Never enough! We drive ourselves with a compulsion we don’t understand and feel we always come up short because in the Church we’ve not been honest with the ambiguity of the human situation, which is simply the way we are. Created in the image God. Part of the earth and part of God. Well, modern culture in reaction doesn’t help. Some years ago Tom Harris wrote a book, a best seller, I’m O.K. You’re O.K. Remember it? Over against the denigration of the human person on the one hand, that did help to bring some people back to a self-worth and self-esteem, but that’s not true either. I’m not O.K. And you’re not O.K. Forgive me for saying so. I’m not O.K. You’re not O.K., but that’s O.K. God can handle that. If only we can come to the point of acknowledging that. An analyst quoted by Kurtz, named Marian Woodman, says, “Addiction keeps a person in touch with God.” At the very point of vulnerability is where the surrender takes place. That is where God enters. God comes through the wound. The Pharisee was regaled in an armor that mercy could not penetrate - he was going it alone. The Publican had no armor, and the point of vulnerability - his wound - was the crack through which grace could enter. “Out of the depths I cry to thee, Oh Lord. Oh Lord, hear my cry. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, I haven’t got a leg to stand on. But with thee there is forgiveness. God, be merciful to me a sinner.” And God is, thank God. One of the great Christian leaders of this century, a theologian and preacher, Carlyle Marney, wrote the following in his book, The Human Condition: “Man is the most dangerous and savage of the beasts: His bite is poisonous; his hand is a club; his foot is a weapon; knives, clubs, spears are projectiles to bear his hostility. Nothing in nature is so well equipped for hating or hurting. Confuse him and he may lash out at everything. Crowd him and he kills, robs, destroys, for his crime rate increases in proportion to his crowding. Deprive him and he retaliates. Impoverish him © Grand Valley State University �God’s Mercy For the Asking Richard A. Rhem Page 6   and he burns villas in the night. Enslave him and he revolts. Pamper him and he may poison you. Hire him and he may hate both you and the work. Love him too possessively and he is never weaned. Deny him too early and he never learns to love. Put him in cities and all his animal nature comes out with perversions of every good thing. For greed, acquisitiveness, and violence were so long his tools for jungle survival, that it is only by the hardest [effort] that these can be laid aside as weapons of his continued survival.” Reference: Ernest Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham. The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. Bantam, reprint edition, 1993. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Scripture Text Psalm 130:3-4, Luke 18:13-14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Ernest Kurtz, The Spirituality of Imperfection, 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-0-19920830 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-08-30 Title A name given to the resource God's Mercy for the Asking Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 30, 1992 entitled "God's Mercy for the Asking", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 130:3-4, Luke 18:13-14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness Human Nature Mercy Nature of God Parable Sin https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d48209a6f8683ca668ed43fa9b6e58a7.mp3 4fd6f1ebc5df1bbdefdecc63a28d8878 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0ba5393081407615a0b05709aee3b03a.pdf a84af30dbf60d8a6c40d08e312ddb825 PDF Text Text All is Grace From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Text: Psalm 130:3-4; Luke 18:13-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XIII, September 6, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. Psalm 130:3-4 God, be merciful to me, a sinner! I tell you this man went down to his hour justified … All who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 18:13-14 I had an interesting week this past week. I received a sweatshirt with a cartoon on the front that had a dog, a Dalmatian, preaching, saying “Bad, Bad, Dog.” The dogs (Dalmatians) were lined in the pews and underneath it said, “Hell, Fire and Dalmatians.” (Laughter) I got a good laugh out of that and some warmth as well! I received some interesting letters, and notes too, very nice ones about last week’s sermon. Thank you for those. I received a pew card too. It raised a question about the mercy of God about which I spoke. The question was about the mercy of God in regard, for example, to a Hitler or to a Saddam Hussein (to update it a little bit). That question always arises when you talk about mercy in God, or sin in us. I would have thought perhaps that the paragraph in the bulletin by Carlyle Marney might have forestalled such a question. If you remember, he said: Man is the most dangerous and savage of the beasts: His bite is poisonous; his hand is a club; his foot is a weapon; knives, clubs, spears are projectiles to bear his hostility. Nothing in nature is so well equipped for hating or hurting. Confuse him and he may lash out at everything. Crowd him and he kills, robs, and destroys, for his crime rate increases in proportion to his crowding. Deprive him and he retaliates. Impoverish him and he burns villas in the night. Enslave him and he revolts. Pamper him and he may poison you. Hire him and he may hate both you and the work. Love him too possessively and he is never weaned. Deny him too early and he never learns to love. Put him in cities and all his animal nature comes out with perversions of every good thing. For greed, acquisitiveness, violence were © Grand Valley State University   �All is Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 2   so long his tools for jungle survival, that it is only by the hardest [effort] that these can be laid aside as weapons of his continued survival. Now, if we worry about a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein, our first problem is that we haven’t scratched ourselves - you see? Because, if you scratch yourself a little bit, you find most of the stuff there that is operative in Saddam Hussein. That’s a tough word to hear. But it’s true. Did you happen to catch 20 Minutes last week? They aired one of the most gripping segments I have ever seen. A Jewish psychiatrist, 50 years after the Holocaust and the horror of that Nazi Death March of the Jewish people, brought the children of some of Hitler’s henchmen together to talk for the first time since the end of the war. The children of the Nazi leaders, people now in their 60s, 70s were gathered to speak of their feelings and memories – the son, for example, of Martin Boermann and some other persons whose names I didn’t recognize. It was very moving. Martin Boermann’s son was I think a lad of 8 or 9, or maybe 14, when he had to come to terms with the fact that his father was a monster. Well, not a monster, but a human being who could sing hymns as well as organize the Death Camps. The son of Boermann converted to the Catholic faith and became a priest. I suppose he is living out his life as an atonement. There was a woman, I don’t know her name, who was moved to weep as she spoke of her fear that there might be something in her own genetic makeup that would emerge of the awful monstrousness that emerged in her father. Here they were 40-50 years later, human beings like you and me, sensitive human beings, feeling all the weight of that past. It is a tough word to receive that God has mercy even for the Hitler’s and Saddam Hussein’s. Just ask Jonah. Saddam Hussein is not the only person who has persecuted God’s people. There was the King of Nineveh, that gravely wicked city! Next to Nineveh, New York City is the jolly Big Apple. God saw the wickedness in Nineveh. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that there are not terrible, evil deeds perpetrated by the likes of us and by our brothers and sisters. God doesn’t like it. So sometimes God sends a preacher. He said to Jonah, “Things are rotten in Nineveh - go preach. Tell them to repent. Tell them that I, the Judge of all the earth, demand that they turn around in their tracks.” Nineveh was east. Jonah hopped a boat west. He didn’t want any of that preaching to Nineveh, because Nineveh was the enemy. The King of Nineveh the capital of Assyria, the oppressor of Israel, the decimator of the North Kingdom, the enemy, the adversary on the horizon. Let Nineveh go to hell! Nineveh conjuring up judgment for itself. “Ah-h-h, I can hardly wait,” says Jonah. God says, “Go preach to Nineveh.” Jonah says, “No way. I know you. I’ll preach. They’ll heed. They’ll repent, and you will forgive. No way!” So off to Tarshish he goes, in the direction of Spain. A little Mediterranean cruise, if you please. But, of course, the Lord God was not to be outfoxed by the likes of Jonah, and so God blew (phew) a little bit of wind. The sea turned. A shipwreck was imminent. All the sailors began to pray to their gods. The captain found © Grand Valley State University �All is Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Jonah down in the hold of the ship asleep, drugged on his own anger and hostility. He said, “Hey man, get up and pray, if ever you’ve prayed. The situation is desperate!” And then they cast lots to see who might be the cause of this storm, and sure enough it fell to Jonah and Jonah said, “Yup, it’s me. It’s me. I am running from God.” And they said, “What should we do?” And he said, “Toss me over.” And they did. And the sea calmed - and all was fine. Jonah, going down into the depths, got swallowed in the belly of a whale. And there, amidst the digestion juices of the big fish, he had a little time to contemplate the call of God. Then God, feeling perhaps the prophet had finally gotten the point, God tickled the belly of the fish and he burped Jonah up on dry land, safe and sound, and said, “Would you like to go to Nineveh?” (Laughter) And to Nineveh he went. And he preached. And it was just as he said. They heeded. They repented. God forgave. And Jonah was so angry. God said, “Do you do well to be angry, Jonah?” “Yes, I do well! I knew what would happen. You are so soft. You are just a teddy bear. Just let people give a little inkling that they are turning to you, and you just open up your arms. Yes. And it makes me very angry!” So he went off and found the Pacific Palisades hotel, which overlooked the city. He thought he would see what was going to happen. Perched on a hillside, he built himself a little booth for shelter (it was a hot climate). God looked down and said, “Plant. Grow-big-fast.” The plant towered over the booth with shade. Jonah was happy as a lark. He thought he was poolside. The next morning God says, “Worm, eat the plant.” The plant dies. The sun beats down, mercilessly. Jonah can hardly stand it. God says, “Good morning Jonah. You’re angry. Do you do well to be angry?” “Yes, I’m angry!” says Jonah. God replies, “Jonah, you’re angry because a plant that you didn’t plant, didn’t nurture, grew up overnight and withered in a night. Jonah, how do you think I feel about the hundred and twenty thousand people in Nineveh, to say nothing of the cattle?” Now the parable of Jonah was told in the Post Exilic period after Judah came back from Babylon, came back from its exile experience. It was during this time that the Pharisaic Movement began - the separated ones who began to gather their skirts around them in righteousness. They punctiliously followed the law, the rituals, said their prayers, did everything that they were supposed to do as recorded in the prayer of the Pharisee of last week’s sermon. The righteous ones. The good ones. The serious ones. And as that society developed in a kind of narrow meanness of heart and spirit, somebody told the parable of Jonah. They told it in order to remind Israel, in its exclusiveness and narrowness, its nationalism which translated also into a kind of particularism of religion - God is bigger than that. God has mercy on all people. But Pharisaical particularism had become a dominant view in Jesus’ day, so it was to that group Jesus had to constantly defend himself. It was to that group that he had to vindicate the Gospel he proclaimed, as well as the behavior of his life. It was to the murmurers and the grumblers that Jesus had to constantly defend the fact that he received © Grand Valley State University �All is Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 4   all sorts of people. In his home synagogue in Nazareth he gave an inaugural sermon. They almost killed him because he indicated that the Grace of God was broader than the limits of Judaism. Jesus reflects that word of God, as shown in the parable of Jonah. It is in that context that he tells a story of a man who owned a vineyard, who went at 6 o’clock in the morning to the labor union office to find who was eligible for the day. He negotiated a contract with a bunch of workers and sent them out into the field. Twelve hours a denarius. “Is it a deal?” “It’s a deal.” Such a deal! Full day’s work full day’s pay. Honest wage for honest work. Everything fair and square. At about 9 o’clock in the morning on the way to coffee he saw a few more standing idle there and he said, “What are you guys doing?” And they said, “Well, we’re available.” “Well,” he said, “get into the field and I’ll make it right with you.” No written contract negotiation, no wage established. Just “I’ll do right by you.” At 12 o’clock the same thing. At 3 o’clock the same thing. At about 5 o’clock he was making his last pass and he saw a few more still standing there and he said, “Where have you guys been?” They said, “Well, the time before when you came we were in the ‘john’.” (Laughter) They didn’t say that, but they probably were, because they really didn’t want to work, they wanted to be able to go home to their wife and say, “There was no work today.” He said, “Get into the field.” So they worked for an hour and, when it came time to dole out the pay for the day, those who worked for an hour got a full day’s wage, and so did those who came at 3 o’clock, 12 o’clock, 9 o’clock and 6 o’clock. And those who were hired at 6 am and had worked a whole day and had worked under the sweat of the noontime heat, when they got the same wage as those who came at 5 pm, they were angry. Wouldn’t you have been angry? Be honest now, wouldn’t you have been angry? Every normal human instinct in you should rise up and say, “That’s not fair. That’s not just.” And that’s true. The owner of the vineyard said, “Look. Did we negotiate? Have I lived up to the contract? “Well, yes but. . .” “Am I not able to do what I wish with what is mine? Do you begrudge me my generosity? The anger that you are feeling is the anger that Jonah felt when wicked Nineveh repented and found Grace.” What is the image of God in this story of Jesus? Let me suggest this to you, that God is a promiscuous Lover. Do you know the word promiscuous? I didn’t say are you? I said do you know the word? (You should have laughed a little bit!) (Laughter) The word is usually identified with those of somewhat less than moral scruples. Do you know what the word means? Its root is in Latin. Miscere which is to mix or mingle. Promiscuous is to mix or mingle indiscriminately. That was the charge against the vineyard owner. That’s what makes people angry about God. God does not discriminate. God is indiscriminate. In the bestowal of God’s gifts, God’s Mercy, God’s Love, God’s Grace flows indiscriminately, mixing and mingling, with those who have some claim upon it, and those who have no claim upon it. God does not distinguish in the way we do, between those who are © Grand Valley State University �All is Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 5   worthy and worthless. Valuable and valueless. Good and evil. Black and white. With God there aren’t good guys and bad guys. God is promiscuous. And this made a Jonah angry. It made the religious leaders in Jesus’ day angry. And it still makes the church today angry. Listen to an interesting twist on the story told by Jesus. This is a true story recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud in about the year 350 A.D. Thus it is later than Jesus’ story, and so probably either working off the same story that perhaps had general circulation, or maybe an actual twisting of the same story of the vineyard owner. A rabbi, aged twenty-eight, died. He died on the day that his son was born. He was a very worthy rabbi. And so the rabbi’s colleagues gathered for his funeral. One of his colleagues gave the funeral oration, in which he told this similar story. Similar but with a twist. He said there was a householder who went out and engaged laborers for the day. As he observed their labor he saw one man that was tremendously industrious, competent, capable and fruitful. And after two hours of work, he went to that man and he said, “Come with me. Let us walk and talk today.” And so for the rest of the day they carried on conversation, walking and enjoying one another. It came the end of the day and the time for the pay, and the man who had walked with the master all day long after working only two hours got the same pay as those who labored all day. Those who had labored said, “Why should he get a full day’s pay, he only worked two hours?” And the householder said, “Because he did more in two hours than the rest of you did all day long.” In the funeral oration the rabbi said, “God took our young brother early because he was more fruitful in his short life than many gray-haired scholars who live a whole lifetime.” Now do you catch the twist? Do you see how the rabbi turned Jesus’ story on its head? In Jesus’ story the ones who went to work at 5 o’clock received a full day’s wage. And there was absolutely no justification for it. It shattered all conception of reason and justice and fairness. When the rabbi told the story about his brother, he had said, “Maybe God took him young, but it was because he was so worthy.” There are only two options, two worlds described in those two stories. In Jesus’ story, it is a world of promiscuous love, grace and mercy on behalf of a God who does not seek to justify such promiscuous ways. In the rabbi’s story there is perfect justification because the reward follows the merit. In the story of Jesus, God is a God of promiscuous mercy, grace and love who refuses to justify these ways, who simply says to those who complain, to those who are angry, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” And if we would be honest we would say, “Yes. Yes, God we begrudge your generosity. We don’t like that about you, and we don’t like a world that is run that way.” © Grand Valley State University �All is Grace Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Let me twist the knife one more time. Jesus told the story to vindicate the Gospel over against the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders of the day. But, by the time the Gospel of Matthew was written, we’ve moved two or three decades down the line, and those Gospel writers wrote and selected their stories for a reason. What they wanted to do was not simply tell this story about something that happened back there. They wanted to speak to the Church to whom they were writing. Now the story in Matthew’s Gospel is addressed not to the Pharisees; it’s addressed to the Church. It’s so easy for us to read our Bibles and say, “Oh those bad Pharisees,” and, “Ah, give it to them Jesus!” Oh no. Jesus had to tell the Pharisees. Matthew had to tell the Church. And I have to tell the church. I’ve got to tell you. If you have heard this story, you don’t like it. If you heard this story you can understand Jonah’s anger. Because this story says that God does not play fair. And the straighter you are, the more righteous you are, the more serious you are, the more industrious you are, the more you will be offended by God’s promiscuity. You simply won’t take it sitting down. This matter is so important because it is our image of God that influences our behavior. It is our image of God that shapes our spirit. And if our image of God is not the image of Jesus, then we are going to be reflecting something quite foreign to the Jesus whom we claim to follow. Shall I make it concrete for you? Let me give a contemporary example. Now I’m not a politician. I could never make it. But if I were a politician, and if I were a Republican, I would be extremely nervous about the inroads that the religious right is making into the Republican Party. Here is a paradox for you. It is fundamentalist Christian people that are influencing a political party and that are making a political party mean-spirited and divisive. It is Christian people. If I were a politician, and if I were a Republican, I would tremble before the prospect of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan setting the agenda for my party. If I allowed them to set the agenda, to take over, then the party of Abraham Lincoln would be no more. The spirit that they are spewing out is the spirit of Jonah, who gets very angry with all of the sinners out there and wants to draw nice clean lines between those who are worthy and those who are not, those who are right and those who are wrong. They would be terribly offended at a God that could be promiscuously gracious - across the board. Now - I’ve said it. Do you do well to be angry? © Grand Valley State University � 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 XIII Series Images of God in the Stories of Jesus Scripture Text Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16 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-0-19920906 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-09-06 Title A name given to the resource All is Grace Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 6, 1992 entitled "All is Grace", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness God of Grace Jonah Sin Unconditional Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a70a19c8032dc56d2025f16ea3cb1b92.pdf 37ad02a018d808b5da4ba77c17392f9f PDF Text Text Faith-Full Generations Text: Psalm 78:5-7; II Timothy 1:5 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XV, September 20, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon … which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God … Psalm 78:5-7 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you. II Timothy 1:5 Well, there’s a new Miss America, I think. I was busy last night and didn’t check in but it was supposed to happen. And if that was supposed to happen, then it must be a new church year and time to get church school started. It’s time for that annual sermon on engaging in the life of the community of faith. It’s time for that annual pep rally. One of the things that I don’t want to do, ever, is to make the pulpit a place for a pep rally and the sermon a promotional piece. It’s too important a time, an encounter, to let it become simply a time for banner waving. As I was reflecting on this morning in our life, I know that we are at that point again when the “menu” is before you. The smorgasbord is being spread. But, rather than slipping into the temptation, into which the Church so often slips, of becoming an institution characterized by the tyranny of “the ought, the must and the should” – It is so easy to talk about all of the wonderful things that are out there, to say that you “ought to do this, you really should do that, and you simply must do something else,” I wonder if long-time Christian people generally bend their backs just a little bit as they enter the sanctuary, waiting for one more burden to be laid on them – this morning let me put a little different twist on this day and say, “I celebrate you. I am grateful for you as a congregation. I’m thankful that you show up.” Didn’t the now famous Woody Allen say that 90% of success in life is just showing up? Well, I’m glad that you show up. And you keep coming back. And in the diversity and the multiplicity of the offerings of the life of this community you will be there – some of you here, some of you there, as this community moves © Grand Valley State University   �Faith-Full Generations Richard A. Rhem Page 2   into full gear and I am thankful for you. You are a marvelous congregation, and I say that in all sincerity. I don’t really need to cajole you, to coerce you, to persuade you. I can celebrate you! I think that is a thing that has characterized Christ Community, and at least in part is what has made this an alternative to church as usual. You show up. You find that which strikes fire in your soul and meets the need of your heart, and together we are a community of faith. I’m really grateful for that. A community of faith. A community. There’s a connectedness here. Brothers and sisters. Pilgrims in passage. Together. We’re not alone. We’re not in isolation. We move together toward a shared vision and hope. We support one another, and as we move together we are able to draw strength and encouragement from one another. We are a community. I’m very grateful to be a part of this community, this community of faith, a common faith, a shared confidence that God is, that God is good, that God is gracious. We keep coming back here together to have that reinforced in our lives, to let it wash over us once again. We live together in that faith, in the God who will never abandon us. I celebrate you. A person who lives a long distance from here and is on our mailing list called me last night and congratulated me. He had opened his mail and saw “Joining God’s Agenda,” and he said, “Dick you are doing a wonderful job.” And I had to say, “I have surrounded myself with some wonderful people.” There is a level of creativity and commitment here that is second to none. Colette said to me this week (in the intensity of getting ready for this morning, you’d have to be around here to sense that intensity, the hours day in and day out getting ready for today), “I am surrounded by strong individuals and there is not a follower among them.” You know what it is to be a leader when you don’t have any followers, but a whole host of leaders? Have you ever tried to lead leaders? Well, it’s challenging, and it’s exhilarating. That’s what you are. You are a gifted, creative, committed, talented group of people, and I am grateful for this community and for the privilege that is mine to be in a position of leadership in the midst of you who are so bright and engaged and involved, and strong in your own right. It is a wonderful thing. In the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which is one of the great churches of the land (I’ve gone there of late when I have been in New York City because of an outstanding preacher, Dr. Morris Boyd, who has been there about five years), I became aware in the last year of some tension that was growing between Dr. Boyd and the leadership of the congregation through my friend, Ernie Campbell, who was close to the situation and had gotten some inside sense of what was going on there. Unfortunately, in the spring of this year, Dr. Boyd resigned. Last Sunday the Interim Pastor was there for the first time in this fine congregation. The announcement was made in the bulletin that there was a copy of the Mission Statement that had just been prepared for those who would like to avail themselves of it. So following the service I made my way to the reception desk and asked for one as though I was interested as a member of that congregation. But really I wanted to take it home, because for the last couple of years we’ve © Grand Valley State University �Faith-Full Generations Richard A. Rhem Page 3   been working on a mission statement, and I thought it would be good to see what this fine congregation has come up with. Quite a document. I thought I’d read it to you this morning! (Laughter as he holds up that document!) But at least this might be important to hear. There will probably never be agreement about the circumstances that led to Dr. Boyd’s resignation and early departure, but all agree that this was a wrenching experience for the entire congregation, “leaving deep wounds and division which cry out for the reconciling presence of Christ our Lord.” And then a paragraph about the different priorities and envisions of action in the congregation, “as the church turns to the task of seeking a new pastor, it must do so with the sobriety and grace of a congregation that has learned that the bonds of trust and mutual connectedness are fragile. That words spoken carelessly or in anger cannot be withdrawn, but can be forgiven. That the certainty in the rightness of one’s own position does not exclude mutual respect. That love and commitment are acts of will rather than fleeting emotions. The congregation must now have the strength to see through its anger and conflict as it recognizes that people of good will can differ yet join together in a common ministry.” That’s quite a candid statement. I apologize to the Session of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for hanging out their dirty laundry in public. It is a great church, and it has a great tradition. It has just experienced some very painful brokenness. Their statement says to me, number one, I’m very lucky. Number two: let’s never take this community and our relationship with each other for granted. You are a marvelous congregation. Gifted. Creative. Full of leadership. I am constantly amazed when someone else emerges out of the