955 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2c97312d3c94f4a18b8a0c23ebb8ed42.mp3 437e55c83555090b336ce2336f236545 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7fa23d603720880c9b1fbf874142100b.pdf d584d78702604f6b327f28d2cdf0ecc0 PDF Text Text The Face and the Flesh From the series: The Human Face of God Text: John 6:51, II Corinthians 4:6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan March 12, 2000 Transcription of the spoken sermon It is Lent again. If you have been with me over the years, you know that Lent is a very difficult season for me for preaching. It is when I contemplate the meaning of this season that I realize how costly and difficult it is to be a Christian - if not impossible. It is in Lent that I am faced with the fact that Jesus took up the cause of the poor and the oppressed, representing in his life and message the underdog in a world of imperial power and economic crisis. He envisioned and embodied an egalitarian world marked by justice, fairness and compassion. And we who hear his word today are the powerful and the affluent for whom his mission and message is a threat. One Lenten season I kept hammering away on the theme, "He died the way he died because he lived the way he lived," and I still believe that to be the case. As Dom Crossan reminded us a year ago on the first Sunday in Lent, the bread and the cup mean the separation of body and blood and that points to violent death; Jesus did not die in bed of natural causes. Neither did Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Archbishop Romero or thousands of others whose names we know not, but who stood in solidarity with the marginalized masses - the powerless and voiceless ones. And so, here we are again at this uncomfortable moment of the Christian calendar and what will we do with it? I have a good friend who says often to me as we speak of the human situation, the world events, the social scene, "Save your own soul." His advice is not intended as a counsel of withdrawal from the world, of narcissistic self-absorption, or disengagement from life. But, he means, I think, that one needs to be centered in oneself with a bit of detachment from which to understand oneself, the human condition, and the Spirit that is ever seeking to break through and become embodied in the human, in one's own life and in the life of the world. © Grand Valley State University   �The Face and the Flesh Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Lent is a season for that - a time to think, to seek to understand, "Who am I? What is my life? To what vision and values am I committed?" Lent is a time to cultivate awareness - to become aware in moments of reflection. "What am I doing? Why am I doing it?' In a word, to face what truth I'm living, or whose truth I'm living. This is easier to recommend than to accomplish because we are constantly bombarded with propaganda that would shape us and mold our actions and attitudes. I've noticed a television ad recently during the evening news. It advocates trade with China, which has become a sharp political issue. I'm not even aware of the motivation of all the players, those who want to trade and those who do not. But, I was struck by how this ad debases those who are against granting the most favored nation status to China. According to the ad, they are Isolationists. So, write your congress persons; tell them to vote for trade with China. If you catch the small print on the screen that appears momentarily, the ad is sponsored by the Business Round Table. Of course, the Business Round Table wants trade with China and they can make a good case for such trade being the best assurance of peaceful co-existence with the world's most populace and future most powerful nation. But, simply to write off those who oppose trade with China as Isolationists is to fail to recognize that there are some who are opposed because of human rights violations, who want to tie trade with movement toward a more democratic society. I am not saying anything about the issue itself - trade with China. I am only using this as an illustration of the twisted nature of the messages that pommel our minds and battle for our attention. Having just gone through the Primary battles, we have only begun to experience the distorted rhetoric of an election year - The object is not to carry on civil and humane dialogue; it is to get elected – and I find it all very disheartening. What to do - not disengagement, flight, cynicism or despair. But, let me suggest that it is wise and well to save one's own soul, cultivate a bit of detachment and then from a state of awareness engage where one can for the vision and values one holds. What I am suggesting for our Lenten journey is that we cultivate the intentional life - that we determine to live with intentionality, and not just any intentionality, but an intentionality shaped by the way, the life, the truth of Jesus. Old hat, you say. Admittedly so. Yet, still compelling and radical. Translation will be necessary; one cannot don a bathrobe and sandals and flee to Galilee's hills. It is here one must determine how Jesus' way can be embodied by the likes of us. We will not all settle on the same mode of incarnating the way of Jesus in our world of 2000, marked by