woodwork, of whom I was not aware, bringing tremendous gifts to the community and to our life together. It is a delight. I celebrate you. Today I delight in you. I give thanks for you. And we must never presume upon you or take you for granted. Because as the report says, those bonds of connectedness are fragile and they need always to be nurtured as we live together in this community of faith. But, what are we all about? Well, we are all about “telling a story with a meaning.” That’s the translation of Psalm 78, verse 2. That’s the New English Translation. In the version that I read a moment ago it says, “I will speak in a parable.” The Hebrew word speaks of parable or proverb, but the New English Translation I love. The Psalmist says, “I will tell a story with a meaning,” and that’s really what we are about. We keep telling the story and listening for the nuances of its meaning, meanings that continue to deepen and to take on new color as we move through the pilgrimage of life. We are about “telling a story with a meaning.” That’s what we are engaged in right now. Part of a living tradition of faith that stretches back into Israel, finds centrality in Jesus Christ and has moved on through two thousand years of Christian history. We are a people, a community of faith, who live out of that story, out of that faith vision. And we keep telling that story. © Grand Valley State University �Faith-Full Generations Richard A. Rhem Page 4   I keep connecting what I do on Sunday morning with this storybook. Our children left us, but they have left us in order to hear stories, Bible stories, stories that have a meaning. A meaning that says God is, that God has created all things, that God is good and full of grace, that God will never abandon them because God is unconditional love. That’s what we need constantly to be telling. We tell the stories because they have a meaning and the meaning bespeaks Grace and Love in all of the respective stories of this story of God’s love and grace. In order that as a community of God’s people we may baptize our children here with confidence, and that we may bury our dead here with confidence because there has been laid in the fabric of our lives a deep fundamental trust. Fundamental trust. That’s a kind of a catchword, a slogan, the jargon which the leaders of child and human development have coined to express a posture of life. Not trust in this and that and another thing, but just trust. And we know from child development studies that the most critical thing we can do for the infant is to secure the infant in trust. To surround the infant with the warmth and stability and security that translates in their early days as the foundation on which they can rest. We know from concrete studies that it is so critical that a child learns to trust. Not, again, in terms of trusting that this is true and that is true, and that is true, but being able to trust. There are people and they are human tragedies who have never been able to trust, to let go, to take their hands off the controls, to entrust themselves to another. One nurtured in a safe environment learns to trust, and it is fundamental trust that we are seeking to instill in our children, our adolescents. The Psalmist understood clearly that this was Israel’s way. This is why the Jewish people are still a people four thousand years later, because they have continued to tell the story that had a meaning, the meaning of which was God, the creator of all, is good. That reality can be trusted. God will never abandon God’s children. And so the Psalmist in Psalm 78 recites the history of God’s people, because it is in their concrete history that Israel experienced God with them, for them. He says in the 5th verse, “God established a decree in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our ancestry to teach their children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God.” Isn’t that a marvelous text? Isn’t that what we are about? Isn’t that why we go through all of the effort to nurture our children? That, finally, with us they may set their hope in God. But it isn’t always the children. You keep coming back too. You’ve heard so many sermons I couldn’t think up a new one for you. And I’ve been here so long I couldn’t possibly have a new thought. But we don’t come here to get more information. We don’t come here in order to know more things. One of the finest books on preaching that I know of, by a Dutch scholar, speaks about fundamental trust. He points out that preaching really is that weekly occasion in which the people come to be renewed in their fundamental trust. Just © Grand Valley State University �Faith-Full Generations Richard A. Rhem Page 5   to have it wash over us again. You don’t come here really week after week to gain some new insight, some new piece of knowledge. You come here again to be together in the presence of God, and in hymns and prayers and liturgy, and anthems and sound of the organ, and the Word of preaching. Simply to know again in your depths God is. God is good. God is full of grace, and God will never abandon God’s children. God will finally bring us home. Why, my goodness folks, if in your depths that is your confidence, then there is nothing you cannot negotiate in the passages of life. We in the church often know too many things. We get too excited about matters of doctrine or theological correctness. That’s not what it’s all about. We know too much. We know far more than we ought to bother our heads about. What it’s about is Trust - in God - the baptismal font - the Lord’s Table – the candle lighted for our final passage. We are kept in the grip of love by the gracious God who will bring us home. That’s what happened to Timothy. Paul writes to his child in the faith, longing to see him, and then encourages Timothy, reminding him that he stands in the third generation of faith-full living: the faith of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Paul says, “the faith that lives in you too, Timothy, I am sure.” It wasn’t exactly an ideal situation: Lois and Eunice; I wonder where Timothy’s father was? Maybe he was dead. Maybe he abandoned them. One thing sure, he was alive when Timothy was born because Timothy, the child of a Jewish mother and a Jewish grandmother, was never circumcised. I’ll bet Lois and Eunice had some words. I’ll bet Lois was really upset with Eunice for falling in love with a Gentile. I’ll bet they really scrapped. I’ll bet you could have cut the tension with a fork. But somehow or other they got together, grandmother and mother. Poor Timothy didn’t have a chance. They nurtured him in the faith to the point at which, when Paul came telling the Good News of God in Jesus Christ, Timothy was ready to take on the mantle of ministry himself. Paul says to him, “Timothy, my son, you have not been baptized with the spirit of timidity and fear, but of power and love and self-discipline.” And that’s really what I would pray for all of you. So often religion appeals to the weakness in us. I would hope at Christ Community we might always appeal to your strength, to the center of your being. To call you in your strength, in your giftedness, in your creativity to serve God with all your heart, to follow your bliss, to do that which strikes fire in your soul to be alive. There’s no party line at Christ Community. Once we have laid that foundation of fundamental trust that God is - that God is Good - that God is full of Grace - that God will never abandon us -that God will bring us home…once we’ve affirmed that and constantly renew that, well, you’re on your own. You’re not sheep. You have not a spirit of timidity and fear, but a spirit of love and selfdiscipline. I don’t ever want to hear you say, “Well, at Christ Community we don’t believe that, or at Christ Community we believe that. Christ Community has no party © Grand Valley State University �Faith-Full Generations Richard A. Rhem Page 6   line. I call you to maturity. To be able to stand on your own two feet. To be able to say, “This I believe.” To stand in your own concrete truth, mature in faith. I am not going to urge you to grow. What’s alive grows! And our pilgrimage takes us through so many different experiences - sometimes it’s on the mountaintop and sometimes it’s in the darkness of the deepest valley but, in it all, where we are rooted and grounded in the good and gracious God, we will be able to negotiate the passages. Not alone, but finally being able to say, “This is who I am. This is what I believe, and my belief is being translated into my life.” And we are here to help you to come to that kind of wholeness and maturity and strength and power and love so that finally, whether you are on the left end of the spectrum or the right end of the spectrum, or whether you waffle in the middle somewhere, it doesn’t matter. Whether you dot your i’s and cross your t’s, or whether you spice life with a little heresy, I don’t care. All I want you to be able to do finally is to be able to say with a Paul, “I know in whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.” To say with sobriety and grace, and with power and strength. To be able to say, “I know, I am persuaded, I am alright.” That’s what we are all about. I celebrate you. You are a great community of people. I thank God for you. © Grand Valley State University � 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 XV Scripture Text Psalm 78: 5-7, II Timothy 1:5 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-0-19920920 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-09-20 Title A name given to the resource Faith-Full Generations Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 20, 1992 entitled "Faith-Full Generations", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 78: 5-7, II Timothy 1:5. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Bible Community of Faith Meaning Nature of Faith Unconditional Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fb805c9ca2cacd95423a5ea24355938e.mp3 9ef5c45afba0ecbf5da7f678efe4ea63 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9d39a18bb345c4e941570591532f03df.pdf cd839c4cebd5d84356021d26aadb4115 PDF Text Text Worship: The Medium of Traditioning Text: Psalm 137:4; I Corinthians 11:26 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XVI, September 27, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? Psalm 137:4 For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes. I Cor. 11:26 On those rare occasions when I get to worship in the pew I like to look at the order of worship, and particularly the scripture lessons. I try to figure out why that Old Testament lesson with that New Testament lesson, and why those two lessons with that sermon subject. I wonder what kind of rabbit the preacher is going to pull out of the hat today. Sometimes I can figure it out and sometimes I am surprised. But, if you had done that today, I don’t suppose you got that far. You probably did not get beyond the Old Testament responsive Psalm? “Crushing little ones against the rock and rejoicing in it.” Did you get beyond the final verses of Psalm 137? Did it shock you a bit or did you miss it? How could you miss it? No, you didn’t miss it. Did you say to yourself, “Is that in the Bible?” Did you say to yourself, “Is that the Word of God?” Well, let me put your fears at rest. That is not the Word of God. I am not going to talk about those verses, but I can’t use Psalm 137 without at least addressing those statements. I wondered whether to even use them in public worship, but then I thought perhaps it could be an occasion to deal rather honestly with some of those expressions in Scripture that seem to us to be so far from what we have learned in Jesus Christ. Those two verses are venomous statements of anger and hatred. And the expression “crushing little ones against the rock and rejoicing in it” is so crude and brutal as to hardly be conceivable. So let me say a couple of things about it. The first thing I am going to say is that it is in the Jewish song book, and the song book, The Psalter, is the expression of the deepest human emotions that are offered in the presence of God. There is a wonderful honesty about Jewish religion. The Old Testament is healthy in its honest statement of the human heart and the expression of human emotions. I want to suggest that if you can not identify with the intensity of the anger and the hatred that come to expression in © Grand Valley State University   �Worship: Medium of Traditioning Richard A. Rhem Page 2   that Psalm, it may be that you don’t really know yourself, because what comes to expression there is a potential expressible by any one of us - if we are sufficiently abused, devastated and defiled. That expression of hatred is an honest human emotion. Not infrequently, I have people come to me and confess their anger or their vengeful feelings, or even their feelings of hatred - they feel guilty about having those emotions. I say to them, “You cannot be guilty about what you feel. You don’t determine what you feel. What you feel you feel. You can’t think it away.” The healthy aspect of the Jewish relationship to God is that ability to bring the darkest emotion into the presence of God and to leave it there. Maybe the Psalmist of Psalm 137 was healthier and had a more wholesome relationship with God than most of us do. It is a bone-chilling statement, but it is an expression of the depths of which we are capable of feeling. What we feel can only be denied with dishonesty. And why be dishonest in the presence of God? What better way to be freed from the paralysis of such hatred than to bring it to expression before the face of God? So I want to say that this is not the Word of God, that it is a human word of response to God. That’s what the Bible is anyway. In the earlier years of my ministry I never would have dared touch that Psalm because I would have thought that I would have to justify it somehow or other as being a legitimate statement. I can’t do that. It is human word. It is an intense, passionate, human word spoken to God. I should say, too, it’s 180 degrees from what we learn in Jesus. Jesus radicalized his religion, the religion of his Jewish tradition, when he said, “Love your enemies.” Jesus modeled it out on the cross when he said, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” So don’t hear me justifying that statement as appropriate, but hear me saying that sometimes human beings can be so debased and dehumanized that there arises that kind of vengeful intensity. The thing that triggered this statement was that the tormenters, the Babylonians, who had taken them from their land and from their holy city and from their temple, had brought them to Babylon and said, “Sing us a song.” We read that in the death camp in Trablinka during the Holocaust, the Nazi guards made sport of the Jewish prisoners, having them sing a little Jewish ditty and do a little dance. Well, these devastated people said to the Babylonians, “We cannot sing God’s song in a foreign land.” And that’s really why I chose this Psalm. There is a vivid image of their hanging up their harps on the willow tree by the riverbank and saying, “No, here, we can’t sing.” The Jew was so formed and shaped and determined by the life of worship that happened at Jerusalem and in the temple that to think of bringing the songs of Zion out of that context was unthinkable to them. They couldn’t do it. So, in that vivid image, you have the sense of the holiness of the place and the rootedness of the Jew in that temple where the presence of God was. It was in the worship life, in the great festivals, and the annual events and the offering of the © Grand Valley State University �Worship: Medium of Traditioning Richard A. Rhem Page 3   sacrifices through the priesthood in the temple, in the holy place where the name of God dwelled that the heart of the Jew dwelt. In Babylon they couldn’t sing. They loved Mount Zion. Another Psalmist said, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the house of the Lord.” The Psalmist of Psalm 42 says, “Why art Thou down cast, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? When I remember Thee, when I remember Jerusalem, when I remember how I went with the pilgrims on festival, then my soul is cast down within me.” Oh, they loved Zion. They loved Jerusalem because there, in that sacred place, all of their being was centered, because there God dwelt. In the New Testament community, Paul had to write to the church at Corinth because they were abusing the Lord’s Supper. That gave him an occasion to give to us the tradition that he had received: how Jesus broke bread and poured the cup and said to his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me.” So, for us, the center is no longer the temple in Jerusalem, but the center for us is the table and the bread and the cup. And our life comes back again and again to that celebration - that simple celebration of the breaking of bread and the pouring of the cup, and the remembering of Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us. What these two scriptures do is they give me an occasion to say that what was true of Israel is true of the Christian church as well. Our worship together can be the medium for traditioning. Usually I think we think of tradition as that understanding and way of life that is passed down, the actual contents of what we believe and how we live together, but tradition can also be a verb and I use it thus this morning. We are called to tradition - our children and grandchildren and ourselves. The process of traditioning is the way we are shaped and formed according to the will of God and after the image of Jesus Christ. We noted last week that the Psalmist of Psalm 78 said, “I will tell a story with a meaning,” and then he went on to say that God had commanded that these things not be hid from the children but that the children be instructed in the ways of God. The mighty acts of God in the midst of Israel’s history were related in order that the children, the generation as yet unborn, might come to set their hope in God. The Christian community, like Israel, lives by continuing to tell the story. In our encounter with the word of God and our experience of life we are being shaped and formed. And that spiritual formation of our lives is what we are about in our worship. I want to say to you this morning that worship, I believe, is the primary medium for traditioning the people of God. Now I wouldn’t have always said that. I am only somewhat recently coming to appreciate that. I am growing presently in my sense of the importance of worship as a means of traditioning. That’s new for me. I am a child of the Reformation. I was raised in the Reformed tradition. The Reformed tradition has been characterized by the clear articulation of the word of preaching. Oh, to be sure, John Calvin spoke of word and sacrament, but we have © Grand Valley State University �Worship: Medium of Traditioning Richard A. Rhem Page 4   been Word, Word, Word. Even our worship has not been worship, but has been word - the sermon dominating. Word necessarily addresses the mind. So our faith has had an intellectual bent. We have had a reasonable faith, and we have prided ourselves on the thoughtfulness of our tradition. I want to say to you this morning that, while I would not take away from the importance of understanding and of clear thinking about faith, I want to say, that we’ve been wrong in our emphasis. In the way we have shaped our worship, in the way we have nurtured our children, we have been wrong. We looked to Sunday School classes to pass on the faith. But you can’t teach God. For the adults the worship service itself was primarily didactic. Experience of worship is the key to faith. I am pleased that we as a community are growing, I believe, in a deepening sense of the tapestry of worship. The movement of worship, where color, pageantry, dance, song, prayer is woven around the spoken word and create an experience that is more than simply an intellectual exercise. I think it has always been that to some extent, in spite of ourselves, but we have not always had that centrally in focus or clearly understood. I am only stumbling and stammering in my attempt to grasp after it, but what I would hope in our corporate worship together is that, if you would go out after the service and someone would meet you and they would ask, “What happened?” And if you were able to put into a sentence the sermon theme – (how anyone could put into a sentence a sermon theme after I am done I don’t know) (Laughter)– then I would hope that you would stop and you would say, “But there was something more. I don’t know how to tell you.” There is a book by a philosopher entitled Surplus of Meaning. I like that phrase a Surplus of Meaning. I would hope that on a given Sunday you could get some insight and some enlightenment that was helpful to you, that you could articulate, but then also be aware that there was some Surplus of Meaning, something beyond that you can’t put your finger on, that you simply can’t bring to expression. I would hope in your worship experience that something happened, some encounter with the Mystery of God that is Grace. And who knows from which angle it may come if you would learn - I hope we are learning to worship, to come in with our minds and hearts, our whole being open, expectant, prayerful, waiting. Then maybe a liturgical formula, maybe the sound of water at the baptismal font, maybe the rose or the candle, or a song or an anthem, or maybe just the rumble of the organ would touch you down in your depths. You see, God cannot be comprehended. God must be apprehended. Not by my mind thinking, but by my being receiving - intuitively, through my imagination, through feeling - who knows? Now here, now there. This one or that one, but something that is operative beyond that which we can nail down, some surplus of meaning beyond the rational understanding of every prayer and every hymn, and even the sermon itself, beyond a comprehension of the meanings of a biblical text © Grand Valley State University �Worship: Medium of Traditioning Richard A. Rhem Page 5   - something more. That something more is what seeps into our depths and forms and shapes us more than ideas, I think. You know if you go out of here on a Sunday morning with a new idea count yourself lucky and double your offering. (Laughter) But that’s not really what it is all about. What it is all about is to be touched in the depths by the God who can only be known in the depths. I was moved as I viewed a video that I used in the Wednesday night class. The videos are videos of Christian and Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism. In the first half of the course on Wednesday night I showed the videos of the Polish and the Czechoslovakian churches. The films dealt with the suffering that these people endured in the communist era, forty years of an intentional attempt to stamp out religion. And then the falling away of the walls and melting of the curtain, followed by the coming again of openness and freedom of people to worship. I was moved as I saw that and as I saw the faces of the old women with their babushkas who had kept faith alive in their hearts. But what struck me, you know – it was the Catholic Church that did a better job than the Protestant Church in remaining faithful in Poland. In Czechoslovakia there were faithful Reformed pastors there, but there were unfaithful ones too. There were collaborators there. And the strength that was able to sustain the fire was the church that was imbued in ritual, sacrament and experience! Ideas will not keep you true! Our rational faith can be abated. If it’s only this deep it will not stand you in the flood. It is what has seeped down here that enables one to be faithful. That’s the traditioning of worship where, beyond doctrinal definitions, I have been gripped, grasped by Grace in my depths, and that comes in worship, in this time together where a gesture, a word, a visual translate, through repetition week in and week out, that which is shaping us even without us consciously thinking about it. I am so glad when we bring our children in here; we bring them in here so they can worship with us. There are surveys about congregations where children never came in the sanctuary. Then they grew up and never came in the sanctuary either because they had never been exposed to the awe and mystery of God. So we bring them in and next week we will come to receive the bread and the cup, and they will be with us - our children and our grandchildren. Because, you see, what you teach them is important. But that won’t do it. Bring them with you. Let them feel the fervor of your faith as you sing your heart out. Let them sense the humility of your heart as you kneel. Let them feel the fire of your faith as you pray. Let the tremor of your body somehow or other be communicated to that child – something that words could never, never express or bring to fruition. You want your children to trust? Bring them to worship. © Grand Valley State University � 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 XVI Scripture Text Psalm 137:4, I Corinthians 11:26 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-0-19920927 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-09-27 Title A name given to the resource Worship: The Medium of Traditioning Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 27, 1992 entitled "Worship: The Medium of Traditioning", on the occasion of Pentecost XVI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 137:4, I Corinthians 11:26. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Nature of Scripture History of Israel Ritual Traditioning Worship https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ca4aefcf978a1672a77c9a56d34d3172.mp3 193b754dea9ae232be2c4ebef8d57e38 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a08e728c9a3a7c7c52846f80d75597f3.pdf fa0483f0fd753c11e9fef7dc23cf0b20 PDF Text Text One Church, One World – Always in Transition World Wide Communion Text: Jeremiah 1:9-10; Acts 5:39 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XVII, October 4, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon ...I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. Jeremiah 1:910 ...if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God! Acts 5:39 Time Magazine comes to my rescue again. This is a special issue, fall of 1992 – “Beyond the Year 2000 - What to Expect in the New Millennium.” It is a very interesting issue, which deals with some futuring prognostication of where things will be in century 21. It reminds us that we are in the stream of history. Our lives are enmeshed in history, and there is no way we can extricate ourselves from it. We are moving toward century 21 - one day at a time. And, as that hinge point of history comes about, we will celebrate not only the entrance of a new year and a new decade, but a new century and a new millennium. We are in the tide of history and we will move with it - whether we wish to or not. I remember a couple of decades ago a popular song that expresses our human resistance to the inevitability of change and movement. The words went something like this: Make the world go away. Take it off my shoulders. Say the things you used to say, and make the world go away.” We imagine that the Golden Age is behind us. We delude ourselves with the thought that in a former day things were neater, finer, manageable, somehow together. In the midst of the ambiguity and the chaos of our present existence, we long for someone to make the “world go away.” For someone to “say the things they used to say.” But to no avail, for we move in history - whether we wish to or not. And how does one keep one’s balance? How does one keep a sense of who one is? And to whom one belongs? And what one is called to be and to do? In this inexorable movement of history, open-ended toward the future, how do you find your way? Well, let me suggest that, because we are enmeshed in history, we must be immersed in ritual. I have been hammering away at that - the sacramental © Grand Valley State University   �One Church, One World, in Transition Richard A. Rhem Page 2   character of the church. Last week I said that it is the experience of worship that is the medium of traditioning. And don't you think I was excited to have my prejudices confirmed when I read the article entitled “Kingdoms to Come,” by Richard Osling? He is the Religious Editor of Time who prognosticates about the future of religion 100 years hence. Of course, he is imagining, making a guess how it will be. And we will probably not be around in order to see whether he was right. But listen to this paragraph: Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy with their emphasis on ritual are well suited to a world in which few people bother to read. Theology is a dying art. School children are ignorant of the Bible and hence the rest of their spiritual heritage. The Post Literate Era has been especially difficult for Protestantism which depended so heavily on rationalism and reading. Although old style Protestants are shrinking in numbers, they retain outsized influence because so many of them remain book readers and are thus, inevitably, leaders of the economic ruling class on all continents. He is saying what I said last week that – in the case of the Roman Catholic Church under oppression in Eastern Europe - it was that implicit faith, it was that spiritual formation at the core of a person that only comes through immersion in ritual, in the worship that becomes mindless because it is so much a part of our depths. It is that that enables us to maintain the tradition and to keep the tradition alive. Now, I will qualify to say that I am not going to stop thinking or reading or preaching. I don't think one has to do one or the other. I will acknowledge also that ritual can become mindless in the sense of empty, thoughtless, meaningless, and that it can be a manipulative tool. But I will come back to my thesis that I have been sharing with you more and more over the last year or two, and especially in the last months, that it is the sacramental character of the Church ritual – that acts out what we believe, that will allow us, in the midst of the rush of history's inexorable movement, a sense of identity. It can enable us to know who we are and give us a vehicle by which to tradition the rising generation in their enmeshment in history. We need the immersion in ritual in order to continue to be who we are. Now I will also say that the only way that it is possible, in the stream of history, to remain the same is to continue to change. To do the same things, we must do things differently. The thing I love about this congregation is the openness to make those changes as time moves and as history unfolds. In order to do the same thing, a willingness to do things differently. There is more on the fork of this congregation this morning than most churches could handle in a decade. In a few moments we will ordain our Eucharistic celebrants, a new class that has been called and trained and equipped to share the sacrament with you. I can remember the day that the idea dawned on us (not knowing at the time that there were other traditions that had been doing it for a long time!). Colette and I were © Grand Valley State University �One Church, One World, in Transition Richard A. Rhem Page 3   talking about the children. We so wanted them to be receptive to the tradition of weekly Eucharist. Yet the 8:30 a.m. service wasn't really doing it. Parents didn't often attend that service with their children. There was a realization that if it was really going to happen for them it needed to happen in their Worship Centers. In order for that to happen, their teachers would need to be prepared. And suddenly the idea just dawned in a moment of insight. Intuitively we knew that it was right. The consistory approved it and we have tested it for a year. Now they have given us unanimous approval to continue. So again this morning we will ordain a new group of people whose life will be in a special way committed to the sacraments of the church. And as the eucharist liturgy is experienced this morning, the children remain here, in order that they may connect what we do here with what they do in their Worship Centers weekly, in order that when they come to their own years of discretion and adulthood and responsibility, they will have been exposed there and here, to the power and meaning of sacrament in the midst of worship. Traditioning them in the context of worship where the heart, the being, is open to all and to the wonder of God. Not a rational, intellectual, pedagogical, didactic attack on them week after week, but the invitation to come and to worship. To hear the story, yes, but to hear the story in a way that brings it into their present experience - moves them at their deepest level. If you want one more reason to congratulate yourselves on a morning like this where we do these innovative things, come at 11:30 when a new form of governance will be suggested to you. In order that this large and dynamic institution may continue to do the same things it has always done, it is going to have to do things differently. It is always incumbent upon us to move with history's flow and in order to do the same thing we must keep on changing. We hate it. Often we resist it. There is something in us which would love to have all the loose ends tied up. The Word of God has always been addressed to those who would absolutize that which is only relative. To make absolute something which is only temporary is to fall into idolatry. The prophets had always to come to Israel. God said to Jeremiah, “Speak to my people.” Jeremiah said, “Not me.” God said, “Yes, you. I touch your lips. Now go and uproot, pull down, destroy.” The Word of God destroy? The Word of God uprooting? The Word of God pulling down? Yes. Pulling down our idols. Shattering our systems, our comfortable ways of being and doing. The Word of God always comes as a word of judgment in order that grace may come. In order that that word may also plant and build. A classic instance of how God's people always block themselves against the newness of God's spirit is the fact that the Jewish authorities rejected the Messiah and crucified the Lord of Glory. Oh I wish there had been enough Gamaliel's around. In the wake of the resurrection Jerusalem was being turned upside down. With apostolic witness, Gamaliel said to the Sanhedrin, “Look, why are you so overwrought? Why do you © Grand Valley State University �One Church, One World, in Transition Richard A. Rhem Page 4   feel so self-important that the whole world is somehow or other in your hands? Remember Thadeus? Well he was quite a number, but he didn't last long. Do you remember Judas, the Galilean? He had a thing going but it came to nothing.” Gamaliel said, “My friends, if this thing is of human origin it will fail, but if it is of God, you'll not be able to overthrow it. And you might even find yourself fighting God.” Oh, that there might have been more Gamaliel's in the history of the Church when the Church fell into idolatry, making absolute what is only relative, wanting something to be eternal which was only for a certain time. Oh that the wisdom of Gamaliel might prevail in the Church as it negotiates the future and moves toward century 21. There is a way that we can remain faithful and solid and certain in the midst of all the uncertainty. But it is not the risky word of the preacher. It is bread and cup, and water and oil: concrete vehicles of Grace that will allow us to negotiate uncharted waters, to take on any storm, to face any confusion, and to be able to say, “Nevertheless, this bread and this cup speak to me of God's forever neverending love.” These sacraments nurture deep within us a fundamental trust, an implicit trust - in God, in God's Grace, in God's presence with us, in God's Spirit, shattering our forms and renewing our lives: bread, cup, water, oil: sacramental signs which point to God's foundational love deep down in things. So that we can know, come what may, that all will be well - and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Trust God. Eat. Drink. Trust. All will be well. © Grand Valley State University � 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 XVII Series Worldwide Communion Scripture Text Jeremiah 1:9-10, Acts 5: 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-0-19921004 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-10-04 Title A name given to the resource One Church, One World - Always in Transition Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 4, 1992 entitled "One Church, One World - Always in Transition", as part of the series "Worldwide Communion", on the occasion of Pentecost XVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 1:9-10, Acts 5: 39. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives All Will Be Well Church Ritual Sacrament Tradition https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b6269ecc664974c50d2abaf7cc23a27e.mp3 b119a4613912656fdae13b856a82bfa2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f8085d700866fa31f7980a7eca4d2f08.pdf eb9a722239ab5c3e869f7a036bc60609 PDF Text Text God Loves People: To Be Human is Enough Text: Psalm 103:14; Romans 5:8 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XVIII, October 11, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon For God knows how we were made; God remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:14 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ dies for us. Romans 5:8 “God Loves People: To Be Human is Enough,” but it has been rather difficult for the Church to be honest with that fact because the Church is also looked to as kind of the ethical guru of society, the conservative glue to hold things together, and to keep things on the straight and narrow and to address that which is wrong with people and society. So I think there has been a tension within the Church and the preaching in its message, afraid that if it was too warm an embrace of the sinner that it might appear to be condoning of such behavior and, therefore, there is this distancing and this body language that causes the Church to withdraw just a bit. In the Church we have sort of kept that illusion alive that there are some good folk, and some not quite so good. The Church tends to become a society of the righteous because we do want to keep up our public image, particularly at church. And so we keep the vestments on or the mask intact, or the facade up so that it never really comes to full expression and public demonstration. But if you scratch us, I think you will find we are all pretty much the same. So there has been a tension, I think, in the open embrace of the persons who have fallen flat on their faces and gotten muddied and tarnished in the process of living. But, as a matter of fact, to the extent that we do withdraw or withhold, or keep at arms length any person in any condition, we are going contrary to the biblical message. The biblical message is very clear “That God loves People, and to be Human is Enough.” To be human is to be a person filled with anxiety and torn with tension. That’s simply endemic to our human situation. I love Psalm 103, verses 13 and 14, the expression of the Grace of God that grants us forgiveness, and the affirmation of the compassion of God that understands us thoroughly and loves us anyway. © Grand Valley State University   �God Loves People: To Be Human is Enough Richard A. Rhem Page 2   “God knows our frame. God remembers that we are dust. For God knows how we are formed. God remembers that we are clay.” The Psalmist, I suspect, is informed by that wonderful image in that second chapter of Genesis: the creator, the potter who scoops a handful of mud and shapes a human being and breathes into that human form the breath of life, creating a living soul. In the biblical account of creation, in the Hebrew understanding of the human person, we are linked to the earth. We are a part of this created order. We are of the earth earthy. We speak of ourselves sometimes as “earthlings.” That play on words conveys a truth. At a funeral yesterday at the committal I said, “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” In the face of the reality of death, there is our recognition that we are not only shaped of the elements, the primal elements, that are a part of the cosmos, but we ourselves are finally dissolved again into those elements. We are of the earth. Sometimes putting ourselves down, we say we feel “cloddy.” Or looking judgmentally at another we may say, “Oh, he’s a clod, or she’s a clod.” Well, there is a bit of reality in that, for we are clods. But that is not all we are. Berkhof, in The Christian Faith, says there is a gravitational pull on us because, though we are a part of the earth, there is also that beckoning call from above. So, we are creatures who live in two worlds. We are part of the earth and part of that spiritual reality of God and the call of God to be in communion with God’s spirit. Harold Ellens in an article a few years ago in Perspectives pictured the human person as full of anxiety, which he identifies not as a consequence of our sin, but as a consequence of being human. He calls it “a generic anxiety.” It is not something that we have encumbered ourselves with because of concrete behavior, but something that simply dwells in us because we are human. He pictures vividly the fetus coming to maturity in the fullness of time, bumping and splashing down the birth canal, being brought into an alien environment, scared to death. And that, he says, characterizes us not only at the moment of our birth but throughout all our lives. We are more often scared to death than we are gargantuan villains of revolt and rebellion. We are not very heroic sinners, really. I suppose that’s why God’s first reaction to us is one of compassion. I think that an honest biblical understanding of the human person should enable us to do what Dr. Kurtz said a moment ago, to listen more sensitively and to speak more compassionately. It should enable us to be compassionate with people, and to be compassionate with one’s self. It’s not easy to be human. To be human is to have a generic anxiety - a given with one’s humanity. There is a fragility - a vulnerability in being human. There is the limited nature of our human existence, the fact that we are always called to make judgments and make decisions on the basis of limited knowledge and insight. We have to decide about things for which we don’t have sufficient data. And we are unable to extricate ourselves for a moment from this human scene in order that we might get a perspective on it. There are those who claim to see things as God sees them, but I’ve never been sure they are right. Our judgments are always human. We are always limited. We live a fragile existence. And finally, we die. © Grand Valley State University �God Loves People: To Be Human is Enough Richard A. Rhem Page 3   There is an inherent anxiety in being human. And I suspect that’s why God has mercy on us. The Psalmist says God never forgets that fact. After all, we are created by God and God doesn’t forget the “stuff” with which he (or she) is working. That’s good news. That ought to give us some encouragement for ourselves and some compassion one for another. Paul writes in the fifth chapter of Romans, in this context, where he speaks about the demonstration of God’s love being precisely in the fact that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In that context, Paul describes us with two different words. One is he speaks of us as being weak or impotent. It was while we were in our weakness and our impotence that the initiative of God was taken to come with redeeming grace. Weakness. Impotence. And then a little later he speaks of our hostility or enmity with God. And those two words characterize our human situation very well. Impotence and hostility. Have you ever known a hostile person? You say you are married to one. (Laughter) Or maybe for a brief stint an adolescent growing up in your home manifests a bit of hostility. I sure hope you don’t work for one. Hostile people are not easy to live with. Hostile people are dealing with some stuff that they may be aware of or they may be unaware of. The most dangerous ones are those who have no self-awareness at all - who don’t realize the pot or the cauldron that boils deep in their gut. But it manifests itself in hostility. And you know the great generator of hostility - impotence, occurs when we feel powerless. It makes us angry. We become hostile. We strike out. Paul says that is a portrait of a sinner. No great, dramatic, tragic villain here, just a powerless, hostile person. Paul says for such persons Christ died. To such people God comes with grace and in compassion provides the healing that empowers and reconciles. In his book, The Spirituality of Imperfection, (If I get it in ten times in this sermon, I get 10% on all copies sold in the next six months.) (Laughter) Dr. Kurtz makes a very significant distinction - a distinction between spirituality and therapy. The end of therapy is explanation. The end of spirituality is forgiveness. We need both. We need explanation. We’ve been short on explanation in the Church. I ream you out for all of your fallibilities, failures, fickleness, faithlessness and what have you, and then say “Repent or perish.” And, of course, you do neither. But you get your back up. Who likes to be addressed that way? The problem is that you don’t even understand what’s going on. We’ve been short on explanations. So we have driven a lot of faithful people out of the Church. People have said, “Something is going on, but I don’t understand it,” and they’ve found a couch somewhere and a psychiatrist. There, they find explanation. Explanation illumines, but by itself it doesn’t heal, because, when we have received all the light that is possible on the subject, what we still need to hear is, “You are forgiven.” Forgiveness is necessary for that for which there is no explanation and no excuse. We are anxious. We are scared to death. We feel our emptiness and we strike out in hostility. It is helpful to get a handle on why. It is healing to know that God in © Grand Valley State University �God Loves People: To Be Human is Enough Richard A. Rhem Page 4   grace forgives us. In fact, has forgiven us already. As “far as the east is from the west so far has God removed our transgressions from us….as high as the heaven is from the earth, so great is His mercy to those who stand in awe.” The Bible is replete with many such beautiful images. God, it says, has blotted out our sin. Like a thick cloud, God has cast it behind God’s back. God has buried it in the depths of the sea. The story was told of Jim who got to heaven one day and fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Oh, Lord Jesus, thank you, thank you for forgiving all my sin.” And Jesus looked at him and said, “What sin?” Now that’s good news. It is all because God loves people, and “To be Human is Enough.” And from what I know of you folks, you’re human, all too human. And God loves you! Reference: Ernest Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham. The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. Bantam, reprint edition, 1993. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Scripture Text Psalm 103:14, Romans 5:8 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Ernest Kurtz, The Spirituality of Imperfection, Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, 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-0-19921011 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-10-11 Title A name given to the resource God Loves People: To Be Human Is Enough Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 11, 1992 entitled "God Loves People: To Be Human Is Enough", on the occasion of Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:14, Romans 5:8. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Compassion Forgiveness Love of God Non-exclusive https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f507b0cfa1ae854fea576fc16e88a5cf.mp3 eb113abf8e118eb5f28b35087094bf5f https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d27d30490657ff2c35fad3e5fdadd494.pdf 2dedcab7843f92308542ca51a12ac7fa PDF Text Text Weaving Our Way Into God’s Story Text: Isaiah 55:11; Acts 11:17 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Pentecost XIX, October 18, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon ...so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:11 ...who was I that I could hinder God? Acts 11:17 The Old Testament text today is Isaiah 55. I don’t generally push you to get your Bibles out, but I might today suggest that it would be a good idea. I will give you a little Bible lesson at no extra cost. If you will open your pew Bible to page 650, you will be at Isaiah 55, I trust, if the bulletin is correct. And then if you would page back a few pages to find Isaiah 40. Biblical scholars believe that Isaiah 40 to 55 is written by a single prophet, not Isaiah of the 8th century, but a prophet who spoke to the people of Israel, the people of Judah, who were in exile in Babylon, having been taken there in 586 B.C. and this word, Isaiah 40 to 55, was addressed to those exiles in Babylon, probably sometime after 550 B.C. To a people who had lost their faith. To a people who had given up on God. To a people who were full of despair. Just ordinary people like us. They figured that their future was behind them and heard that Babylon’s gods must be supreme because the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David had allowed them to be overcome. They were strangers in a foreign land, a captive people. They simply had lost their faith. It is always to a concrete context, always to a particular people, that the Word of God is addressed. Sometimes we speak about the Bible as being the Word of God, but the Bible isn’t the Word of God. The Bible is a record of the Word of God that once has been heard, and that is heard again and again as the Holy Spirit moves upon the sacred page. But this isn’t the Word of God. We would love to have this be the Word of God, because then we could get it all between the covers of this book and we could master it. We could master the Word of God. But that is not the Word of God. It is a record of how the Word of God in the past has come to expression, around those originating events of our tradition - Israel and Jesus. And that’s all it is. © Grand Valley State University   �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Yet the Word of God is always God’s word addressed to concrete people in their contemporary situation. It is a word of grace, or a word of judgment, but it is always God’s word here and now. This little section of prophecy in Isaiah 40 to 55 is a beautiful example of it. You will recognize how chapter 40 begins, from Handel’s Messiah. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to . . . etc.” And then in the 6th verse, “A voice says, ‘Cry, and the prophet says, “What shall I cry?” And what he is really saying is, “What’s the use of crying? What’s the use of speaking? All flesh is grass. All human flesh is transient, passive, fading. Why should I cry? The grass withers, the flower fades, the breath of the Lord blows upon it. The people are grass. What is there in this call now to cry? Why should I cry?” Well, says verse 8, that’s right. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. So, now, get back into the cities of Judah and say, “Behold your God. Lift up your hearts. Raise your voice in the midst of that people and tell them that I’m not through. I’m not finished. There’s still something going to happen in the future, and it’s going to be a word of salvation.” It ends beautifully in the 40th chapter, verse 28: “Have you not known, have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the earth, he doth not faint or grow weary, and his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” So you see, this is the Word of God addressed to this people in their situation and they are called to hope. Fear not. Hope in God. Watch. Something is going to happen. I’m not through yet. And then the 55th chapter is the concluding part of this writing, which has many beautiful passages in it. If we start at the 6th verse: “Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous one his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have mercy on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seeds to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” This is the word of the Lord. © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 3   And the New Testament lesson from the Book of Acts, the 11th chapter, is Peter’s summary of what he had just been doing because he had had a vision and was sent by this vision to the house of Cornelius, the Roman leader, where he had told the story of Jesus and saw the Holy Spirit fall upon them. Now, of course, for Peter, a Jew, to go to the house of a Gentile was forbidden. And, of course, the Church then being good Jewish people, they criticized him and so he had to give account of himself, and the 11th chapter is Peter relating his experience. “Now the apostles and the brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the Word of God, so when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ And Peter began to explain to them, I was in the city of Joppa praying and in a trance I saw a vision, something descending, like a great sheet let down from heaven by four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles, and birds of the air, and I heard a voice saying to me, “Rise Peter, kill and eat.” But I said, “No, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But the voice answered a second time from heaven, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” This happened three times and all was drawn up again into heaven. At that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea, and the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brethren also accompanied me and we entered the man’s house, and he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.” As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning and I remembered the word of the Lord how he said: “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard this they were silent and they glorified God saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.” This is the word of the Lord. I suppose it’s the campaign, the political campaign, the election coming and all the issues that are constantly before us, and we are bombarded by the media from every angle, but I sense there is a lot of unrest and dis-ease, restlessness and lack of clarity in the minds of many people. Such ambiguity out there. Maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I don’t remember any more former elections, but I don’t ever remember a time when so many people were so dissatisfied with their favorite candidate - and when it seems that so many people are going to vote for the least unliked person. However that may be, all of the issues are before us and it seems as though we are in a time of social upheaval and chaos. There is just a lot of unrest in the body politic. © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 4   But really that isn’t so unusual. All historical times are messy, full of ambiguity. We only dream of the Golden Age and the Good Old Days and the past; they never did exist really. We are simply in the midst of times that are changing. That is always the rule, because history is an ongoing movement, this ongoing tide. We would love to be able to stop the process somehow or other. We would love to be able to have some absolutes in the midst of all the relativities. We would love to have a place to stand in the midst of shifting ground. There is that lust for certitude in our hearts - that longing for something that is more stable and something that is certain. But it’s really never that way. It never has been that way. The thing that has always tried to dislodge God’s people from that place to stand is the Word of God. The Word of God is always a word that would unshackle and set free and propel, and energize and move God’s people in accord with the purposes of God. And it seems to me that as the people of God, one of the wonderful assurances that we could have is that our life has meaning and purpose, and that our life is being woven into a tapestry that God is weaving. Well, do you believe that? Do you really believe that? Is there the uncanny that laced into our lives that we cannot explain, but in which we trust? Is there a purpose and a meaning that infiltrates history? Is there an invisible hand? Not Adam Smith’s invisible hand that drives the market, but is there an invisible presence powerful and purposeful that impacts the movement of things, that engages our willing and deciding and planning and strategizing? Is there more than meets the eye in the ongoing movement of human history? Is God “a Weaver of a tapestry vivid and warm...?” Is God able because God is a “Spinner of Chaos...” to effect God’s purposes - ultimately? That really is the question. Do you live with that kind of fundamental trust - or aren’t you so sure? Are things just up for grabs; is it chance? Is all human ingenuity and human willing? Or is there woven in and through it all the eternal God? Well, the prophet believed in the Word of God to effect history. In Hebrew it is interesting that the term for word and deed is the same word, because the Hebrew conception of God speaking of God’s word was God effecting that word. A word was not an empty word. A word was an action word. A word was the Word of God effecting the purpose of God, and so the Hebrews have given us the prophets and that dynamic sense of history moving toward its goal. Not the old cyclic eternal return, but this ongoing movement. That’s an Old Testament conception. The prophet as the spokesperson for God was the effector of those purposes. The prophet spoke to the people of God, a word from God. And that word in this case, as we saw in Isaiah 40 to 55, was a word of comfort. It was a word that said to a people in despair, “Fear not.” The people of hopelessness wait on the Lord. And that word is full of hopeful expectation. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and say to the cities of Judah, “Your God is abroad. Lift up your voice. Cry out a word of salvation.” © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 5   This word the prophet says will be effected – it’s going to happen. Oh, you can’t get a neat blueprint of it. You can’t nail it down and be so certain it is just this way or that way, because “my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” God never becomes simply accessible to our human conjure. We can never get it all clear. I smile at those who claim that there is absolute truth. Well sure there is absolute truth - but we don’t have it. We only have an approximation, a relative grasp of that which is beyond us. And we are always groping, always feeling our way, because we can only know within the rootedness of our lives in that movement of history. Sometimes, when you hear preachers talk, you would think that somehow or other they were able to get out of the stream of history and look down and see the whole picture. Not so. The Word of God comes to us and that word is released. God’s spirit breathing through that word continues to effect God’s purposes. That’s why the Reformation insight was that there was the word in the flesh of Jesus and the Word of God written, and the word preached. The preaching of the word was presumptuous. And yet right at the heart of our Reformation tradition was the belief that the Word of God preached becomes again the Word of God because it addresses concrete people in a concrete situation with a word – a word of judgment or a word of grace. So in the Old Testament in the experience of Judah there came this voice, in spite of the fact that the people were despairing, this voice speaking into that transient ambiguous human situation encouraging people to be not afraid - to trust in God. The Word of God is always calling people to trust God, not to know everything that God is doing, but just to trust God. Fundamentally to trust God, to trust that there is that invisible hand - that there is that intangible person - that there is something more than meets the eye that’s going on. But the Word of God is always a word addressed to God’s people trying to get them moving and setting them free and finding their lives caught up in this grander purpose of God. So what happens to Peter living in the wake of that time when God’s people shut down, rejected the “word made flesh,” the one whom God raised up. In the experience of that early church we see that once again that word coming, and nudging and pushing and shoving. Peter says, “Not so, Lord.” The word comes and says, “Yes, Peter.” And so Peter goes to the house of Cornelius and he says, “You know I shouldn’t be here. I am not supposed to associate with you folks. That’s what my religious tradition and my religious training has taught me, but now I am being pushed to do what breaks and shatters my neat little system of ideas.” And so there he is in Cornelius’ house and what does he do? He gives the word. He tells the story - he tells the story of Jesus. And it becomes in the telling the instrument of revelation and insight, and the Spirit of God falls on these people. So Peter goes back and they say, “What in the world are you doing traipsing with Gentiles?” And Peter says, “What in the world was I supposed to do? Here’s my story . . .” And he just throws up his hands and says, “How could I hinder God?” © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 6   I submit to you, dear friends, that it is not the world that hinders God; it is the Church that hinders God. The Word of God has problems with the people of God because the people of God always want to shut down - always just love to have it right here. It’s not right here; it’s beyond us. It’s in things we haven’t yet dreamed of. It is the word that keeps coming to us here, and wherever, because God is always calling us to find our lives being woven into a larger pattern and a grander design in the tapestry God is weaving. We in our Reformation tradition have found our center back in the 16th century, but if you read the somewhat recent biography by William Bowsma, you find that the 16th century was a period of social chaos and unrest, probably not so different than our own period. It was a period when the Renaissance had permeated the European scene, and the Reformation was afoot and it was leading to the Age of Reason. And all of the old forms and all of the old structures were being challenged and were falling away. All kinds of new configurations were developing and our saint, John Calvin, was a man whom Bowsma says was characterized by anxiety. But some reviewer in the New York Times says that, according to the way Bowsma describes it, it wasn’t simply anxiety; it was angst, the pain of the world. John Calvin was a man torn. There were two vivid images that shaped his life: one was the abyss. He was terrified of the abyss - a kind of a free-fall without structure or order. And on the other hand the horror of the labyrinth, being entrapped in all kinds of tunnels and channels and structures. John Calvin was a man who throughout his days was filled with anxiety, with angst, with the pain of existence. He was a great Christian leader, but . . . for us today to imagine that the 16th century was some kind of century of pristine clarity and subtle truth is simply to deny reality. And for us today to think that the answer is for us to somehow or other hark back to that - to reassert it, to reaffirm it, to renew it, to revive it, to cling to old structures and old forms, to buttress them and to shore them up and to buoy them up - is to fail to see that we are God’s people today and the Word of God addresses us today for tomorrow! We’ve always got a choice. It is either to hark back, to shut down, or to trust God and open up. And it is the call of the Word of God for us to be shapers of the future, not the guardians of the past. In gratitude for what has been, it is our task to address the Word of God to shape what will be. We are at one of those interesting points in history - one of those hinge points in history. The Renaissance is past, and the Reformation is past, and the Enlightenment is past. The Modern Age has come to an end. We are in the Postmodern period and its configuration is not yet at all clear, but we are at a time when there is a shifting and a sifting. The word today is paradigm. Everybody’s looking for a new paradigm. And at such times there is a lot of fear abroad and there is a kind of desperate attempt to hunker down and hold on. © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 7   The fundamentals of the word that some of us are looking at on Wednesday nights are indications of that social dis-ease with the chaos and the attempt to get hold of something that is tangible and something that can be grasped, and some place to stand. You can’t stand. You’ve got to move. The good news is that you don’t have to be afraid, for the Word of God is always out ahead of us, and out of the chaos God is able to create beauty. Remember the image of Brian Wren in the hymns that we have sung here “Spinner of Chaos, pulling and twisting, freeing the fibres of pattern and form, Weaver of stories, famed or unspoken, tangled or broken, shaping a tapestry vivid and warm.” Have you not heard? Have you not seen? The Everlasting God is not weary, nor is there any lack of his strength. The Creator of the ends of the earth neither slumbers nor sleeps. God is not dead, and God’s finest word was not yesterday, but tomorrow – and today . . . today. So it’s not all settled. So it’s ragged around the edges. Do you trust God - or not? Are you able to flow with it because you trust God? Or have you no faith? Do you want it nailed down - i’s dotted, t’s crossed? The last word spoken back there? Not so. God’s people are always faced with a choice - to trust God today for tomorrow on the basis of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in the past. But it’s always before us, dear friends. And the Word of God is always “Don’t be afraid.” The best is yet to be - through ups and downs, through valleys and mountains, darkness and light, but God will not abandon us. My friend, Ernie Campbell, in his recent newsletter talks about the urge to shrink the world. And he says, “As I listen to others who speak for God professionally and I listen to the murmurings of my own heart, I am forced to conclude that many of us live with a kind of chronic sense of being overwhelmed.” Can you identify with that? A chronic sense of being overwhelmed - more questions are being raised than we can answer. Old reasoning doesn’t fit. Someone in the night moved all the landmarks. Right? Ministers in their 50s and 60s longing to retire, (Not this one, thank God, but I’ve got a lot of colleagues that can’t wait to get out. That’s too bad.) Couples, so happy that their child raising days are over. Too bad. Can’t God nurture tomorrow’s children? Is God unequal to the future? Fingers pointing in all different directions to the cause of malaise. Ernie pictures a castle turret and people going up with binoculars and one looks out in this direction and says, “The problem with our world is theological; they’re taking our © Grand Valley State University �Weaving Our Way into God’s Story Richard A. Rhem Page 8   God away.” Another looks in another direction and says, “No, no it’s cultural; where have all the values gone?” Another looking this way is saying, “No, it’s economic; the world can’t support what we’ve been used to any more.” And a fourth one looks off in the other direction and says, “No, it’s the ongoing tide of history; what is one to do?” Well, that’s what Ernie asks, “What to do?” He suggests that there is that urge in us, probably all of us at one time or another just to shrink our world. Cut it down to size. To go back inside; the cloister calls. What we ought to do is cut back. Stay home. Build a colony of faith in this benighted world. Doesn’t that sound pious? And then he says that the churches that have gone back inside are faring better, it would seem, than the congregations that are still intent upon making a difference in the world. The world of claimed absolutes tends to be quiet and reassuring, but the charged atmosphere outside where people claw and scrape for a relatively better rather than an absolutely right will always be subject to division and hostility. Shrink your world. To God, yes. To scripture, yes. To prayer, yes. To family values, yes. To growth in grace, yes. Let the church be the church. Ernie says, “I have more respect for this position every day. I watch the Orthodox Jews in my neighborhood, marked by their peculiar dress, simply doing their thing. It’s tempting.” Withdraw. Shrink to size. Shut down. Now I’m just about ready to say, “Ernie, Ernie, don’t leave me there. You know you’re my last hope.” But then in the last paragraph he says, “And yet I cannot.” (Didn’t lose a hero this time.) He said, “I’ve come too far for that. I may be short of answers, but I believe that God’s purpose for the world does not collapse when I’m confused. All change is not decay. The old is shattered that the new may come to birth. I want to help make it happen. To shrink the world to God and myself in the garden alone, or to God and the company of like-minded people meeting with closed minds behind closed doors tortures my theology to an unbearable degree.” We belong outside the camp, with Him who had the whole world in his heart when he lived and when he died. Do we shrink the world to fit our faith? Or do we pray for a faith big enough to match the hour God has given us? I know not what others may choose, but for me there is only one choice because I trust in God - the Spinner of Chaos - who says, if hope will listen, love will show and tell and all shall be well. All things shall be well! © Grand Valley State University � 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 Scripture Text Isaiah 55:11, Acts 11:17 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921018 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-10-18 Title A name given to the resource Weaving Our Way Into God's Story Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 18, 1992 entitled "Weaving Our Way Into God's Story", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 55:11, Acts 11:17. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Divine Intention Prophetic Scripture Trust Word of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7575a27801010a5696a18b08f189edd1.mp3 3eab503fed2e7a35620a47b1370139ad https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d0d01b7c305b87b659fa8468e2b5ff73.pdf f6d175d210373acb5329f37a4bef5f41 PDF Text Text Tradition: Instrument of Continuity and Change From the series: Future Edge Text: Isaiah 43:18-19; Luke 2:34 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Reformation Sunday, Pentecost XX, October 25, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Cease to dwell on days gone by and to brood over past history. Here and now I will do a new thing; this moment it will break from the bud. Can you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:18-19 Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “This child is destined to be a sign which men reject; and you too shall be pierced to the heart.” Luke 2:34 I have a book with me - I always have a book, but someone went out of church a few weeks ago and said that the message had reminded them of this book. They said, “The book is really about business and corporations but there is a connection and I think you would be interested in it.” So I went out and got it as I always do - I’m always willing to chase down a new book. Sort of like Paul said to Timothy, “always learning and never arriving at the truth,” that’s me. But this book is called Future Edge, written by Joel Arthur Barker. It would be particularly good for some of you women and men who are involved in business and corporations, who are out there trying to make a profit and turn a buck. It’s a good book. It’s interesting. Its subtitle is Discovering New Paradigms For Success. Paradigms is a word that was connected with my sermon, because I often talk about paradigms, models, examples, ways of viewing things, setting up structures to visualize that which is invisible, and to deal with that which is intangible. Future Edge deals with paradigms for success. Thomas Khune wrote a book, The Construction of Scientific Revolution, some years ago, and that book chronicles the history of science. He showed that scientists are not these wonderful, marvelous, open-minded people that simply respond to every new piece of data, but, rather, scientists are just like theologians. They resist the truth, they close their minds to new data until they can’t do it any more and the data explodes in their faces. Then they design a new paradigm and then we have a new revolution. Khune caused quite a stir when he talked about the way science has gone bumping and jerking forward because the data finally compel the scientist to admit that the old model doesn’t work any more and that the new model can accommodate more data and move us forward. © Grand Valley State University   �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Hans Küng, the theologian, took that idea and applied it to the church. He recognized that in the history of the church there have been several paradigms the ancient church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Traditionalism, and then there was Protestant Orthodoxy. Then there was Protestant Liberalism. The difference between the church and scientific community was that, when the scientific data demand that there be movement, the old scientific paradigm has to give way and a new paradigm prevails. The church doesn’t have to do that. You just start another church. That’s how it is done. So you have one paradigm in this particular group and this group continues. And you have another paradigm and another group continues. You’ve got all these paradigms and all these groups. You don’t let the data bother you. When you are in the church you don’t let data bother you; it’s “don’t bother me with the facts, my mind’s already made up.” So all these paradigms can live next to each other in the church. But it’s different in the business world. Those of you who are out in the business world are not in the same endeavor as I am. For those of you who are out in the business world, you are not in a non-profit endeavor as I am. Do you know how you know whether you are in trouble? Very simple. The bottom line. You can’t stay in business very long if you are not making a profit. It’s just that simple. And that makes business people marvelously open-minded and flexible, and able to move with the moving cultural themes, with the demands of the times, with the spirit of the age. Business folk are always tuned in to today, always trying to be ahead because, after all, what they are about is making a buck. In order to prosper you have to be ahead of the game. You don’t have to do that in the church. In fact, there are people who moved out of the business world and got into the church or the public sector because in the church and the public sector, (government service, education,) you don’t have to make a profit. You don’t have to be productive or fruitful. If you are in government and it’s not working, you just raise the taxes. In government you are lucky enough to be able to enforce the tax, you see. So what you can do is you can be in debt. Future generations to the third and fourth generations of those who will come to hate us. Four trillion dollars or something. You can enforce the taxation and, as long as you can keep the money coming in, the debt escalates but it functions - it still looks alive. Now you can’t do that in business. That’s why in business people are always trying to understand where things are moving and what is happening. Someone else saw a paradigm and thought of me and gave me this seminar announcement, called Paradigm Shifting. People resist change. New ideas most often come from the fringe, the unexpected places. They are often rejected by the best-intentioned decision makers. The models we live by every day may be the very roadblocks that prevent our businesses from progressing and staying ahead of competition. Our models filter information, often preventing us from seeing opportunities vital to the creating or improving of products and services. What do we do when our models become counterproductive and must be altered? In © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 3   business you change because you’ve got to turn a profit or you are going to be out of business. In government you can add some more taxes. That’s what we have tried in churches too. The Reformed Church in America is raising the assessment every year because, when things aren’t working and people aren’t supporting spontaneously and don’t really have that feeling that this is really where things are, then you assess. What you don’t get voluntarily, you assess. The church gets in trouble with assessing. The trouble is, it is not as successful as the government at that because we can’t enforce that. I wish there were a way to enforce that, but I don’t know - we just have to depend on your voluntary good will. It’s a terrible way to live for me, but anyway - the church is somewhere between the government and business. In business you change “by cracky.” I mean you are not locked into anything forever if it’s not working. In the government you can keep going for a long time in a wrong path as long as you’ve got the enforcement to raise the revenue. The church is somewhere in between. We’ve got a special problem too. We have our structures and our forms, our liturgical forms and our doctrinal statements, etc. They are not simply something that arose at one time because they worked well or they said it well; they are identified in our minds with God and with truth. So that’s why in the church we perpetuate these forms even when they no longer are really doing it. We kind of cover it over with a cloak of piety, and, if it’s not working any more and people are dropping off or aren’t supporting, we tend to say that people are hard hearted or unspiritual, or they are not as good as they used to be, or they don’t care any more. That’s not true, of course. But it makes us feel good if our numbers are falling off, etc. I’m talking about the larger church now. Denominations are really in trouble. The Reformed Church in America is in trouble. We are trying desperately to find some way to shore up the structures. We try a little harder. We run a little faster. Of course that doesn’t work. You just get out of breath. But the Reformed Church in America is not unique. The denominations generally in this country are in trouble. The reason they are in trouble is that they are yesterday’s forms and structures that cannot do what needs to be done today. But in the church we don’t change very easily. We are not in business. If somehow we could find a way to change this whole religion business into a profit-making enterprise, we would be more ready to change. But here we don’t have to change because we can keep the thing going, appear to be living yet, while it is dead - deader than a “dodo.” Then suddenly one day we wake up and we call a conference, like the conference I am going to. I am going to leave here this afternoon and go to Boston to Brandeis University and there is going to be a conference of Protestants, Catholics and Jews at the Center For Modern Jewish Studies, and the subject is “Congregational Affiliation.” Now you know why you call a conference about Congregational Affiliation? It’s because people aren’t affiliating any more. If you are involved in the institution, you have a vested interest in the institution. You © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 4   may even think the institution is valuable. You call a conference and you say, “Let’s not talk theology - Protestants, Catholics and Jews - but let’s talk about synagogues and churches and cathedrals and why people aren’t affiliating like they once did.” We’ve got a problem, in other words. And so we are going to sit down and talk about it, and you only do that when you have a sense of foreboding, and you finally say, “Something isn’t working any more.” Now you know, we probably ought to be the people that are the first in the whole church to offer some word of counsel about openness to newness. We are the heirs of the 16th century Reformation of the Church, and the one insight in the 16th century that is eternally valuable is that insight that nothing is spoken as eternally true, or timeless. The Church in its forms and utterances, in its life, is caught up in history and must always be moving with history and, therefore, it needs constantly to be opening its eyes and cocking its ears to catch what the Spirit is saying to the Church in order that the Church may be tomorrow what it was yesterday. Now you’ve probably heard a lot of Reformation Day sermons in which the big point was that the Church rediscovered justification of faith through grace, or the centrality of the word of God, or the priesthood of all believers. I mean, you’ve probably already heard that in Protestant churches. You might have heard me preach it on occasion, as though, after the 16th century we discovered that. That’s ridiculous. That’s presumptuous. The Catholic Church had grace. The Catholic Church had the Word. It had a lot of other stuff too. But so do we. Eastern Orthodoxy had grace, and it had truth, and it had Christ, and it had sacrament. The 16th century was not the birth of the evangelical church in the sense of some pristine understanding of Christian truth for the first time. The 16th century was a time when the forms shattered and at least part of the Church recognized that what ought to always be true of the Church is that the Church is being re-formed according to the word of God and needs to be constantly being re-formed. That’s our central insight. That’s the thing that has shaped us and characterizes us at our heart. So we ought to be the Church that leads the pack in looking at the world and studying the word of God and seeking to determine what God is calling the Church today and tomorrow. Because we are an historical institution with a human dimension that is constantly moving and, like I said, if it were a matter of raising a buck or two I would take Joel Barker and we’d study “Paradigms for Success,” and we would make all the adjustments necessary in order to get the job done. But, we are not business. And we may not be able to live forever like the government because we can’t just raise the taxes. Sometime or other we are going to have to come face to face with that which is the very heart of our tradition: that we never arrive, but we need constantly to be in the process of being reshaped and reformed in order that we may be all that God would have us to be today and tomorrow, as we have given witness to God’s grace in the past. © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 5   This is our Reformation heritage. And I do believe that it is incumbent upon us, and maybe Christ Community Church to be a catalyst in the larger church to get the attention of the church to say, “We aren’t making it any more. We are losing money.” You know, Stemple may survive. Gehan is in trouble. Something is going to happen there. But in the church it takes a couple of hundred years to come to that awareness. Now, why don’t we get smart and get honest, and be true to our Reformation heritage and recognize that the church is in trouble because it is perpetuating anachronistic structure and giving yesterday’s answers to today’s questions? Well, there are a couple of temptations that we face as human beings who would be the people of God. There is the temptation to inordinate pride where we see the world as a human project and see this past as something that is dependent upon our ingenuity and our capacity, as though God was on vacation or had taken a furlough, or was some kind of blasé observer and spectator of the human scene and not engaged. There are those who would take the stance of aggressive activism, take the bull by the horns, and consequently they become bulls in china shops. As though anything that is going to happen in the Church today and tomorrow is dependent upon human ingenuity and planning and decision making. But there is an equally deadly peril on the other side. And that is kind of a passive resignation, as though one simply has to wait for God to move; as though perhaps, in 16th-century terminology, there is some kind of divine predestination where the whole thing is set anyway and we just sort of twiddle our thumbs and watch it happen without our involvement and our engagement, and the engagement of our minds and of our hearts, and our commitment. No. The Church of Jesus Christ, you and I, are called to be salt in the world and light to the world, to be a catalyst agent to galvanize the people, the larger populace, in the things that are really significant and eternally important. It is for us to hang loosely, knowing our past, but open to the future. It is for us to know our tradition in order that we may negotiate tomorrow. Tradition. The Christian tradition. Our tradition is an instrument for continuity and change. Now to be an instrument for continuity is obvious. For our tradition had shaped us and made us what we are. We know who we are because of where we come from: those who have shaped us - Reformed us - that stream that is issued in us today. So it is obvious that tradition is an instrument of continuity. It gives us rootage. It gives us a place to stand, a sense of identity. Terribly important. We must never play fast and loose with it. We must know it well. We must be steeped in it. But tradition also must be an instrument for change. I never understood that until a year ago, when Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar, and David Hartman, a rabbi, who was born in Brooklyn and now is in Jerusalem, had an all day interfaith dialogue in Muskegon. It was a wonderful interfaith dialogue. Krister Stendahl had just spent some time as a bishop of a Lutheran Church in Stockholm. He had been exposed to contemporary Swedish society, and that was so vivid in his experience. But he had relatives in Minnesota where all the © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 6   “Svedes,” except for Karl Lundgren lived. All the Swedes live in Minnesota. (Laughter) He said, “If you would go to Minnesota and you visit the “Svedes” in Minnesota, it’s like seeing them 100 years ago. He said I used to go visit my grandparents. It’s wonderful because you have all these old customs and they still survive, and they are passed along. It’s like a visit to yesterday. But he said, “If you want to know Swedish tradition in its living form, you don’t go to Minnesota. You go to Sweden.” I could have told him, you don’t have to tell me about the Swedes, I can tell you about the Hollanders. (Laughter) I live in a Dutch ghetto in Western Michigan, but I have lived four years in the Netherlands, and I’ll tell you, you wouldn’t know that the one came out of the other. But that is because an immigrant mentality moves out of its location and into another location and it sets in its heels. It builds high walls. It has certain things that it is fleeing, and certain things it wants to preserve, and so it becomes a very well set tradition and it holds on - it is true of Hollanders and Poles and Germans and Swedes, and whomever you want to call. It is a human characteristic. Tradition needs to be living so that it can lead us into the future. Stendahl says if you want an example of tradition as a museum piece, let me tell you about the boa constrictor. Some of you were here years ago when John Greller was our youth director. John Greller as youth director, in order to force discipline, used to keep a boa constrictor on the premises. It had a wonderful calming effect upon the children. (Laughter) A boa constrictor occasionally wiggles out of its skin. And there’s the skin. So Stendahl says, a sociologist grabs the skin and he examines the skin, the texture of the skin, he stuffs the skin, he puts it in a glass case and he says, “There’s a snake.” Stendahl says, “No, it’s not a snake. The snake has wriggled out of its skin and it’s off somewhere calming the children another day. It’s making its new tradition over here.” Now you go to Minnesota if you want to see a museum piece of Swedish tradition; you go to Stockholm if you want to see living Swedish life. (Speaking in accent) “I willa go to-a Minnesota.” I have heard so many people who went to the old country – as I grew up as a Dutch kid, Dutch people who went to the Netherlands – and came back shocked. They couldn’t get back to western Michigan fast enough. That Godless place. And it isn’t even clean any more, they say. But that’s where the Dutch tradition is. Not here. This is a museum piece. Sweden in Minnesota is a museum piece. Living tradition is always where the edge of the community is growing, where its life is moving. Now the Christian Church in large measure has made tradition a museum piece, and we have been in the business of guarding and preserving and perpetuating rather than seeing ourselves as a catalyst in society to move into the future, to help people learn fundamental trust in the God who created, the God of our faithful past who is equal to the future and beckons us because God always goes before us. God is always ahead of us while we are crouching in the bushes trying to protect ourselves. Living tradition is our connection with our past and © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Page 7   the means by which we can move into the future unafraid - with confident trust in the Eternal God. This Reformation Sunday, we acknowledge that the best insight of the 16th century was that the Church needs constantly to have its ear cocked and its eyes open to see where the Spirit of God is leading it - in the future. This afternoon I will fly to Boston and I will go to Brandeis University to the Center For Modern Jewish Studies and we will convene at 7:00 p.m. The young lady who is organizing the conference called a week ago and she said, “You know, we Jews aren’t too heavy on worship and prayer, and we never even thought about it but we got to thinking that maybe we should have some prayer together.” She said, “We are going to have a Catholic reflection on Tuesday morning, and a Torah service on Monday morning, and would you lead the Protestant worship on Sunday night?” I said, “Yes, I would.” And I thought, it’s Reformation Sunday, it’s to be a Protestant worship, there ought to be a word of God. I said, “Do you have any music?” She said, “No, we don’t have music.” I said, “Well, I’ll be forced to preach.” (Much laughter) So I am going to preach. You want to know what else? Do you have time to hear the sermon? Sure you have. I am going to suggest to this group gathered to study the matter of congregational affiliation – translation: the lack of affiliation – I am going to suggest that what we really need to do on this Reformation Sunday is for us to come from Geneva to go back to Rome. What might have happened if the religious establishment of the 16th century had been open to listen to Martin Luther, to hear what he had to say, to take seriously the critique rather than a defensive posture and cast him out? What might have happened? There might have been no Reformation, because it might not have been necessary. I am going to ask what might have happened if the religious establishment in the 10th century, when the Western Church excommunicated the Eastern Church, had been more concerned about the Gospel and true spirituality than playing power politics. That’s all that the split in the Eastern and the Western Church was about in the 10th century. It was pure, simple, raw power politics. It had nothing to do with truth. I am going to raise the question - What might it be like today if, when Mohammed had his visions in the 7th century and he went to the village 90 miles north of Mecca to plead with the Jewish community to hear him, what might have happened if the Jewish community, the established religious group at the time, had been open to hear his vision rather than cast him out? Out of which casting out arose Islam. And then, I am going to raise the question as to what might have happened if the 1st century Jew, Jesus the Nazarene, had been received as a spokesman of a deep spirituality in the Hebrew tradition rather than as one who was undercutting the tradition of the Hebrew people? Just think about it. What if we could go back from Geneva to Rome, to Constantinople to Mecca and to Jerusalem? I am going to suggest, very simply, this evening that we dismantle it all - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. That we dismantle it all - and start over again as children before one common God and Creator, Redeemer, who calls us to Shalom. © Grand Valley State University �Tradition: Instrument for Continuity and Change Richard A. Rhem Well, it’s a simple proposal isn’t it? (Laughter) © Grand Valley State University Page 8   � 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 Scripture Text Isaiah 43:18-19, Luke 2:34 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921025 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-10-25 Title A name given to the resource Future Edge - Tradition: Instrument of Continuity and Change Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 25, 1992 entitled "Future Edge - Tradition: Instrument of Continuity and Change", on the occasion of Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 43:18-19, Luke 2:34. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives History of the Church Re-imagining the Faith Reformation Tradition https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/29e719464bf5c67d68a27abb47888c1b.mp3 4e3bf42ab268c6297e0416e13e4af7af https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c4c9a98e969cfe5c9f9565c083a8d4fb.pdf fbcb3ac7a3d28454a2194ea5ef036ec1 PDF Text Text Somebody Has To Believe! From the series: Heroes in Clay: Moses Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan November 8, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? Exodus 3:11 Now faith is the assurance of things hopes for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 Two weeks ago, the last time that I was with you in this setting, I told you that I was leaving for Boston for Brandeis University, and for the think tank on Congregational Affiliation, which is funded by the Lilly Foundation and is centered at the Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis outside of Boston. I told you just briefly what I intended to say on Sunday night in the worship that I was to lead - the Protestant worship service for that mixed group of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. You were so very kind. You even applauded, and I left here feeling I hardly needed the airplane in order to fly there. It was a great encouragement to me and so many of you since I have returned have asked me about it that I feel I must take just a moment to let you know it was one of those experiences for which, having looked forward to it with great anticipation, all my expectations were met. So seldom that happens in life - you look forward to something and then it happens and we say, “Is that all there is?” But this was really a wonderful experience, full of stimulation, full of very wonderful people. There were about 50 of us and then a few presenters. The subject was Congregational Affiliation and, as I said a few weeks ago, the reason the study is being made is that many people in our culture are not affiliating with churches and synagogues, and so the purpose was to find out why, and to try to find ways in which to encourage people to return to the churches and to the synagogues. My Reformation Day message to them was a word in due season to the right crowd. I didn’t know who was going to be there and, had I known, I would have been scared to death, I think. There were a few denominational executives, many professors in sociological research in religion, and then there were a few gardenvariety practitioners like myself. But when I said to them at the conclusion of the message that we have met the enemy and it is us - it could not have been spoken more poignantly to a better crowd. My suggestion was that the big problem is all of our divisions, all of our structures and institutions that keep us separated and © Grand Valley State University   �Somebody Has To Believe! Richard A. Rhem Page 2   apart from one another. And so my message was a word of judgment at the purpose of the whole think tank. What a way to honor an invitation! It would have helped a little bit if I had had a little more leisure time. I knew that the schedule was tight, but the plane was late and then the taxicab got lost. I was to preach at 7:30 p.m. and I walked in at 7:30. It is a wonderful way to get ready for divine worship, biting your fingernails all the way. But it went quite well, actually. It was quite well received in spite of the fact that I was suggesting that maybe we were dealing with the symptoms rather than getting down to the root cause. But I did what I promised to do. I suggested that we undo the divisions between Catholics and Protestants, between the East and the West, between Islam and Judaism, and between Christianity and Judaism. Just a mild proposal. (Laughter) An impossible possibility. But it is a possibility, and after being there and associating with priests and pastors and rabbis, I believe it could happen if we would all simply get out of the way. There is really not any good reason why we could not all be children of God - together, except for the vested interest in established institutional structures. I believed that before I went, I said it while I was there, and coming away from the experience I am convinced that it is true. The problem is to find somebody who will believe it. To find somebody who would be outrageous enough to propose it and actively pursue it. That’s what this world desperately needs. Somebody to believe. Somebody to believe that things do not have to be forever as they have been. Somebody to believe that God has dreams and surprises that have not yet entered the human mind to conceive of. Someone to believe. Today, and for a couple of weeks, I want to look at some biblical characters. Heroes. Heroes in Clay. God knows we need heroes. We love heroes, and we have in our past heroic men and women of faith. But, if we are honest, the heroes are always heroes in clay, for the point that I want to make is not that these were gigantic figures, extraordinary people who are able to do great things for God. My point is simply this: that God is able to do extraordinary things through very ordinary people if only God can find a man or a woman to believe. God knows somebody has to believe. Moses is our first Hero in Clay. The story is so very familiar. The situation is the oppression of Egypt. Male children of the Israelites are being killed at birth because of the population growth and the threat that these Israelites posed to the Pharaoh. This mighty civilization of the ancient world was now in slavery, and their children were being done away with. Moses was miraculously rescued, nursed by his own mother, after having been rescued by a daughter of Pharaoh and raised in the splendor and nurture of that marvelous Egyptian civilization, coming to a point of responsibility in a leadership role. But seeing his own people, the Hebrew slaves, abused, he rises up in indignation one day and kills an Egyptian. And, in that moment of wrath, righteous though it may have been, he © Grand Valley State University �Somebody Has To Believe! Richard A. Rhem Page 3   recognizes that his whole life now is changed. He flees Egypt. He finds the wilderness. He tends sheep for a man named Jethro, whose daughter he marries. And for years and decades he broods on the course of his life and that moment that changed everything. He must certainly have gone through times when he said to himself, “Egypt must have it right and the gods of Egypt that seal and bless that whole system must be Gods indeed. The slaves are but animals, worth nothing. My righteous rising up and committing of murder was an irrational moment without foundation in truth.” But was it? As he brooded on it, at other times must he not have been gripped by the conviction that, “No, that can not be right. Slaves are slaves, but slaves are human. Slaves are people. Slaves have feelings. Slaves must not be used as a commodity, as so much chattel. As he brooded in the isolation of the desolate wilderness, I wonder if he churned inwardly. All of his education. All of his culture. Now in that isolated wilderness with hours and days and years to think. Chaim Potok, the Jewish novelist, is the one who gave me a window into the psyche of Moses, how he must have struggled with that watershed moment of his life - that rash action and what it was that caused him to rise up and kill a man. It may have been the culmination of those years of internal struggle that caused him one day to be confronted with a phenomenon - a bush that burned but was not consumed. I think so often in our Sunday School theology we picture a literal bush and a literal flame, and an audible voice and all of that, but I think Potok may be right that, suddenly, all of that that was churning within him came to a point in which God manifested God’s self. There was that inward conviction that the gods of Egypt were not gods, that there must be another God, some other source of truth that was pressuring him and pushing him. Then he hears a voice that comes in a vision, full of mystery and awe, in which he is encountered by this wholly other One who says, “Take off your shoes, for this is holy ground. I have heard the cry of my people. You are right, Moses. Treating human beings as a commodity is wrong. Slavery is wrong. I am the God of people who would have them free and accorded dignity and respect. You are right, Moses, and I call you to go and to lead them out of their servitude, and I will be with you.” Moses says, “Who? Me? Who are you?” “I am that I am” comes the answer. Now that translation is not a good translation. The Hebrew translated by our verb “to be” doesn’t exist in the Hebrew language. There is no verb for “being.” That’s too static. Rather, those who know the language have a nuance which suggests that what God was saying was not, “This is my name,” but “I am the God who will be there for you. I will be truly there. I will be present for you. I will be whatever I need to be in any situation wherever you go.” So in Moses we have the coming together of a deeply held truth about what God would have for human persons, and this sense - this word, “Go. I’ll go with you.” Too often I think we set biblical heroes high on a pedestal as though they were some other breed than the rest of us. We assume that it must have been crystal © Grand Valley State University �Somebody Has To Believe! Richard A. Rhem Page 4   clear. Moses, just go and do it. But it wasn’t so crystal clear as indicated by the subsequent conversation with God. If we had time to go on to the fourth chapter we would find Moses saying, “Can’t we reconsider? Who am I, after all? Not me, please. I can’t even speak eloquently,” and finally, “Could you send somebody else?” This is God’s hero - wanting to pass the buck. This is the man of deep conviction - full of self-doubt, shrinking from the moment of encounter after the moment of epiphany. A Hero in Clay - just like the rest of us. Scared to death. Shrinking from the execution of that which had gripped him in the depths of his being. “But, Moses, somebody has to believe.” “Yes, but not me - please could you send somebody else?” Isn’t that so like our human experience? Can’t you identify with Moses at a time like that? Rather than marching forth in the strength of God on the basis of this revelation, this epiphany, this bush that burned and was not consumed, Moses slinks away and tries to get out of it. If only it could have been nailed down with certainty. Isn’t that the way we wish we could live? I met with a couple this summer. Their life seemed as though it might be coming to a crossroad. They gave me a call, hoping that this man of God could help them determine which way the arrow of God’s will was pointing. (Ah hah.) I just smiled at them. They said, “Well how can we know?” I said, “You can’t know.” How do you know the will of God? You don’t know the will of God. Oh, sometimes some few of us have some kind of mystical experience, some kind of clarity. But for the most part, we live making decisions one after another, so wishing we really knew, but we really don’t know. That’s what it means to be human. We live in the ambiguity of our historical existence where we always have to decide with partial knowledge and limited understanding. And so the decisions, ultimately, are decisions made on faith. Could you send somebody else? Now the deep conviction and the promise of God’s presence are neutralized by fear. That’s our great enemy. We are afraid. What if we crawl out on a limb and somebody cuts it off? “What if I cross the border into Egypt and they still have papers for my arrest?” “What if I go to the people with this message that you purportedly are giving me and they reject me? What if I try and fail?” Are we not time and again stunted by fear? Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of making a fool of ourselves? We don’t expose our deepest yearnings and desires and hopes and dreams. We don’t dare tell anybody because we are afraid they will laugh. And after all, how do we really know? Last week I was in New York at our Perspectives board meeting, and someone suggested that we need to do an issue on angels. One of the members of the board said, “I’m running into people all over the place who are having all sorts of experiences with angels.” And someone else said, “I’m not.” He was told, “You are probably not giving them permission to tell you.” Do you remember the stories of near death experiences that exploded a few years ago? Suddenly, one was reported and then another, and then a whole rash of © Grand Valley State University �Somebody Has To Believe! Richard A. Rhem Page 5   them because most of us don’t dare tell those deepest intuitions, longings and dreams of our life. We are too afraid. Afraid that we will be laughed at, scorned or rejected. Moses said, “I think probably you would probably be there for me, and I do think that it would be right that slaves be set free, but could you send somebody else?” About two or three years ago after one of my Perspectives meeting I reported to you that we had met with Edwin Mulder, the Executive Secretary of the Reformed Church, and suggested to him that perhaps, rather than frantically trying to rescue the Reformed Church in America, we ought to begin a process of orderly dismantling. That was not an easy word for Ed to hear at that time. We met with him again Monday because we have an annual executive review of our work, and the mood was different. Ed suggested that it may be a few years away but, all things being equal, a dismantling may be in store. I heard after he left he had just announced his retirement in June of 1994. So I came home and wrote him a letter and I congratulated him on his decision and affirmed him for his work, and then said to him that I had noticed on election night that John Chancellor, the retired elder statesman, seemed to have so much fun. He was so relaxed. Retirement has a way of doing that to you, you know. When we are in the trenches and have the harnesses on, we are so serious and have such a sense of responsibility. Everything seems so heavy. Our creative juices can get all dried up. But there was old Chancellor having a ball. And I said to Ed, “Now that you have announced, let me suggest that the last eighteen months be the best you’ve ever had. Why don’t you propose some outrageous thing? Why don’t you get the heads of the denominations together, and suggest to all the giants that we dismantle and start over? Why don’t you have a ball in this last eighteen months? Have fun! Be outrageous!” Well, I will be interested to see how he responds to that. (Laughter) But, that is where I began. I am convinced that energy and resources and worry is poured into religious institutions and structures in order to sustain yesterday’s answer, in order to perpetuate anachronistic structures that do not bring together God’s people, but actually keep us all separate in our respective boxes. The thing that needs to happen at that think tank is not that we find ways to make our respective institutions prosper, but that we find a way to transcend our respective institutions in order that we might find a new energy and a new way to carry us into the third millennium. Somebody has got to believe! Somebody’s got to say, “Enough of business as usual. Enough of all of this fearful clinging to that which once was legitimate and necessary.” One of the issues that we will have in Perspectives next year has to do with language, with God’s language. We have talked about that here. I picked up a book on my way home - a book of excellent essays. One author asked whether or not Christianity will be able to sustain itself in the future. She suggested that it may well not make it for, if it doesn’t change, it will be to society too unrelated and irrelevant to where life is really moving.” © Grand Valley State University �Somebody Has To Believe! Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Some of you tease me as though I just like to rock the boat. Well, I do. Some of you think that this is just a game. And, it sort of is, but I’ll tell you - deep down there is something else operating. It is because I believe in God. It is because I believe the Gospel. It is because I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the hope of the world and that we have in our traditions the richest resources that the world so desperately needs, that I don’t want to see them just piddled away, written off as though they are irrelevant and unable to meet the pressing needs of our day in a world that is tearing itself apart - fractured and fragmented, hostile and warring. We have so much to share with the world in terms of the love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of God that would make people one - if only we could let go and trust God. Dear friends, somebody has to believe. Maybe it’s you. You say, “But how can I know?” And I say, “You can’t.” And you say, “On what basis do I plunge?” And I say, “Trust God. Trust God. Trust – God.” © Grand Valley State University � 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 XXII Series Heroes in Clay Scripture Text Exodus 3:11, Hebrews 11:1 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-0-19921108 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-11-08 Title A name given to the resource Moses: Somebody Has To Believe! Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 8, 1992 entitled "Moses: Somebody Has To Believe!", as part of the series "Heroes in Clay", on the occasion of Pentecost XXII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 3:11, Hebrews 11:1. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Faith Institutional Religion Interfaith Moses Trust https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be14a89ff0e966f80b8ed6225aac9c84.mp3 e11aab272432f7f4fcc4b620fe63382f https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bb81980486f88dee6b44daf5652109b1.pdf 9d949e6e3ee157ce1df6f45c30bdb66c PDF Text Text Culture Wars – Does God Take Sides? From the series: Heroes in Clay: Samuel Text: I Samuel 8:19-20; Matthew 5:45 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan November 15, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon … we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations… I Samuel 8:19-20 … God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on righteous and on the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45 Last evening on the evening news there was a brief bit of the heavyweight championship fight of the night before and of Riddick Bowe who delivered the telling blow to Vander Holyfield. “I won,” said Bowe, “because God was on my side.” Now that’s really dumb! One guy beats up another, makes him bloody and says, “God’s on my side.” But it’s really only the extreme of what we all do at one time or another. We get in a conflict or a debate, or a discussion or we get into something that deeply divides and we do our best to make sure that God is on our side. We make the claim and Samuel made that claim too. Samuel believed that God was on his side - or maybe, in all fairness to Samuel, I should say that Samuel believed that he was on God’s side. Samuel was one of the great leaders of ancient Israel – a good man, a man of integrity and of spiritual depth. He had been one of the judges of Israel at the end of that historical period we call the time of the Judges. Israel was a tribal confederacy at the time following the conquest of Canaan under Joshua. It was that period of time in which Israel lived as a kind of loosely confederated group of tribes. They would, when a crisis arose, rise up together for a common defense. They believed that God would, at a decisive moment, raise up a charismatic leader who could rally the tribes together. Then, when the crisis had passed and the battle won, they would go back and do their farming again in their respective tribal territories. They were a tribal confederacy. We can understand that because we had thirteen colonies at one time or thirteen states that were in a confederacy. A confederacy is a kind of government where the independent units maintain a certain amount of autonomy, but they feel the need for a certain amount of centralizing and organizing power for such things as common defense, etc. If you remember your ninth grade civics class, at least a © Grand Valley State University   �Culture Wars –Does God Take Sides? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   hundred years ago it was called the United States Civics class, you learned there about how the Confederacy moved into a strong central government. Wasn’t it Alexander Hamilton who wrote the “Federalist Papers” and argued the case for the strong centralization of power? Well, that’s exactly what was going on in Israel at the time. Samuel had been an excellent judge and a great spiritual leader. As long as you have a towering figure, the old forms and structures survive somehow because such a figure as a Samuel commands such trust and respect. But we are told in the eighth chapter of I Samuel that Samuel is old and his sons are not following in his footsteps, and so the elders of Israel, (kind of the leading citizens, I suppose) come to Samuel. I hope they were a little more sensitive than the text says. It says, “You’re old.” It can be a difficult thing, you know, growing old. You don’t need somebody to remind you! Somebody comes up to Samuel and says, “You’re old. And your sons aren’t doing well. Give us a king.” Samuel was displeased. These people were about to fall into the same trap from which they had so long ago escaped in Egypt. The Hebrews had vowed they needed no king but God. So he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said, “Yes, I understand you are displeased, but recognize they are not rejecting you. They are rejecting me and I am used to it. This has been going on since the very day I brought them out of Egypt. Listen to the people. Give them what they want.” However, Samuel warned them what they were in for. Then we come to the ninth chapter and it is as though we are reading a totally different account, because now we have Saul in the picture. God speaks to Samuel and he says, “Tomorrow there is a young man who is going to come. His name is Saul. I have appointed him to be a king and I want you to anoint him, etc.” And very interestingly, in the ninth chapter and the sixteenth verse, the Lord says, “Anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hands of the Philistines, for I have seen the affliction of my people because their outcry has come to me.” Now here in the ninth chapter you have another source. You have another perspective. You’ve got another understanding of things. Here, very much parallel to Moses, you have God coming to Samuel and saying, “This man is going to be my answer to meet the affliction and suffering of my people Israel. Anoint him. Appoint him. He will be my instrument in response to the cry of my people.” God said, “The cry of my people has risen to me and I am going to do something for them.” The words are very similar to the ones spoken to Moses at the burning bush. In the ninth chapter, after that rather discouraging beginning about the initiative for a king, it seems as though God is on the bandwagon now and it is God who is doing this thing. God is saying, “I am going to move this tribal confederacy into monarchy in order to meet the needs of the immediate situation.” Well, that whole section meanders between these two points of view. You have, we’ll call it, the Samuel source, the source that speaks for the old tradition, the covenantal community. And you have the Saul source, which reflects the view of those who want to move into something new, into some new social organization in order to meet the exigencies of the time. Both sides are sure © Grand Valley State University �Culture Wars –Does God Take Sides? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   that God is on their side. Neither side is pure. None of us is ever pure. No faith conviction of ours is without some measure of vested interest. You can count on that. Now I think Samuel was genuinely upset about the undercutting of that ancient covenant community where a people was gathered into a community, not through political alignment or economic philosophy or ethnic purity, but out of a common trust in God. But I also think he was hurt. He felt rejected. And those who were seeing where Israel had to go had a concern for the well being of Israel, but I think probably there were also the ones who had been able to accrue some considerable bank accounts here and there and they really wanted some kind of security system. They wanted to take the bull by the horns and make sure that the accumulated wealth and positions they had acquired would somehow or other be secure. They wanted to be like other nations where a king could help maintain an army and a measure of stability. So there is always that mixture. What’s going on here? Well, I suppose it’s a culture war. I don’t know who introduced the phrase “culture war,” but I do know that it came into prominence in this past political campaign. Pat Buchanan at the Republican Convention spoke about being at war for the soul of this nation. And out of the campaign has come an accentuation of that polarization of our society. If we look back to Israel we can see that polarization and culture divide wasn’t devised in the 1990s; it’s not a 20th-century phenomena. It has been going on forever. Then, there were two visions of what Israel was to be. There were two visions of what the identity and the mission and the nature of the community ought to be. They were at odds. They were at cultural war with each other. It’s really interesting that in the biblical account you don’t have one setup as the right way and the other way as the wrong way, but you have a weaving together of these two positions. Now in the old way that we used to read the Bible, and the old way I used to preach the Bible, frankly, I would have had to iron out those two undissolvable knots of material. I would have had to make one be subservient to the other. I would not have been able to recognize that a biblical writer might have left in there, intentionally, an unresolved tension. The biblical writer is no fool! He didn’t just cut and paste and put things together. It is intentional. As he looks back on Israel’s history, the tensions and conflicts and the movement that made them what they were and what they became, he is trying to see the way in which the uncanny presence of God moves in the unsettled, unstable, unpredictable human, historical situation. It is a marvelous study of how Israel became the nation that it was and the writer in retrospect portrays both sides of the issue for us so that we could see these tensions that existed within this ancient people of God. There have always been those who have clung to old values--What shall we call them? Shall we call them the orthodox? Or conservatives? There have always been those who have felt that new times demand new solutions. That growing explosion of knowledge and new © Grand Valley State University �Culture Wars –Does God Take Sides? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   understanding in insights call for new arrangements. What shall we call them? Progressives? Liberals, maybe? There have always been those who have looked to the past in order to secure the present and the future. And there have been those on the other hand who, looking to the future, have recognized the necessity of scuttling the past as a straightjacket. In which camp would you have been? Would you have put your arm around Samuel and said, “You’re right, old boy. Things are going to pot and there may not even be a future if those radicals have their way. Everything is going to pot. No more morality. No more spirituality. No more God. Secularism. Secular humanism, etc.” Or would you have been one of the lobbyists who were pushing for the king and would you have said, “Look, the future is here. And the new situation demands that we move out of this inherited confederacy that has served its time. It’s time for a new form and a new structure to carry out into the future in order that we can be all that God would have us be.” Where would you have been? Let’s have an election. Shall we have another election? You can cast your vote. Why is it even important to look at this? In this fascinating biblical narrative, seeing these tensions, we might get a word of enlightenment for the present situation in our own nation and society. For we are a nation deeply divided. We are a society that is polarized and poisoning each other, and everybody claims that God is on his or her side. There is a kind of conflict of moral vision about what this nation ought to be, and what kind of society God is calling us to be. And moral vision held with passion sometimes becomes violent. There is name-calling and acrimony, and there is division and adversarial spirit - a kind of polarization that fragments society and makes civil and rational discourse almost impossible. So I think that it may well be that in this narrative we have some help to understand how we should negotiate these times. When I was at Brandeis three weeks ago I met Professor James Davison Hunter. I didn’t know at the time that he had authored a book which was reviewed in the October Perspectives, entitled by the way, Culture Wars. I picked up a copy a couple of weeks ago in New York. His focus is the struggle to define America making sense of the battles over the family, art, education, law and politics. It is an excellent study. James Hunter is an evangelical Christian, and he is an excellent sociologist. So I find this a very intelligent survey of what’s going on in our nation - the things that are tearing our society apart. I would recommend it to you. Culture Wars. He uses the phrase, and he points out the perils in which our society stands: the potential fragmentation and the potential for the breakdown of all discourse, which of course, is so essential for a democratic society. As we look at the biblical account, might it not help us simply to recognize in the first place that these tensions are endemic to the human situation? So you’re orthodox. That’s good! But that’s not all. And so you are a wild-haired liberal. That’s great! But it’s not the whole picture. The one who clings to ancient values and the one who reaches for that which is new and untested need each other. In a © Grand Valley State University �Culture Wars –Does God Take Sides? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   healthy society there will be a creative tension with a strong enough center to hold people together. But I think it is simply important first of all to recognize, not despair, and not throw up our hands as though it is the end of the world. We didn’t invent this kind of polarization. Maybe the mass media, and the television, and the sound bite, maybe that accentuates, maybe that polarizes and divides us more than in earlier times. I think that is probably true. But, nonetheless, we have to learn to live with that and to work with that. If you are conservative and orthodox, you have every right to be thus. And it is your responsibility to hold to values that are tried and true, and to make sure that the treasures of the past are not lost. Yours is a good voice, but it’s not the only voice. And if you are always champing at the bit, and always on the growing edge trying to break through to something not yet jelling, then, bless you! Keep everything unsettled and unstable. Be a nudging discomforter, but recognize that there are perils out there. As old Samuel said, “You are going to get your king, and you are going to get yours.” What we need in a healthy society is an acceptance of the legitimate and authentic tension that rests within any community of people. I like the way God is portrayed in this whole narrative. I think that I would have to say that God is kind of a grudging progressive. That I say without bias. (Oh, come on. Where’s your humor!) [Laughter] He says to Samuel, “Samuel, you’re right. You’re right.” I think the narrative is saying, “You can’t give up traditional values without some significant loss, but the nature of the historical experience is such that you have to keep moving on. Yes, they’ve rejected me. But listen to the people. Warn them, but listen to them. Give them their king. No arguing. No pouting. No raging. No manipulation. No coercion.” God seems to be able to handle that which is threatening to so many of us. God seems to be confident about the future and God’s ability to cope with the future regardless of which alternatives are chosen. And then I love this in Samuel’s farewell speech in the 12th chapter. The people are rather humbled at this point, and they say, “Pray to God for us.” And Samuel could say this to them, “For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.” Don’t you love that? Isn’t that the kind of God that you could worship? Samuel can say, “Look, this isn’t some petulant, petty, capricious deity. This is Almighty God. This is the Creator of the heavens and earth. This is the One who has created us in his image, who will not let any of his children go. This God will not abandon you. This God will not forsake you. Stop quivering in your boots. Trust God. God forbid that I should cease to pray for you. And I will continue to instruct you in the way you should go.” And then if you follow the story on, there is also this - that as there is this normal, inevitable kind of movement, the values of the old tend to get incorporated into the vision of the new. Samuel anointed Saul king, and the new was here. But Samuel said, “Saul, buddy, don’t think you’re a sovereign, an absolute like all © Grand Valley State University �Culture Wars –Does God Take Sides? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   those puppet kings around you. Saul, you’re just another citizen before the eternal, sovereign God.” And you know the thing that made Israel unique? Even when it became a monarchy, it was the fact that its king always trembled before the prophet - that its king knew that he was accountable and that he had no absolute sway, but must always regard the ways of righteousness and justice, and seek the ways of peace. The old values - the community and tribal confederacy in covenant with God – that somehow or other got laced into the monarchy, so that when we reach Chapter 16 we have David. We have the ideal king and it would seem for all the world that God always intended that there would be such a kingdom and there would be such a king - the Golden Age. Samuel wouldn’t have dreamed that it could be so good. I read from the Sermon on the Mount this morning because it seems to me that as God’s people we are called to that kind of posture and spirit and attitude. I think one of the great problems in our present social unrest is the fact that we have politicized things that cannot be politicized. You cannot legislate morality. You cannot legislate spirituality. The things that tear us apart - abortion, homosexuality, a National Endowment for the Arts, family values - those trigger words set off emotions and generate a lot of heat and very little light. They are not things that the government really can handle. Those are the things for us the people of God to deal with. We, as the people of God, are called to live an alternative community. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. Light illumines. Salt preserves.” And we are called to be Godlike. The God who causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and causes the fields of the righteous and the unrighteous alike to be watered with rain and snow. Jesus final word is “So, be like God.” The word perfect in the RSV is not a good translation. The word is kellos in Greek, which is the end or the purpose. Realize that for which God created you. God created you in God’s image. Be God-like, with a kind of universal benevolence, with a kind of love and a compassion, a justice and a seeking of love and fairness, and finally, peace in society. You be different. Don’t let the sound bites polarize you. When you feel your anger begin to rise, recognize that God is not on your side. Or rather, God is on your side - and on the side of your adversary. Have a moral passion, but lace it with humility and express it with compassion. Simply be God-like. God knows. God can handle this alternative, that alternative, and another alternative, but if somebody tells you, “This is God’s way,” don’t you believe him. God is bigger than that, bigger than my vision and your vision. A vision that embraces us all and calls us all to be civil and committed, agents of the kingdom that will surely come. Sorry folks, God doesn’t take sides. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Heroes in Clay Scripture Text I Samuel 8: 19-20, Matthew 5:45 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-0-19921115 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-11-15 Title A name given to the resource Samuel: Culture Wars - Does God Take Sides? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 15, 1992 entitled "Samuel: Culture Wars - Does God Take Sides?", as part of the series "Heroes in Clay", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Samuel 8: 19-20, Matthew 5:45. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community Diversity History of Israel Justice Samuel https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/53f81032e4838a1bc663bbd9a6c514a3.mp3 899798d1d6b0bdc7607eb45a1e02d854 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2445c212d6441a4228867e5288bf7a7e.pdf e229b1f6a9b6372d0f2d77049bdca596 PDF Text Text Wrath – Sometimes Necessary: Never the Solution From the series: Heroes in Clay: John the Baptist Text: Matthew 11: 3, 14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan November 22, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Matthew 11:3 ...if you are willing to accept it, he [John] is Elijah who is to come. Matthew 11:14 Wrath is a word that we don’t use often. It bespeaks a violent kind of anger, indignation. It bespeaks a strong passionate anger. When we think of wrath, we often associate it with the “wrath of God.” We even use it colloquially, almost flippantly when we speak about the “wrath of God” coming down on someone. Why do we identify wrath with God? We do so legitimately because, both in the Old and New Testaments, wrath, violent reaction, strong indignation is indicated as that which, from time to time, God expresses. The wrath of God comes to expression most often through a prophet. Israel gave to the world prophecy, that speaking in the name of God, on behalf of God. Most often it was a word of judgment, a word that called God’s people into account. The prophetic word reflected the wrath of God against all that was wrong, all that thwarts God’s purposes of love, and of grace in the world. All that oppresses, all that exploits, all that dehumanizes calls forth from God a wrathful response. God is not all sweetness and light. God is not a wimp. God cares too much. God loves too much. When God’s care and love and God’s purpose for humankind is thwarted - the prophet tells us that God’s response is wrath. Now the prophetic word that announced God’s wrath was never the last word. It was always a penultimate word. For it was spoken in order to elicit in its turn a response from God’s people, a turning back to God in order that God may save. The word of judgment that the prophet speaks, announcing the wrath of God against all that is wrong, is a word that is intended to turn God’s people in order that they might experience the saving love of God. But, nonetheless, that word wrath has a legitimate place in the biblical story. It is the other side of God’s passionate love and all that stands in the way of that love elicits from God wrath announced by the prophet. © Grand Valley State University   �Wrath... Never the Solution Richard A. Rhem Page 2   John the Baptist was among the greatest of the prophets. John the Baptist spoke a word of wrath. John the Baptist was tough. John the Baptist was angry. John the Baptist addressed his word of wrathful judgment against God’s people. The prophetic word of judgment was not often spoken to the world in general. Primarily the prophetic ministry of the Word of God which calls people to account and announces God’s wrath is addressed to God’s people, to the faith community that has failed to trust God and has failed to respond in the way of living to which God calls God’s people. John the Baptist in his day rose up in the wilderness and spoke this word of judgment to the religious leaders. And all of Jerusalem and Judea came to him and heard his preaching. He was tough. How would you like it this morning if I said to you, “You brood of vipers, what are you doing here this morning?” [Laughing] Tough word from old John. He never took Dale Carnegie’s course. He didn’t know “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” John was tough. John was serious. John was passionate, and John was only half right. John was right and John was wrong. John was right in the words he addressed to the community of God’s people at that time, a community that had fallen into a kind of complacency, a kind of spiritual dullness and decadence where religious service had become form and in many cases empty ritual and where the religious worship of God’s people was not reflected in the life that they lived. John preached against the tax collector for exploitation and the soldiers for dehumanizing people, and the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious leaders for their blindness and their unspirituality. He was right about that and in so speaking he spoke a word of God, and the wrath of God on that dead faith community was a word spoken in due season. But John was only half right. When Jesus appeared John embraced Jesus. Jesus was baptized by John. Then Jesus inaugurated his own ministry, and here is where we see that John, who was in many senses a prophetic hero, was nonetheless a Hero in Clay, for Jesus disappointed John. John hoped that Jesus would be the one to ring down the curtain of history and bring fire on earth. John hoped that the world had come to its end point, that soon the wickedness that so tore him up would be blotted out by the judging vengeance of God. He hoped that Jesus would be the one to effect this. John himself in consistency with his moral severity had the audacity to confront Herod for his immorality and was thereby cast into prison. And eventually he lost his head! But while in prison he heard reports of Jesus’ ministry and what he heard he didn’t like. Remember when the disciples of John came to Jesus and they said to him, “John asks, ‘Are you the one that we are looking for or should we look for another?’” That’s where you see the clay in John, the human error. John had a preconception of what Jesus ought to be and when Jesus failed to live up to that preconception John did not say, “I wonder if I’ve got it wrong?” John was ready to look for another one. He could not hear Jesus’ word of grace. He could not hear Jesus’ word of invitation. And he could not countenance the compassion, the healing ministry of Jesus. He was ready to switch messiahs rather than to question his own predisposition. He failed to recognize that, as a forerunner, he had brought only half the message and that his © Grand Valley State University �Wrath... Never the Solution Richard A. Rhem Page 3   message announcing God’s wrath against all that was wrong, was only Act I in order for Act II to happen, which would be the announcement of God’s grace that would embrace all. John was a hero, but a Hero in Clay. He had a true word of God, but his error was making it God’s last word. Wrath is sometimes necessary, but it is never the final solution. I find that juxtaposition of John and Jesus rather interesting for our understanding of what’s going on in our own world, our society, our own lives today. Last week we focused on Samuel and we noted that there was a cultural war in Samuel’s day. There were those who said to Samuel, “You are old and we want a king.” But Samuel reflected those others who said that to serve a king would be to undercut the old values and the old ways. In Samuel’s day there was the conservative party and the liberal party. There were the orthodox and the progressives and there was this great divide within Israel. So we noted that the cultural wars in our day are really nothing new - that God’s people have always lived with these kinds of tensions, the things that are dividing us today in our society, the things against which fundamentalist Christians, especially, are raising their voice: questions of abortion and homosexuality and family values and education, etc. These tension-filled social matters that cut across denominational lines and faith group lines and divide people with great acrimony and create a polarization in society – these issues are not new issues. And we saw last week that God somehow or other is able to embrace the whole spectrum. God does not choose sides. This morning as we look at John in juxtaposition to Jesus, I think we get another interesting angle on what is going on today. Let me say first of all something that you may not agree with, which is alright, and which I may not be able to express with great clarity, I am sort of struggling with this, but it seems to me as I experience what is going on today in contrast to biblical prophecy, the biblical prophets spoke the Word of God to the people of God. And I find today that the Word of God that is being spoken by fundamentalist circles is not addressed to the people of God but to the world out there, as though the Church somehow or other is a kind of a society of the righteous, and the world is a wicked old world that needs to be bombarded with the threat of judgment and hell. It seems to me that is to set prophecy on its head. If God is as Jesus reflects God, there is a great deal of compassion for the world on God’s part. God is rather easy on the world. It is the people of God that get the prophetic word - the people of God who ought to know better. So, that’s the first thing that I would observe as I think about John. John at least addressed the faith community. He addressed tax collectors and soldiers, and Pharisees and Sadducees, and anyone else who dared come within range of his voice, but essentially he was addressing the covenant community. I wonder what John might preach to the covenant community today. I wonder if John would have anything to say to the fact that things in Muskegon Heights are so poor that 68 teachers are getting laid off and class sizes will get doubled, and © Grand Valley State University �Wrath... Never the Solution Richard A. Rhem Page 4   education becomes a joke, and the dropout rate can only increase, and the unemployment among young blacks exacerbates, which results too often in a reaching out for a quick buck through the passing of drugs - a temptation almost too great for anyone to withstand. I think John the Baptist would have a Word of God full of wrath maybe for us who sit twelve miles to the south. Thursday night I saw Malcolm X. When I see a film like that, when I see the way we white people treated black people before the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s I could weep. It is treating people in a dehumanizing way. It is creating in them a slave mentality where they cower and where they don’t rock the boat, where they take abuse. They were treating them with paternalism and condescension. Malcolm X experiences that and says to his people, “Don’t turn the other cheek.” And that word, diametrically contrary to Jesus, was the right word. I think John the Baptist would say, thirty years after the Civil Rights Movement, that racism is alive and well in our hearts, and our society continues to be divided and the people continue to be treated as less than human. Time Magazine’s cover this week has God and women - the story of the Roman Church’s continued intransigence against allowing women into the priesthood and the Anglican Church’s admission of women into the priesthood amongst a furious controversy. I think John the Baptist would have something to say about that. We are in the midst of a cultural, social revolution. The Time article (which I know is not the Word of God; nonetheless it is an astute comment on our social situation) calls the movement of the women in the Church a “Second Reformation,” and points out that an all male jury of bishops sits in judgment as to whether or not a woman ought to be a minister of Christ. I think that some day we will look back on this whole period like we look back after a hundred years on the slavery issue. Again, there were those within the Church who were justifying slavery from the Bible. So often the Church, rather than being the avant guard, rather than sensing the movement of the Spirit, becomes the entrenchment of old ways, full of prejudice, and blindness, unable to see the nose on its face. Where in the world is the world going, and where must the Church be are the questions to be asked of ourselves if the Church is to continue to be taken seriously as a community of the people of God. I imagine, just out of events of this past week, there would be enough fodder to keep old John the Baptist preaching along the Jordan for a long time. And it would be a tough word. It would be a hard word. He would say, “You Christian people coddle yourselves in your aesthetic beauty and wonderful ritual and you don’t give a damn about people who are bleeding, people who are hungry, people who are dehumanized.” There is a place for the wrath of God to be spoken. But not out there to the world. Goodness sakes, let MTV alone; let Madonna do her thing. An old English professor of mine at Hope College had more wisdom than I did one day when I was complaining about the worldliness on campus. [Laughing to himself.] She said, “Let the wicked have their pleasure. They have so little.” We get all steamed © Grand Valley State University �Wrath... Never the Solution Richard A. Rhem Page 5   up about all of the nastiness in the world, and we don’t see the depths, prejudice, racism, and lack of compassion in our own hearts. Sometimes a word of wrath is necessary, but it is never the solution. And now you see the juxtaposition of John and Jesus. John could serve as a forerunner, but not the answer. The answer came in the one whose coming we will remember next Sunday. Jesus full of compassion and full of grace. Jesus who said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” For wrath confronts and may make you cower, may bludgeon you into submission, but only love can transform. Only love can change people. When we are angry we lose our effectiveness. Jesus was no wimp. He was every bit as tough as John the Baptist. But rather than anger that wished that the earth would be set on fire, Jesus was full of anguish, “Oh Jerusalem, Oh Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her, but you would not.” He came to the crest of Olivet and looked across to the city on Palm Sunday and he wept, and said, “If you had only known the things that belonged to your peace but now they are hid from you. And there will not be left one stone upon another...” But he said this with anguish, not with anger. I get angry. I get angry. Sometimes I would love to run from it all. Sometimes I would love to throw in the towel because it seems such a hopeless task. Anger is self-defeating and doesn’t do the job. Only love can change the world. Only love can change our personal relationships. Anger begets anger. Love melts. Only love finally can bridge the abyss of our culture wars. Angry accusation, acrimony and hatred only polarize and entrench. Only love can change the world. John was a prophet of God with the Word of God, announcing the wrath of God on my life when I fail to be God-like. It’s not the last word. The last word is God’s love that will never let us go - and keeps beckoning us to love in turn. God help us! © Grand Valley State University � 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 XXIV Series Heroes in Clay Scripture Text Matthew 11:3, 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-0-19921122 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-11-22 Title A name given to the resource John the Baptist: Wrath - Sometimes Necessary: Never the Solution Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 22, 1992 entitled "John the Baptist: Wrath - Sometimes Necessary: Never the Solution", as part of the series "Heroes in Clay", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 11:3, 14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives God's Grace John the Baptist Judgment Prophetic Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dd9ffb0d0459acd1f80eb940b8f72f83.mp3 c8e1c6e0460929e5f7f01ad327128dac 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 Thanksgiving Day Scripture Text Psalm 73:16-17 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921126 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-11-26 Title A name given to the resource Worship: Therapy for the Soul Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 November 26, 1992 entitled "Worship: Therapy for the Soul", on the occasion of Thanksgiving Day, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 73:16-17. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/87cdb0ced4a3d16f007d53c3636f2be1.mp3 90957c6f29184b8a51818ef031c77f7b https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2607c859a56f899d2d90cf4b3340027e.pdf 81ecea92cae914c9386c8b847ed03491 PDF Text Text Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come? Acts 3:11-21; Revelation 22:8-12 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Advent I, November 29, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon Advent is a season in which we celebrate within the Church the one who came, the one who comes, and the one who will come. Advent means coming, to approach for a visitation. Israel was that nation of people who throughout their history looked for one who would come, who would be anointed with the Spirit of God. The Hebrew word Messiah means “the anointed one.” The Messiah was the one that Israel hoped for, prayed for, and longed for in order that God’s will might be done on earth as in heaven. The anointed one, the Messiah, the longedfor one was anticipated every time a priest was anointed with oil or a king was enthroned and anointed again with oil, for the oil, the sign of the Spirit, was a sign of God’s empowering through the Spirit. Every priest and every king was a sign pointing to that one who one day would come supremely, full of the Spirit of God, and would bring justice and peace and Shalom. The Christian Church believes that the awaited one indeed did come, and that one was Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes we speak of Jesus Christ as though it is a first and last name, but that is not correct. Christ is a title. Jesus of Nazareth was believed in the Church to be the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one long looked for by Israel, the one who would bring the will of God into effect on earth. In the Christian Church, the expectation that this Jesus of Nazareth was the one grew in various ways among his disciples and his followers. And then he was crucified. Those who had hoped despaired, for they said, “We thought that Jesus might be the one! But a crucified Messiah? No way!” But when Jesus was raised from the dead and he appeared to them, they rejoiced. They also began to see that the fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose came in a way quite other than they had expected. It was a new and surprising way, but they believed that this Jesus who was crucified, resurrected and in the presence of God was the reigning Lord whom they expected imminently. I read from the Book of Acts this morning because it reflects one of the very earliest conceptions of these events that would mark the end. Peter, who had presented Jesus as the one who was crucified and raised by God, says to those who were listening, “Repent.” That is, change your mind. Turn around. Repent and understand that this one whom you crucified was God’s servant, indeed the © Grand Valley State University   �Do You Really Think He is Going to Come? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Messiah. He says, “Repent. Turn to God that your sins may be wiped out, so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed, that is, Jesus.” Now when you think about that for a moment, it is rather interesting. “Repent that the seasons of refreshing may come. That he may send the Messiah.” Well, didn’t they believe that Jesus was the Messiah who had already come? Yes. But it would seem as though in this conception, at least in those early days when everything was fuzzy, they were saying Jesus was the Messiah, but that he was in the presence of God now, as though heaven is keeping him until you repent and turn, and the seasons of refreshing come and there is the universal restoration. Then God will send the Messiah appointed to you again, that is, Jesus. Now that conception of things did not prevail in the New Testament Church, but it was one of the earliest understandings—Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah, in heaven for a while but soon to return. The expectation of the return was obviously very vivid and the return was to be imminent. At the end of the Revelation to John, the revelation of the ascended Lord, the Book of Revelation, Chapter 22, we have these words of the ascended Lord who gives the vision to John. He says, “Behold I am coming soon.” How soon is soon? What do you think? What would be soon? He says at the tail end of the first century, “I am coming soon.” What do we give him? Six months? Or would you give him a year? Ah, somebody over here says, “I’ll give him two years.” How soon is soon? What do you think? How about two thousand years? That’s not soon. That’s not soon according to any kind of soon I’ve ever understood. And yet for two thousand years there have been preachers taking this text and saying, “Go outside and watch the sky because it may be today.” If we had more time this morning I’d sing for you a chorus of “Jesus Is Coming Again.” I am really tempted to do it, but I won’t. “Jesus Is Coming Again,” and you can flip your dial anywhere you want to on the radio today and you’ll hear preachers all over the country saying, “Repent, because Jesus is coming and it may be today.” How long can you hold your breath? How far can you stretch this thing out and still talk about Jesus coming soon? Do you think he is coming? Do you think he is coming soon? I don’t think you do. In all honesty, I don’t think you do. I think after two thousand years, anybody that expects Jesus to appear on earth soon and establish a kingdom is simply going along with a traditional conception of things that has had a strong hold on the Christian Church. But I don’t think we really believe it. That raises a question for me. Was perhaps what the New Testament Church understood about Jesus true, but cast in a form that really could not carry the freight for us into modern or postmodern times? This is the way I have come to understand it, the way I have found most helpful in trying to translate all of the © Grand Valley State University �Do You Really Think He is Going to Come? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   imagery of the second coming, the end events, and the rapture (or is it the rupture), the great white throne, the final judgment, heaven and hell and all of that–the end events. The way that I have come to translate that for myself is in the same way that I have come to translate the opening chapters of Genesis. Somehow or other, in the stories of the beginning we have been able to accept the symbolic presentation of profound truth, moving away from the literal understanding. But at the other end, we’ve never been able to shed the literal translations of those images and understand them symbolically. Think about the beginning. You don’t really think there was a garden called Eden, do you? You don’t really think there was a Mr. Adam or a Mrs. Eve. Do you believe there was a snake, a tree, an apple? Well, with Adam and Eve, of course, there was a pair. And they do say of Eve that she was a peach, but not an apple with a worm! Not a snake, a talking snake! Yet the story’s message was full of truth. It was the Hebrew understanding of what was going on in their own time and in their own existence. What they said essentially was, “Everything that is, is, because God said, ‘Let there be.’” God said, “Let there be.” And “It is very good.” Well, then they said, “If it was created very good, why it is so bad? How come everything is so rotten?” And they said, “It’s not God’s fault. It is our fault, because we, who were created to worship and adore and serve, usurped God’s place in proud rebellion and self-assertion. We wanted to be God. And so it was we who made hell on earth.” That’s what those chapters tell us. And what they tell us is profoundly true of our existential experience of the human situation where we are drawn to heaven and mired in earth, caught in the tension of worshiping and rebelling, wanting to be God and yet wanting to be God’s. In those symbolic representations of garden and tree and snake and apple, all of the most profound truth of the cosmos of God, of the human situation, comes to the fore. It has been a long time since I’ve been able to negotiate all of that and come to a deeper understanding of biblical truth. Yet it is only recently that I dealt with the other end of it in Revelation in the same way. All of those images of the golden city, the streets of gold, the tree for the healing of the nations–all of those images picked up from the Old Testament really tell us that paradise was lost. But in the End, paradise will be regained. The garden out of which we were driven becomes the city into which we are invited. Essentially the Bible says that God, who in the beginning had good plans for us, will consummate those plans ultimately in the end. What the Biblical message is trying to say in those allusions to Jesus crucified, risen, ascended, reigning, and returning may have meant to intimate a pouring out of his Spirit, the Spirit of God for us, the community which is the body of Christ. Jesus did say, according to John’s Gospel, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.” Pentecost was the coming of the risen one. The Spirit of God, or the © Grand Valley State University �Do You Really Think He is Going to Come? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   Spirit of Jesus, is with us forming the community. The community is the body of Christ, which is to live out the life according to the example of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the anointed one. Jesus was full of the Spirit. And Jesus lived a life according to the intention of God. Those who follow Jesus are those who form concretely the community of God’s people where God reigns, where there is righteousness and justice and mercy and peace, where love abounds. Those end references are simply the only way we can talk about these kinds of things, by which we bear witness to our conviction that it’s not all going to come to naught, but that ultimately God’s way will prevail. God’s purposes will be realized and we will be gathered into the eternal brightness of God’s presence with all God’s people. All of the imagery and symbolism of the New Testament is simply a testimony to the conviction of the early Church that God had acted decisively in Jesus and the end was no more in question. It is something like a chess game, to which I get subjected every once in a while by my grandson Derek on Sunday afternoon when I am tired and brain dead. The mistake I made was to let my son Joseph, when he was a little boy, teach me to play chess . . . a little bit. Now I’m humiliated week after week by my grandson. But two weeks ago I was doing quite well. I actually had more off the board than he did, and I thought I might have a chance of licking him until that fateful move when I unthinkingly did the wrong thing, and I knew it. I thought, the good news is I am going to be able to take my nap! It was over. So I just put my king out there where he could get me. He said, “Oh, no, Bumpa. No, no, no. There’s another move you can make.” So I made the move, and he had to make another move, and I could make another move. But it was all over. All he was doing was dancing me all over the board until finally he got me into the corner where there was no more wiggle room. “Checkmate!” In the early Church, in God’s chess match with all that was opposed to God, what happened in Jesus was that decisive move. There is no possibility that God will not be all in all. But there is still a little wiggle room. As people of God, we believe in that already, of the presence of the kingdom, a kingdom not yet in its fullest expression. In the meantime God is with us. Do you want me to tell you three things that sum up everything that I could possibly suggest you believe and bet your life on? They are these: God in the beginning, God in the end, and God in the meantime. In the beginning all that is, is because God said, “Let there be.” In the end, God will be all in all. And in the meantime, Immanuel, God is with us in the flesh of Jesus who came to us and continues in the ongoing community of God’s people in the bread and in the cup, tokens of a presence with us now. © Grand Valley State University �Do You Really Think He is Going to Come? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Where is history going? I don’t really know. What will happen to planet earth? I haven’t got a clue. I simply know that for myself and those I have loved and lost, and for my children and my children’s children—in the beginning, God. In the end, God. And in the meantime, God in tokens of bread and cup, and word, and in the flesh of the community—in the other that one loves and in whose face one sees God. That’s enough. I will sing, “He is coming, He will come again,” and by that I mean poetically in song, liturgically in worship, that I adore the God who has called us into being and has come to us and will finally fulfill every promise when we are gathered eternally in the brightness of God’s presence. Thank God. Do you really think God is going to come? No, you don’t. But don’t you know that God is with you and that you could never move beyond the grip of God’s grace? Of course, you do. And that’s enough. That’s all you need. That’s true! © Grand Valley State University � 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 Advent I Scripture Text Acts 3: 11-21, Revelation 22:8-12 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-0-19921129 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-11-29 Title A name given to the resource Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 29, 1992 entitled "Do You Really Think He Is Going To Come?", on the occasion of Advent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 3: 11-21, Revelation 22:8-12. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Advent Community of Faith Grace Revelation Spirit of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c2ca9837b191da69babad739c9c7c800.mp3 393f9ce183515fa351fd87153a1b9979 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a02df693385ba1e0c0f5939d1fd7bc39.pdf eb56a4fd13e695990fb86c0cb70c4f30 PDF Text Text Life After Life? Text Psalm 16:11; I Thessalonians 4:17 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Advent II, December 6, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon In your presence there is fullness of joy... Psalm 16:11 ...and so we will be with the Lord forever... I Thessalonians 4:17 The Season of Advent is a season in which we celebrate in the Church the One who came, the One who comes and the One who will come. Advent, the word itself, means to approach or a visitation. And Israel was that people who all of their history looked for one who would come, that one who would come, who would be anointed with the Spirit of God. “The one who would be anointed” - the Hebrew word was Messiah - the anointed one. The Messiah was the one who Israel hoped, prayed for and longed for in order that God’s will might be done on earth as in heaven. The anointed one, the Messiah, the longed-for one was predicted every time a priest was anointed with oil or a king was enthroned, anointed again with oil. For the oil, the sign of the Spirit, was a sign of God’s empowering of the Spirit, and every priest and every king was a sign pointing to that one who one day would come supremely, full of the Spirit of God and would bring justice and peace and Shalom. The Christian church believes that that one indeed did come, and that one was Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes we speak of Jesus Christ as though it was a first and last name. But that is not correct. Christ is a title. Jesus of Nazareth was believed in the Church to be the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one longed for by Israel, the one who would bring the will of God into effect on earth. In the Christian church the expectation that this Jesus of Nazareth was the one grew in various ways among his disciples and his followers, and then they were despairing for they said, “We thought that this might be the one. But a crucified Messiah? No way.” But then he was raised from the dead and he appeared to them, and then they rejoiced. Then they began to see that the fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose came in a way quite other than they had expected. In a new © Grand Valley State University   �Life After Life Richard A. Rhem Page 2   way. In a surprising way. But they believed that Jesus, crucified, resurrected, and in the presence of God, was their reigning Lord whom they expected imminently. In fact, I read from the book of Acts this morning because it reflects one of the very earliest conceptions of these events that would mark the end. Peter, in having presented Jesus as the one who was crucified and raised by God, says to those who were listening, “Repent.” That is, “Change your mind. Turn around. Repent and understand that this one whom you crucified is God’s servant, indeed the Messiah.” He says, “Repent. Turn to God that your sins might be wiped out. So that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you. That is, Jesus.” Now when you think about that for a moment it is rather interesting. “Repent that the seasons of refreshing may come, that he may send the Messiah.” Well, didn’t they believe that Jesus was the Messiah who had already come? Yes, but in those early days when everything was fuzzy, they were saying Jesus was the Messiah but he was in the presence of God now and it was as though heaven were keeping him until you repent and turn, and the seasons of refreshing come and there is a universal restoration; then God will send the Messiah appointed to you, that is, Jesus. Now that conception of things did not prevail in the New Testament church, but it was one of the earliest understandings. Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah, in heaven for a while, soon to return. The expectation of the return of this one was obviously very vivid and the return was to be imminent. At the conclusion of the revelation given to John, the revelation of the ascended Lord – at the conclusion of the Book of Revelation, in the 22nd chapter, we have these words of the ascended Lord who gives the vision to John. He says, “Behold I am coming soon.” Now, how soon is soon? What do you think? Soon. He says, “Here at the tail end of the first century, I am coming soon.” What do we give him? Six months? Or would you give him a year? Ah, somebody over here says, “I would give him two years.” How soon is soon? What do you think? How about two thousand years? That’s not soon. That’s not soon according to any kind of soon I’ve ever understood. But yet for two thousand years there have been preachers taking this text and saying, “Go outside and watch the sky because it may be today.” If we had more time this morning I would sing for you a chorus “Jesus is Coming Again.” I’m really tempted to do it, (Laughing) but I won’t do it. Jesus is coming again, and you can flip your dial anywhere you want to on the radio today and you’ll hear preachers all over the country saying, “Repent because Jesus is coming, and it may be today.” How long can you hold your breath? How far can you stretch this thing out and still talk about Jesus coming soon? Do you think he is coming? Do you think he is coming soon? I don’t think you do. In all honesty I don’t think you do. I think after two thousand years anybody that expects Jesus to appear soon on earth and establish a kingdom is simply going along with a traditional conception of things that has a strong hold on the Christian Church, but I don’t think we really believe it. And that raises a question © Grand Valley State University �Life After Life Richard A. Rhem Page 3   to me as to whether or not the New Testament Church understood about Jesus, and the summing up of all things might have been true but it was cast in a form that really cannot carry the freight for us today two thousand years later. The way that I have come to understand this and have found most helpful in trying to translate all of that imagery of the Second Coming and the end events – and the rapture, or is it the rupture? The Second Coming, the great white throne, the final judgment, heaven and hell and all of that, the end events - the way that I have come to translate that for myself is in the same way that I have come to translate the opening chapters of Genesis. Somehow or other in the beginning we have been able to deal with the symbolic presentation of profound truth, moving away from the literal understanding, but over at this end we have never been able to get off the literalization of those images and understand them symbolically. But if we are over here in the beginning, you don’t really think there was a garden called Eden do you? You don’t really think there was a Mr. Adam and a Mrs. Eve? A snake? A tree? An apple? Well, with Adam and Eve, of course, there was pear. (Laughter) They say of Eve that she was a peach. (Laughter) But not an apple with a worm. Not a snake, a talking snake. (Laughter) No. But what it says is so true. It was Israel’s understanding of what was going on in their own present existence. And what they said essentially was, “Everything that is is because God said let there be.” And God said, “Let there be,” and God said, “It’s very good.” And then they said, “If it’s very good, how come it’s so bad? How come everything is so rotten?” And they said, “Not God’s fault - our fault because we who were created to worship and adore and serve, usurped God’s place in proud rebellion, in self assertion wanting to be God. We made hell on earth.” That’s what those chapters tell us. And what they tell us is profoundly true and touches our own existential experience of the human situation where we are drawn to heaven and mired on earth and caught in the tension of worshiping and rebelling, wanting to be God and yet wanting to be God’s. And in those symbolic representations of garden and tree and snake and apple and all of that, the most profound truth of the cosmos, of God, and of the human situation comes to expression. Somehow or other a long time since, I’ve been able to negotiate that and come to a deeper understanding of biblical truth. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Advent II Scripture Text Psalm 16:11, I Thessalonians 4:17 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921206 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-06 Title A name given to the resource Life After Life? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 6, 1992 entitled "Life After Life?", on the occasion of Advent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 16:11, I Thessalonians 4:17. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Anointed One Eschatology Jesus Messiah Nature of Scriptures https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fd4e67fa2588974c90c2e9affb107b07.mp3 85736715e091ec4a9f28b9cd4c980e9a https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/78c7a6521cc98bc279042c7d715a5ddf.pdf 2f91d395eab6fd8a8ef22c12d25254e0 PDF Text Text Hell? Text: Isaiah 66:24; Luke 1:51-52 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 13, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon ...the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not be quenched. Isaiah 66:24 ...he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. Luke 1:51-52 Let us descend into hell. Well, I mean, we’ve been to heaven. Now, “Hell?” I suppose if there is a heaven it is quite natural that one might raise a question about the other possibility. But what has the Magnificat to do with such a question? Well, it has everything to do with that question, I suppose, because in the beauty of voice and instrument, the Magnificat according to Pachelbel becomes an ethereal experience. But did you catch the words? He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich empty away. That is a battle cry in the mouth of a young Hebrew maiden. That is a radical social statement, and if there is a hell it will be populated by the powerful and the rich and mighty who rule and oppress and abuse and who lack justice, righteousness, compassion and love. If God is angry, God is angry not with the ungodly who pay no heed, but with the godly who insulate themselves from the pain of the world. If Jesus was angry it was not with tax collectors and adulterers and garden-variety sinners. It was with the religious establishment that bound heavy burdens on the peoples’ back and oppressed people in the name of God. Is there a hell? “Yes, Virginia, there’s a hell.” It is the hell of missing the meaning and purpose of life, of having one’s life end without realizing its full potential, a life of self regard and self assertion and self centeredness that fails to find the rhythm of God’s movement, which is to realize the highest possibility for our human existence. If there is wrath in God and wrath in Jesus Christ, it is not for © Grand Valley State University   �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the poor, the oppressed, the careless and the reckless; it is for the well-informed and the enlightened folks like us with power, position and prestige who go our own way while the world weeps and goes to hell. “Hell?” Question mark because we are talking about things about which we have no experience, and about things beyond the veil we cannot penetrate in our present experience. But the question is always before us even though it doesn’t get mentioned in polite circles and is not a topic for conversation. Preached on almost never in the Church and yet the question of Hell is a kind of ghost that lurks around the edges. The doctrine of hell or of everlasting or eternal punishment has been the chief weapon of the Church for controlling people, scaring people, manipulating people. It probably has been the greatest travesty perpetrated in the name of God and goodness and decency. And yet you can’t take the Bible seriously without sensing that there is a kind of ultimacy about the issue of our life. At the very end of the Old Testament in Isaiah, a very late writing, there is a beginning of that imagery that we call apocalyptic. That genre of writing is classically expressed in the book of Revelation where you have all the images of fire, and smoke, and the moon darkened, and the sun darkened, and the heavens falling and that kind of thing. You have the very beginnings of that in that last chapter of Isaiah 66. Verse 24 of that chapter is a gruesome verse. Just prior to that verse all the nations are beginning to come to Jerusalem to worship before the Lord. It seems like there is a kind of universalistic theme here where the nations will finally come to worship at the temple. But then the 24th verse says, “And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me, for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” In the synagogue in the Jewish tradition when this lesson was read, the lecture could not end with that verse. The reader had to go back and read verse 23 because they didn’t want any lesson to end on that note. The picture was too gruesome. In the passage that I read in the Gospel of Mark, I read it because it is full of hell, but the word hell is a translation of the Hebrew word for the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom was a valley just outside Jerusalem. To the south on the Mount of Olives as you look across the Kidron Valley to Jerusalem, you could also look south and you could see the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom was the place where they burned the offal of the animals that were slaughtered for temple sacrifice. It was where they threw the bodies of criminals. The Valley of Hinnom was a public incinerator. It was a refuse heap. It was a garbage dump. But this is the imagery that Jesus picks up. Now the imagery is so strong and so lurid - the temple sacrifices created a rather rancid situation around the temple. There are one or two persons here in Christ Community that would like me eventually to come with one of those sensors, you know, with a little incense. Why not, we’ve got everything else? One of these days we are going to have a little incense. But the incense for us would simply be one more little pretty trifle in our worship, but in the temple days the incense had a function - it stank. It was to get rid of the odor. © Grand Valley State University �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   When I was a boy, my father was superintendent of a company that had a subsidiary and once in a while he would have to go out and visit that company. Whenever I could, I would jump in the truck with him. I loved to ride in that truck. The subsidiary was the Kalamazoo Rendering Works. Have you ever been to a rendering works? You know what they do? They go around to farms and pick up dead animals and bring them in (Are you comfortable?) - they bring these dead animals in and slaughter them and take the skin and cure the skin and hides, and they grind up these things, you know, bones and all and make fertilizer. So one summer day, very hot, I went out with my father and walked into the slaughtering room and I lost it. It was bad! If you have ever been to a rendering works, you probably haven’t returned. There is another image I have – it’s an image of a friend of mine down in Florida. I used to go down fishing with him, and you know if you are a fisherman one of the problems is to get rid of the fish heads and the other stuff. You can’t put it in your garbage can because it begins to reek there. You really have to bury it. My Dad always buried it. The guy in Florida had dug a pit and he threw the entrails into that pit. I went out with him one time. He took the cover off and I’ll tell you I just snapped back. It was white and it moved. (Laughter) There must have been one billion maggots just delightfully feasting. One other