power, affluence, politics and global © Grand Valley State University �The Face and the Flesh Richard A. Rhem Page 3   community. But, we can be about seeking to understand our world and what the implications are of following the way of Jesus. That is my hope for our Lenten experience. At the beginning, let me say a word about the theme - The human face of God. I get the phrase from Paul who claimed that God, the Creator, who is the source and ground of all being (Paul's language - The God who said "Let light shine out of darkness") has given us knowledge of the Mystery of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It was Paul's claim, it is the claim of the Christian faith that in the face of Jesus we get a clue to the nature of God. For the Jew, God is found in the Torah. Or the Muslim, Allah is revealed in the Quran, and so forth. I do not claim that God can be found only in Jesus, but I do claim, as a Christian, that God is revealed in the face of Jesus. In this Lenten journey, quite unremarkably, we will seek to understand ourselves in the Presence of God, of ultimate Truth and Reality, and our window to God is the face of Jesus. I could have created this meditation all out of the Gospel of John. Let me visit four moments in that Gospel. It begins with God's intention. That is how I would translate the Greek word logos, translated commonly as "word." 1:1 In the beginning was the Intention. 1:14 The Intention became flesh (human). 6:51 My flesh I give for the life of the world. 20:21 As the Father has sent me, so send I you. In the face of Jesus we see God - God has intention. The intention became embodied in the human. The intention embodied in this world is crucified, but cannot finally be killed. You are now the embodiment of the intention. Do you follow me? This, I think, is what at least John's Gospel was saying. What was the eternal intention of the Mystery we call God was, after billions of years of cosmic evolving embodied in the human - in our faith tradition, the human, Jesus of Nazareth. The Divine Intention that came to expression in Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the power arrangements of the world. But, what came to expression in that one's flesh cannot finally be killed; it is now embodied in his Body, that is, in you. That means that God's intention for the world is now in the human and the world will only ever realize God's intention if we manage to realize that intention in our lives and in world community. © Grand Valley State University �The Face and the Flesh Richard A. Rhem Page 4   God will not intervene to rescue us. God is not pacing the floor somewhere beyond our world now and again dipping into the chaos of our human reality to fix things, nor is God awaiting the time to intervene and bring the whole drama to a close as was the apocalyptic hope of many in the time of Jesus and many still today. The Divine Intention has been expressed in the human and its full realization awaits the transformation of human consciousness. I cannot make that happen, nor can you. But, as I become aware of the cosmic drama, the emerging wonder of the natural world, the dawning of consciousness and the human story, I can at least begin to understand what is going on, aware of that process of billions of years and limitless space which has spawned the human which can be understood as the incarnation of the Divine Intention. Contemplating the human face of Jesus, I see the meaning of the human as the image of God and I know the fullest, richest realization of my humanity is to express the Divine image, to embody the Divine Intention. When I see that I am saved, my soul is saved, I know who I am and that for which I want to live. I won't be bullied by political rhetoric or seduced by Madison Avenue or deceived by special interests. I will live out of my own center with detachment, awareness, doing what I can when and where I can to make the world safe for children and a place where the elderly can live with dignity and die in peace. I see it all in the Face which reflects the Divine Intention which has become flesh offered up for the life of the world. There were some who heard the claim and turned away. Jesus said to his disciples, "Do you also wish to go away?" Peter answered, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life." Indeed. That is why I take bread and cup in a ritual action in community. I thereby seek the presence of the Spirit through whom the Divine Intention was made flesh and I stand in solidarity with him offering my flesh for the life of the world. © 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 Lent I Series The Human Face of God Scripture Text John 6:51, II Corinthians 4:6 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20000312 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-03-12 Title A name given to the resource The Face and the Flesh Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 12, 2000 entitled "The Face and the Flesh", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Lent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 6:51, II Corinthians 4:6. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Awareness Divine Intention Lent Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f62ae5c875863faf62c89f283279b9b2.pdf 9e3f78bdeb8a54e6308410604d542fb3 PDF Text Text The Face of God The Celebration of the Life of Duncan E. Littlefair Ecclesiastes 3; I John 4; John 1 Richard A. Rhem Fountain Street Church Grand Rapids, Michigan February 6, 2004 Prepared text of the sermon If you knew Duncan well, you know he did not want this - this celebration of his life. I can hear him now, "What's all the fuss!" But, if he was right and his final breath closed his personal existence, then we have nothing to fear in running counter to his wishes. And if he was wrong and his spirit is dancing before these beautiful stained glass windows he so dearly loved, then he will have been sufficiently tempered such that, even so, we need not fear his wrath. For all his brilliance, wisdom and insight, he never figured out why he couldn't just slip away without notice being taken. And so, we have gathered to celebrate his life, not for his sake, but for our own, for we need some closure, some beginning toward healing for the cavern in our souls his passing has left. To know him intimately was to love him deeply, to miss him terribly, and to be overwhelmed with gratitude for the gift we have shared, living in his presence. It was his request that I lead a simple memorial for his family and a few friends. But, we all knew there had to be a gathering of the larger community and so we are here today. I am so highly honored to have been asked to reflect on his life in this great church - to lead the community celebration of his life; and I am grateful to the Littlefair family, the Fountain Street Board of Governors and the Pastoral Staff who so graciously invited me to be here today. I'm grateful, as well, to those at this end who enabled me from long distance to create with them this memorial service remembering our beloved Duncan Littlefair. Let me be very clear; I intend to paint no objective portrait of Duncan, nor to offer a cool analysis of this man. This will be no balanced view noting strengths and weaknesses, light and shadow. I know Duncan was not perfect - but almost and I respected him so profoundly and loved him so completely that I hope to lift up his life such that we can say "Yes, that was Duncan," and through laughter and tears find some closure, enabling us to move on with gratitude for all he meant to us. © Grand Valley State University   �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Let me also acknowledge that many of you knew him longer than I and you knew him in a variety of roles and diverse situations. I would only claim that in the last decade plus of his life, I came to know him intimately through hours of in-depth conversations. I knew him intimately and, I think, understood him as fully as it is possible for one to know another. We each came from such different places, from opposite ends of the religious spectrum. I am amazed to have traveled the whole spectrum, finally to stand where he stood and he was amazed that, coming from where I had come, I should have become the one whom he hoped would keep the heart of his vision alive. I have known the smile of his favor, his warm affection and generous affirmation and consider myself blessed, indeed. Let me tell you what I learned from him, hoping that my experience will be a catalyst for your own reflection as we celebrate his life today. He taught me to live life fully, passionately with awareness, appreciation, wonder, reverence and gratitude. There is a table down at Duba's and many of you are aware that at that corner table in Duba's Bar, Duncan was the center of the roundtable where on Tuesdays we probed the ultimate questions as well as discussed the issues that mark our present human experience. For those few of us who found a place at the table, Tuesdays dawned with a sense of anticipation which grew with each passing hour until, our places taken, Duncan lifted his glass - an Absolut vodka martini up and gave the familiar toast To the wonder, miracle, glory and joy of life! The respective glasses clinked and the serious conversation began – serious conversation, but now the radical diversity of the table became community and it was good - very good. That toast was an expression of the way Duncan lived every day. Sometimes as we gathered we were aware of some eruption of darkness, some evil perpetrated by human beings, and then he would acknowledge, Even in the darkness - nevertheless... When first I came to know him, I realized I had never known anyone who loved life so deeply and lived life so fully. He was so sensitive, so compassionate. He felt the world's pain, but never did that pain cloud the awe and wonder with which he awoke with every new dawn. A favorite poem by Grace Crowell expresses beautifully the way he experienced every day. © Grand Valley State University �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 3   This day will bring some lovely thing, I say it over each new morn Some gay adventurous thing to hold Against my heart when it is gone. And so I rise and go to meet The day with wings upon my feet. I come upon it unaware, Some hidden beauty without name, A snatch of song a breath of pine, A poem lit with golden flame, High tangled bird notes keenly thinned Like flying color on the wind. No day has ever failed me quite. Before the grayest day is done I come upon some misty bloom Or a late line of crimson sun. Each night I pause remembering some gay adventurous lovely thing. I called from Florida the day before he died. His daughter Candy told me when the ambulance arrived at his home where he requested to be taken to die and they were taking him in, he had the most beautiful, serene smile. He was home. How he loved that refuge, that oasis. But, he was really always home. Always aware, he lived with constant amazement at grace and beauty – a rose bud on a table set, the joy of watching the colorful choir of birds on the feeders outside his kitchen window, a leaf in spring tender and green, in autumn turned brilliant red or orange or yellow, a sunset, a starry night, the lawn mantled in a blanket of newly fallen snow, a cool rainy day when by his crackling fire he could read and savor the cloudy grayness of the sky. He knew no bad days, no desolate seasons. He reveled in life. One could not be with him without being drawn by the contagion of his joy and appreciation, without finding one's own awareness raised, one's own spirit sensitized to the miracle of life, the extraordinary wonder of the ordinary that we too often fail to appreciate. How often he quoted Jesus, "If you have eyes to see and ears to hear." © Grand Valley State University �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 4   He embraced life passionately - all of life in its light and shadow. He was so ruthlessly honest about our human situation - he could have penned the lines of the ancient Hebrew poet – For everything there is a season... A time we are born and a time we die; a time we kill and a time we heal; a time we wage war and a time we make peace. This is our human situation and in the honest acknowledgment of the human condition, Duncan stood in awe, saw beauty, created meaning, lived graciously and pursued love. Never had I met one who lived so passionately, so fully, so richly with such wonder, reverence and gratitude. And I wondered why. I began to probe his philosophy. I began to search out his religious understanding. I asked him about his early years, his education and about the Chicago School in which he did his doctoral work. I still remember the smile on his face as he said no one ever asked him about his dissertation. He secured a photocopy of that dissertation from the University of Chicago and gave it to me. I studied it and it provided some excellent Tuesday discussions. I came to understand his naturalistic humanism. The Chicago School pioneered what has been called Modernism - a term that, coming as I did from conservative, orthodox Dutch Calvinist roots, I had been taught to fear as spawned in Hell. Actually, the Modernist movement in theology was simply the recognition on the part of many religious scholars that religious faith must be exercised in light of the exploding knowledge of all disciplines of human learning. It was the recognition that our religious dogmas and confessional statements derive from a pre-scientific age and therefore need to be re-imagined and translated into thought forms consistent with Reality as we are coming to know it through empirical investigation. Duncan was never in awe of the academic world. He never displayed his own brilliant grasp of philosophical and theological ideas. But, when I questioned him, it was exciting to see how his own philosophical/theological orientation translated into his passionate religious commitment and his powerful pulpit proclamation. For Duncan, Reality is one and in that one Reality there is in process an amazing creative venture underway. We do not look for some Supernatural Being outside the world of space and time, governing, controlling, occasionally intervening. Rather, the Creative Process in all its randomness and all its fecundity is Mystery we speak of under the symbol God. © Grand Valley State University �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Not some God "out there," not this world as a vale of tears to be traversed on the way to the Real Event in another time and another place. No. This is the Life, here and now. Duncan spoke of the Spirit. The miracle of the whole cosmic drama was that matter gave rise to Spirit, to human consciousness, to awareness. The amazing wonder is the emergence of the likes of us who have become the consciousness, the awareness, the voice of the Cosmic Process. This is how he expressed it on Easter, 1967, in his message The Risen Christ: I have come to think of all individuals as temporal, temporary, conscious intrusions or extrusions, or illustrations or realizations or expressions of the total which is God - that we are indeed God in consciousness. For we are our creators - Lords of Creation, Lords of the Earth – because we share in the knowledge and the wisdom and the capacity of God to create. We are Life. We are God. We are humans but we are expressions of God, expressions of the creative force in the world. When we die as a person, as a physical body, Love does not die. Love is that which created you and gives you whatever meaning and significance and worth you have. I read from the Gospel of John and the First Letter of John. In both passages, there appears this statement: No one has ever seen God. In the Gospel that statement comes after the Evangelist had recounted the drama of the Infinite, the Eternal Word becoming flesh, or becoming Human - God became Human. That is what Duncan was saying in the paragraph quoted above. The Human as the embodiment of God. To be sure, the writer of the Gospel did not intend to universalize that claim, for there is an exclusivism in John's Gospel that claims that the occurrence of the Word being made flesh was once for all in Jesus alone. Yet, out of that same Johannine circle comes the First Letter of John with the same statement – No one has ever seen God. © Grand Valley State University �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 6   But, prior to that statement, we have those familiar words, "God is Love," and, immediately following, the statement, "No one has ever seen God." The writer goes on to claim, If we love one another, God lives in us, and God's love is perfected in us. And a bit later he writes, God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. In the intimate connection of human bonding in love is the experience, the presence of God. The word symbol "God" carries a lot of baggage. For years, Duncan did not use the term because it could not be heard without all of those connotations of a Supernatural Being of traditional religion. But, he was never without the awareness of the Creative Mystery at the Heart of Reality that found expression in the human. In a 1976 sermon, he explained: ... life is a kind of relatedness in which the parts support the whole and each other.... "Good" is whatever contributes to the growth of such relatedness... God is that relatedness ... ... it is the nature of the universe; it is our life; it is what brought us to this place and it is what sustains us in this time ... This God I am talking about is grounded in nature; he is not separate from us ... The name (God) may be a matter of choice and convention. If you are prejudiced against it, don't use it But don't neglect the reality. (Taken from “A Reasonable and Pragmatic God," 1976) Gradually I came to understand his religious vision that gave him such zest for life. I understood that that toast - to the wonder, miracle, glory and joy of life was the center of his being. His religion was totally natural, wholly human. It was the passionate center of his being. He lived with an unceasing Godconsciousness. His awareness, sensitivity, reverence and gratitude were the result of that God-consciousness. © Grand Valley State University �The Face of God Richard A. Rhem Page 7   From time to time, he would give me a tape of one of his sermons of earlier years. As I listened to one some time ago, he was upset with some of his parishioners who were critical of an anthem which he loved and which the choir had sung the previous week. He was clearly agitated at those who had no feel for the emotional dimension of religion, who lacked poetry in their soul and who were so insecure in their absence of faith in God, that they could not allow the music to wash over them and be moved by the Spirit. Duncan concluded the sermon and then said, "And now I've asked the choir to sing it again!" And they did. And what was the anthem? My God and I, we walk the fields together, We walk and talk as good friends should and do. We clasp our hands, our voices ring with laughter, My God and I walk through the meadow's hue. He tells me of the years that went before me, when heavenly plans were made for me to be, when all was but a dream of dim conception to come to life, earth's verdant glory see. My God and I will go for aye together, We'll talk and talk and jest as good friends do. This earth will pass and with it common trifles, But God and I will go unendingly. If you really knew him and understood him, even now you can image him in that chair in the Chancel, eyes closed, head turned upward, hands folded, spirit soaring in sheer ecstacy. Let me tell you an amazing secret - for all those years that he filled this pulpit -I say with absolute sincerity and certainty, there was not a more honest, more passionate lover of God in Grand Rapids, or Western Michigan, or, for that matter, any place on the face of the earth. No one has ever seen God but the Word has become flesh, God has become human. In that beautiful face of Duncan, I have seen the Face of 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 Friday Memorial Service Scripture Text Ecclesiastes 3: I John 4, John 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-0-20040206 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004-02-06 Title A name given to the resource The Face of God: The Celebration of the Life of Duncan E. Littlefair 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 February 6, 2004 entitled "The Face of God: The Celebration of the Life of Duncan E. Littlefair", on the occasion of Friday Memorial Service, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ecclesiastes 3: I John 4, John 1. 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 Cosmic Drama Litttlefair The Human as Embodiment of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6bb38781701e82d40cbe0cc4a9645a01.mp3 889b795214a683533b54e23c60507f64 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 Epiphany II Scripture Text II Corinthians 4:6, John 12:36, John 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-0-19890115 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-01-15 Title A name given to the resource The Face of Jesus - The Heart of God Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 January 15, 1989 entitled "The Face of Jesus - The Heart of God", on the occasion of Epiphany II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 4:6, John 12:36, John 8:12. 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/4370d10c42f6cc0333da55e9cfeeb18a.mp3 ec24b813363eca62699971c406f46b2e 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 Luke 2:9-10, Revelation 12:5 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-0-19891224 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-12-24 Title A name given to the resource The Fairy Tale Is True 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 24, 1989 entitled "The Fairy Tale Is True", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 2:9-10, Revelation 12:5. 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/4eb16878619466fe1633e9624cfe0435.pdf 866401eb0300628e5e71a86925de0e15 PDF Text Text The Fairy Tale Is True Text: Luke 2:7; Revelation 12:5 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Christmastide, December 28, 1997 Transcription of the spoken sermon Children love fairy tales. I remember a fairy tale feast when I was a child of preschool age. I was ill with scarlet fever. The family was moved out into the garage, the house put under quarantine. But, of course, my mother couldn’t leave me. The shades were pulled and I was kept in bed. There was nothing to do but read to me - the same stories over and over, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Gingerbread Man, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Mother read until she was tired of it. On occasion she turned two pages at once, hoping to abbreviate her task, but I always caught her at it; I knew the stories by heart. But it made no difference; each time it was like a first time adventure. This Christmas the family gathered to watch a video produced by David with all the children as his research assistants - 25 years of this family growing up and then each with their own families. There were several photos of me holding one of the grandchildren on my lap - reading to them. That was usually a Sunday after dinner pleasure, although I remember well getting very sleepy after a big dinner and wanting very much to get to a serious nap when the little one would say "Read it one more time, Bumpa." Why do you suppose children love fairy tales so much? Of course, they are great stories, but I think there is something more They turn out right; just as they begin with the classic phrase, "Once upon a time ..." so they end with, "... and they lived happily ever after." When you think about some of the most familiar fairy tales, they are not all sweetness and light - there is high adventure, danger, darkness and evil woven into the plot. A good fairy tale has moments of high tension; they can be scary which is part of their attraction. But, in the end, good prevails, right emerges on top and nobility and truth are vindicated. In that sense, the fairy tale is reflective of a whole philosophy of life and reality and, in turn, it is a teaching tool for the shaping of one’s perspective on life. © Grand Valley State University   �The Fairy Tale Is True Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Stories not only entertain, they form a philosophy of life. And the classic fairy tale reflects the conviction that the good and true will triumph in the end. Later on when the child develops the capacity for abstract thinking, one can discuss values, right and wrong, truth and falsehood and their implications, but a sense of ultimate value has already been richly laid in the child’s being by the tapestry of stories heard and lived. I was thinking about this because of a few conversations I’ve had with some of you who have wondered how to receive the Christmas story - a story that begins, "And it came to pass ...", and is laced with angelic announcements accompanied by a heavenly choir, Magi from the East following a brilliant star that comes to rest over a stable wherein lies a newborn child born to a virgin. Although scholarly research has investigated the whole of the biblical tradition for two hundred years, that research has only somewhat recently seeped into the church. But in our day, such research makes the feature articles of popular news magazines at Christmas and Easter, at least. So, how does one deal with the growing recognition that the Gospels are storied accounts of something that happened in the past? The question is not so simple. For one thing, we are dealing with something that happened; we are dealing with the story of an actual birth event, not of a makebelieve character, but of one whose historical existence is almost universally acknowledged. On the other hand, the story is a story laced with the supernatural - angels and stars and kings and a miraculous conception - aspects one finds surrounding the birth of other ancient heroic figures. Consequently, the stories have been scrutinized intensively in an attempt to ascertain facts from fantasy. I suspect this is inevitable. We make a faith claim that is entangled with concrete historical reality - the word became flesh and dwelt among us. There is no way that claim will not be tested. Nonetheless, such scholarly scrutiny of the historical event is the ruination of the story because the truth of the story is not in the narrative details, but in the meaning of the story - that which is "coming to pass" in the event - which is that God visits God’s people to rescue them from darkness and death and secure them in light and life. The story is the vehicle of the truth about reality, about the nature of things, about the meaning and end of life. Do you remember our Advent question - How can we who are top dogs sing the songs of liberation of underdogs? Well, I am not going to repeat that, only to say once again that the songs Luke includes in the birth story are songs of liberation sung by people who have borne the heavy load of oppression and domination and © Grand Valley State University �The Fairy Tale Is True Richard A. Rhem Page 3   they celebrate God’s visitation in this child through whom God will reverse the fortunes of the oppressed and their oppressors. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those dwelling in the shadow of death have had the sun of righteousness dawn upon them with healing in his wings. I stressed during Advent the very concrete nature of the salvation referred to - its social, political and economic dimension -This was good news of a different kind of world for the poor and the marginalized. But now let me suggest that there is another dimension spoken to, as well - the anxiety of being human. It is not easy to be human and that is universally true for rich and poor, powerful and powerless. We are all afraid, insecure - We are subject to disaster, catastrophe, disease - and we die and those we love die. Human existence is precarious, perilous, awesome, wonderful, and fragile. Not only in our individual experience, but also globally. The holocaust happened in the lifetime of many of us. Tyrants like Saddam Hussein hold our world hostage. In the ancient world of the birth story of Jesus, it was taken for granted that there were powers behind the actors on history’s stage, Herod and Caesar and Pilate – that the struggles on earth were reflective of cosmic conflict between the God of light and life and the Prince of Darkness. As you know, that time was an age of the expectation of the end of the age and the literature that pointed to the end was called apocalyptic - a word meaning "unveiling." The curtain was drawn back and one was given a glimpse of the transcendent world - the behind-the-scenes view of the powers of evil at work in the present and the sovereign God with whom the powers of darkness were in conflict. The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John is such a work. John was given a vision of what was going on in the cosmic drama. He was in exile for his testimony to Jesus. The Christian community for which he wrote the vision was experiencing severe persecution. Some were giving up their faith, returning to the imperial cult. John writes to encourage them to be faithful, to hold on. Chapters 12-14 are the center of the Revelation. A woman is pregnant. A dragon is poised to consume the child. The woman gives birth and the child is snatched up to heaven. There is war in heaven and Michael, God’s Angel Warrior, with the heavenly hosts defeats the dragon who is thrown down to earth. Although the victory is won in heaven there remains the mopping up on earth where the defeated dragon is causing all the hell he can. The saints suffer greatly; yet they sing of triumph because they know the ultimate victory is theirs because God has © Grand Valley State University �The Fairy Tale Is True Richard A. Rhem Page 4   conquered - for 1250 days, 42 months, they suffer the ravages of the dragon, but this is a brief period. If you go to the Hebrew Scriptures, Numbers 33, you will find that Israel made 42 moves on the way to the Promised Land. Thus, the writer says -Hold fast; this journey so full of suffering will end in the security of God’s Kingdom. A story, a vision. It borrows images from the Hebrew Scriptures – the Exodus, the wilderness wandering; the woman, Eve, Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent; the woman - Mary, pregnant with child; the child snatched up to heaven - but through death and resurrection by which victory is achieved, the dragon falls. Well, I cannot give you a full account of the rich imagery of this vision, but I think you can see how the vision weaves together images from Israel’s history and the event of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. Out of historical happenings whose details we can never recover, a story is told to convey a deeply held conviction that in the end God will reign, the God of life and light having conquered the forces of darkness that threaten human existence and bring death. Now here is an interesting fact - In Greek mythology, Zeus was the chief god. His consort, Leto, was with child. The dragon Python was determined to kill the child. Leto fled to the island of Delos where Apollo was born in safety. Eventually Apollo returned to the mainland and at the great shrine, Delphi, Apollo slew the dragon. When John, on the island of Patmos, not far from the island