image. I used to weed celery in Kalamazoo in the muck. (Laughter) In the muck in the summertime sometimes there is a kind of spontaneous combustion and the muck starts to smolder and sometimes those fires in those muck fields would go on all summer. And they smelled too! They just kept smoldering, kind of like a peat bog on fire. The imagery of hell in the scripture is a combination of the Kalamazoo Rendering Works, that maggot pit, and the muck that burns forever. That is the picture. That is the image. Hell in Mark 12, as Jesus uses it, is a translation of the Valley of Hinnom, and the Valley of Hinnom became a symbol, an image, for life that ends up on the garbage heap. In the Old Testament, in apocalyptic thought, and in the ministry of the teachings of Jesus, it became the image that said to people, “Life is important and you are responsible for the way you live. You are responsible for the choices you make. And at the end of it all, as well as during the interim period, you are constantly being called into account. You are responsible for the way you live. You are responsible for the issue of your life. Your life is a gift and the way that you use it, and the choices that you make, the decisions, the priorities, the values, the things to which you give your heart and soul – those things will be reviewed with you, for you will stand in the presence of them and in the presence of God and there will be that moment of judgment.” What Jesus was getting at when he talked and used this kind of imagery was not the building of a systematic theological picture of eternal damnation or bliss as the case may be, but rather with saying to people here and now before him, “Watch. Take care. Live responsibly. You are called to righteousness and to © Grand Valley State University �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   justice and compassion, and to love. You are called to care and to be careful, and so don’t miss the meaning of life. Don’t miss the purpose for which God created you. You can miss it. You can destroy yourself. You can destroy others.” I believe with all my heart that judgment is woven into the biblical narrative from beginning to end, and I do not believe that any one of us, neither myself nor you, will ever get away with anything. What we sow we will also reap. That which we do and that which we speak, and that to which we commit our hearts, are those things to which we are held accountable. And there will be that moment of accounting. There will be a reckoning. Life is not simply to be willy nilly on its way, flouncing along nonchalantly, carelessly, as though it doesn’t matter, as if it doesn’t matter if one cares or not, if one decides for compassion or not, if one is selfish or self-aggrandizing or not. All of these things matter. Everything matters. Life is serious! That is what Jesus conveyed. Life has implications. Decisions have consequences. Don’t we really know that no one ultimately gets away with anything? I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I could get away with something. Would you? Well, I wouldn’t mind living in a world where I could get away with it, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where you could get away with it. (Laughter) I want to be sure that I live in a world that has a kind of moral fabric about it so that there is something or someone, or some structure of things that will make for ultimate justice - on the side of righteousness and compassion and love. The Magnificat was a battle song on the lips of a young Hebrew maiden who said, “God is a God who sets what is wrong to right. God is a God who is on the side of the poor, the oppressed and the voiceless and the powerless. God cares. God cares about the human condition. And God has a bias for those who have no advocate.” Jesus manifested the wrath of God against the powerful, the religious, the establishment, the entrenched - those who had a vested interest in the status quo. Jesus was radical, revolutionary and they crucified him because, if they didn’t crucify him, they would have had to change. All of the prophets have been killed. And religion has been the instrument of their murder. Jesus in the prophetic tradition was a destabilizer. But before long the religious institutions were able to get things back into the neat and tidy. Religion all too easily, again and again, becomes the baptizer of the status quo. It becomes the institutionalized form of oppression and abuse all too often. In the name of God it baptizes those structures of society that hold people down and gives advantage to those who are powerful - like us. Hell has been the best thing the churches had going. It has held people under threat. It has scared people to death. It has made people cower before a finger pointing to an angry and wrathful God. But we have set the truth of God on its head. Life is serious. God holds us accountable. We are not going to get away with anything. But I need to preach about the doctrine of hell as it has been traditionally taught in the medieval church and the Protestant Reformation and in our own tradition. I need to © Grand Valley State University �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   preach about that in order to undo the damage that has been done with that doctrine, a doctrine that has driven out of the Church too many thoughtful people. For it is not really believed by as many people as it would seem to be believed by. I have got to tell you that the biblical witness is very diverse. There is not a clear teaching on the ultimate destiny of all human kind. There was no formal creedal Church statement on eternal punishment until the 6th century. Some of the most illustrious names in the gallery of the Church did not believe in a hell in the traditional sense of a place of eternal torment, so the witness is divided. There have been various solutions that have been suggested. There is the traditional one that the righteous go to eternal life and the damned go to eternal torment. There is the opposite - the idea of a kind of universal restoration where God will finally be all in all. And then there is a view that is more popular presently and which seems to be growing in conservative circles that is called Annihilationism - a view that those who come to the grace of God will be issued into eternal bliss, and those that reject that grace will not be eternally tormented but simply come to extinction. Well, what do you believe? What do you believe? You need not look to me for an answer because I, like you, struggle with these things and think about them, but I will tell you a couple of things that I believe, and I hope that it will help you as you think about the ultimate issue of your own life. I will tell you one thing that I do not believe. I do not believe in a God of retribution. That God has been portrayed by the Church all too often, I think - the kind of God whose offended honor demands that God gets his own, a kind of punishment and reward, where God is all too human. I don’t see God that way as God was revealed in Jesus. I don’t believe God is an angry deity, offended at the dishonor of his dignity, waiting to mete out punishment. Neither do I believe that the doctrine of hell as it has been taught in the Church has been a fair reflection of the biblical witness, but rather that it has been used as a control mechanism. I believe in the Church we have imposed guilt and threatened judgment as a means of control. Many Christian leaders have felt that, to be honest with the people and to take that away, would be to lose control, and that the common people need to be scared of hell in order to have the hell scared out of them. I also believe that there has been a lot of desire for something like eternal punishment. Not that we would think that we might be candidates for it, but there are some others we know who have it coming. I’m serious. There is that kind of something in us that wants revenge and wants another to get their due. We hope that the bullies and the ones who have beat us and competed with us and conquered us and oppressed us, perhaps will get their due. In the history of the Church and in the Old Testament there are some lurid pictures of the righteous rejoicing over the damnation of the wicked. I could quote you some vivid statements. The Church, religious people, have often been © Grand Valley State University �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   the oppressed and the persecuted - the minority. Our biblical doctrines, our biblical documents and our creedal tradition come most often out of a people who are no people, and there was this kind of crying out for God to damn the persecutors. Tertullian, the great church father, said that “the righteous would be able to take joy and satisfaction in seeing the burning of the wicked who had oppressed them.” Those kinds of emotions, which are rampant in the history of our theological tradition in the Christian Church, those kinds of emotions are sub-Christian, less than Jesus taught. They are unworthy of the God reflected in Jesus, and they really have no place for us. If we perpetuate that kind of thinking, what we do is turn thoughtful people away. We trivialize the reality of life’s accountability. And we fail to say instead to those within the Church and without, “Don’t miss the meaning of life.” Probably the best image that I have ever found, that helps me in all of this is just a paragraph from C.S. Lewis. Rather than hell, he speaks of purgatory, a final cleansing justification: Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true my son that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy.” Should we not reply, “It was submission, Sir, and if there’s no objection I would rather be cleansed first.” “It may hurt, you know?” “Even so, Sir, I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering, partly from tradition, partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it.” But I don’t think suffering is the purpose of purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse or much better than I will suffer less than I or more. No nonsense about merit. The treatment given will be the one required whether it hurts little or much. My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am coming round a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be purgatory.” I believe that one day I will be in the presence of the Lord. That at the moment of death there is an encounter with God, at which moment all is clear and all is revealed. I believe that encounter with God, a moment which reveals all, will be the moment of regret, remorse, repentance, and then adoration at a grace that says, “Nevertheless.” Could one finally say, “No,” to that grace? It would be presumptuous to answer I suppose. It is my hope and conviction that God’s “Yes,” © Grand Valley State University �Hell? Richard A. Rhem Page 7   will finally batter down my every “No,” and all the “No’s” of all those who are encountered finally by the living God. Hell? I don’t know. Of grace - of that I am certain. Thank God! © Grand Valley State University � 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 Advent III Scripture Text Isaiah 66:24, Luke 1:51-52 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-0-19921213 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-13 Title A name given to the resource Hell? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 13, 1992 entitled "Hell?", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 66:24, Luke 1:51-52. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Forgiveness Grace Hell Justice https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2f61cf151f6752fb9db1eb01b736d70d.mp3 a1b65eb3db5e1f0fcaa935263d3561ef https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7147b2d0da366895a0c04cf4e789749b.pdf f9987aec993f794a81fd7f3958c1724b PDF Text Text What Are You Afraid Of? Text: John 4:18; Luke 1:30 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Advent IV, December 20, 1992 Transcription of the spoken sermon There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. I John 4:18 Do not be afraid, Mary... Luke 1:30 In Advent, 1992, we’re asking significant questions that have to do with our human existence and our relationship to God: Do you really think that he will come - this one who came? Will he come again? Do you expect that? Is there life after life? Hell? In these weeks, although we have answered those questions in less than traditional ways, we have affirmed again our Christian faith. We have affirmed that the God of our beginning is the God of our end, and the God of our meantime, that God is with us and that the last word is Grace. And if that is the case, then, “What Are You Afraid of?” What are the fears that dog your steps? What are the fears that haunt the inner sanctum of your heart? Fear, Henri Nouwen says, is so characteristic of our lives today that one could speak of our living in “a house of fear.” Fears that are very personal. Fears that are connected with those we love. Fears connected with the situation of the world and the destiny of the cosmos. Category after category of fearful thoughts that often take possession of us. We live in “a house of fear.” Nouwen, in his little book Lifesigns, invites us to move from “a house of fear” into a house of love - the house constituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord, the one who came at Christmas and whose Advent we celebrate again, and whose birth we will remember this week. To move from the house of fear to the house of love is the invitation of the Christmas Gospel. Easier said than done perhaps, but let’s for just a bit of time think about the perspective of the writer of this first letter of John, for he tells us that fear and love cannot coexist. Oh well, I suppose that’s too strong a statement. As a matter of fact they do coexist in the hearts of us all. But to the extent that there is love, there will be an absence of fear. And to the extent that there is fear, there will be an absence of love. If we did a little word association, if I gave you a word and you were to come up with the opposite… if I said, “high,” I suppose you would say, “low.” And if I said, © Grand Valley State University   �What Are You Afraid Of? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   “black” you would say, “white.” If I said, “hot” you would say, “cold.” If I said, “love,” what would you say? Hate? I think there was a time when I would have said that hate is the opposite of love, but I don’t think so any more. I think, according to John in this letter, the opposite of love is fear. Perfect love, he says, “casts out fear.” Love and fear are at enmity with one another. It’s like light and darkness. To the extent that the light is there, the darkness is absent. To extent that it is dark, the light is absent. To the extent that the heart is filled with love, fear is absent. To the extent that fear controls the heart, love is absent. The opposite of love is fear. Fear is the root of all that destructive behavior, of evil and darkness. Destructive behavior, born of fear, impinges upon our selves and reaches out to all of those whose lives we touch. When we are afraid we are destructive. When we are afraid we cannot love, and we cannot live lovingly. So John in a very interesting association suggests that love casts out fear. He says, “God is love. And those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Love has been perfected among us in this that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment, because as He is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. In this Advent season when we have been talking about the last things - the last events - that final encounter - judgment - Hell? -I find it rather interesting that John associates love as the absence of fear, fear particularly related to the Day of Judgment. Now you say to me, “Well, fear of the day of judgment. There isn’t a lot of that around today. Most people have kicked that habit. We don’t have to fear eternal punishment or damnation or hell - we talked about that last week!” Most moderns, our neighbors, have put that idea to rest. It isn’t that terrifying threat that it once was, and yet John says that fear has to do with the experience of punishment and the fear of punishment. He says that love comes in in order that we might have confidence and boldness in the Day of Judgment. John seems to relate our present possibility of living in love without fear in relationship to the end event. I just wonder - I wonder if he might be right. I wonder if there is something about us as human beings that would on a willed, conscious level rid ourselves of the idea of punishment and judgment, but that fear of it simply goes underground and in a kind of gorilla warfare disables us, so that much of our action that we would not directly relate to a fear of judgment and punishment is nonetheless precisely that. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we know that we are people who will be held accountable, that there will be a time of reckoning, that there will be that final encounter. Maybe down in the depths of our being we know that, so that it doesn’t matter to what extent we may pooh-pooh that final encounter, that day of judgment; nonetheless, there is something perhaps in the very fact that we are human that causes us consciously or unconsciously to feel a bit of disease and thus produce in us fear – fear, whose root we don’t understand, but whose consequences are felt in all of our relationships and all of our doings. Could that be? John says, “God is love. The one who abides in love, abides in God, and this love is what gives us confidence in the Day of Judgment because there is © Grand Valley State University �What Are You Afraid Of? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   no fear in love.” Hm-m-m. Rather interesting association of ideas isn’t it? I wonder if there could be something to that? Harold Ellens, the psychiatrist, theologian and pastor, has spoken about the human condition as a condition of anxiety. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, I forget in what connection, but that human anxiety is not the consequence of our sin, it is the consequence of our being human. He speaks of a kind of generic anxiety which is the consequence of spending nine months all safe and secure in the darkness and warmth of the womb, only to come splashing and bouncing down the birth canal into the bright lights of the delivery room to respond to a whap on the bottom side with a wail! We come into this world wailing. Scared to death. Fragile. That’s anxiety producing. And then he goes to the Genesis stories and shows that even in that setting, the human couple there is anxious - there is an anxiety producing set of circumstances, so that to be human is to be anxious. Then he goes on to say, and I think quite rightly, that the greatest anxiety reducing mechanism in the world is religion. Religion is a universal phenomenon. Stamp it out here and it will pop up there. You can’t seem to get rid of it. Any place you go in any age, any people, there is some kind of religious ritual, some form of religious practice. We who are simply a little farther along on the human story and a little more sophisticated in our religious experience, nonetheless, crave the basics - a kind of cultic practice. That is, a ritual. The prayers we offer. The gestures we make, and a certain mode or code of behavior that we follow, certain creeds that we assent to. They all constitute cult for worship. A creed to lead, a moral code to follow - those are the ingredients of religion, whatever the religion may be. And religion, by and large, is a universal phenomenon which has been a great anxiety reducing mechanism. It is how we anxious people try to come to terms with our anxiety. It is a way we come to curry favor with God, to appease God. There is something endemic in us that knows that we write with crooked lines. And, accountable people that we are, because we are human, we feel a need for some kind of buffer against that final moment, that examination, that judgment day, when God might hold us accountable. So our life is fraught with anxiety. And Ellens says that we try to devise means by which we can buffer ourselves against that anxiety, a way by which we may find ourselves acceptable to that all examining eye of the Eternal God - and so we turn to religion. That is the story of most religion. That is very much what most religion has been about. But the problem with most religion is that it becomes the tyranny of the should and the ought and the must. It becomes a prescription to follow. It becomes a matter of performance - of doing things, of gaining favor through ritual acts, creedal belief, and moral behavior. And any time you are in the business of gaining peace through performance you never make it. We can never satisfy the demands, the infinite demands. We will always fall short. We will always come up wanting. We will always be weighed in the balance and found © Grand Valley State University �What Are You Afraid Of? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   wanting and we know it. There is no peace! Rather, that anxiety reducing mechanism that we call religion becomes an exacerbation of the anxiety with which we came into this world, and our religion all too often binds us and makes us seven-fold more the child of hell than when we began. Religion is too often binding, controlling, coercive, manipulative. It is not too often good news, but bad news. And the threat of hell and of judgment, and of damnation and of condemnation broadly used in the religions of the world, do not reduce anxiety, but increase it. But, of course, the people cowering in fear are manageable at least. John has quite a different thing to say. What he says isn’t the Bible’s only message, but if we could only hear this. Do you hear it with me? “God is love.” He has said it before. He doesn’t say “God loves,” he said, “God is love.” That is whatever God is, whatever God does, God does it in a loving fashion because God is love, and, “Those who abide in love, abide in God and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” It would seem that what John is trying to say is that if you could get a glimpse of the love of God, if you could get a grasp of the love of God, then that intrinsic human guilt and cowering before that final moment of judgment would dissolve. Because John says that, “there is no fear in love. God is love.” And, love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as he is so are we in the world.” As Christ is. How is Christ? Christ is one with God. Christ is in the presence of God - crucified, resurrected, received in the presence of God. “As he is so are we in this world.” Earlier he has said, “Beloved, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God, and such we are now. And it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He appears we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Beloved, what matter of love, we are now, children of God.” If we could only believe it. If we could only lay hold of it. If we could only know that there is no record that stands against us. If we could only know that the love of God somehow or other has embraced us so that the record has been expunged and we are embraced in an everlasting love, so that there is no need for fear in judgment. I think that’s what John is talking about. Do you sense that’s about one hundred eighty degrees from where most religion would take you? From the place of the tyranny of the ought and the should and the must. People have challenged me about my promiscuous offer of grace, about the prodigality of God’s love, about the unconditional love of God that embraces us. Is that not dangerous? they ask. Will not people exploit that? Will not people take advantage of that? If that is true - if we are loved already, if we are embraced already, if judgment is passed already - then why worship? Then why live in praise and wonder? © Grand Valley State University �What Are You Afraid Of? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Why? Precisely because of that! Precisely because of a love so amazing, so divine that it demands my life, my soul, my all! There is no fear in love. Most of the time the Church has not dared preach it. Too radical. The people cannot handle it. They will take advantage of it. Nonsense! Preach fear to the people and you bind them in fear. Preach fear and you increase resentment. Preach fear and you exacerbate anger - hostility. Dare to preach love - and you transform. God is love. And love is perfected in this - that we have boldness before the thought of judgment. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. The one who fears is not perfected in love. Most of the time the Church would keep you afraid. It’s safer that way - for the masses. Nonsense. Dear, serious, sincere, religious people have been forced to cower before the demands of an angry God rather than hearing the word of the Christmas Gospel. The covenant of grace instituted with Abraham began when God came to Abraham and said, “Do not be afraid.” Old Zacharias was in the temple doing his thing and the angel came and said, “Do not be afraid.” Mary, a young Hebrew maiden doing her cross-stitching was encountered by an angel who began, “Don’t be afraid.” And Joseph, concerned about this situation that confronted him, heard from the angel saying, “Fear not.” The Christmas Gospel is Good News pure and simple. You don’t have to be afraid. God is love. And love casts out fear and so that endemic human sense of accountability that causes you to cower has been dissolved by the chemistry of God’s eternal love. Preaching on this text one day, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the time of the Montgomery, Alabama bus protest. After one particularly horrendous week in which he had been arrested and he had received phone calls threatening his life, and everything seemed impossible, he had to speak to a mass rally. When he was done speaking he came down from the podium and old Mother Pollard came forward. She was an old, black woman, uneducated and wise, who marched and marched, and marched in many protests. She came up to him after he had finished speaking and said, “Son, come here.” He went to her and gave her a hug and she said, “What’s wrong with you tonight?” He said, “Nothing, I’m fine.” She said, “You don’t talk strong tonight. Something’s wrong. Is it that we ain’t followin’ you enough? Or is it them white folk?” And then she looked at him and said, “Son, whether we follow you or not, God’s gonna take care of you.” And Martin Luther King said that from that day, because of the words of old Mother Pollard, he was able to live without fear. You say, “Well, that’s just fine. He said it that way at 8:30 but if you remember he died by an assassin’s bullet.” He was killed after all. Yes, that’s true. The Christmas Gospel does not say that life is not perilous, that human existence is not fragile, that there is not tragedy and suffering. Bullets cut us down. Cancer cuts us down. There is brokenness and pain enough to go around. But Martin Luther King lived the rest of his days without fear. That is to say, he lived until he died. But when fear enwraps our hearts we never live before we die. We will all die one way or another. And we will meet the Lord face to face. The question is whether we will have truly lived before we die - lived without fear. © Grand Valley State University �What Are You Afraid Of? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   So what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? Name it. Speak it before the face of God - and let it go. Just let it go. © Grand Valley State University � 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 Advent IV Scripture Text I John 4:18, Luke 1:30 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-0-19921220 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-20 Title A name given to the resource What Are You Afraid Of? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 20, 1992 entitled "What Are You Afraid Of?", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I John 4:18, Luke 1:30. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Fear Judgment Trust Way of Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6846157a023408f9bebeea881c3d050.mp3 ca25b288b022c9625fecb8eae245e5ae 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 Christmastide I Scripture Text Isaiah 9:3, Luke 2:10 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921227 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-27 Title A name given to the resource Joy! Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 December 27, 1992 entitled "Joy!", on the occasion of Christmastide I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 9:3, Luke 2:10. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fad2510feb2e51fd75a90a58d92b7d32.mp3 6a71d53452f26dc0ea43ab66e11cff00 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 New Years Eve Scripture Text Lamentations 3:22-23, Romans 11:33-36 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19921231 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992-12-31 Title A name given to the resource The Promise of Chaos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 December 31, 1992 entitled "The Promise of Chaos", on the occasion of New Years Eve, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Lamentations 3:22-23, Romans 11:33-36. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives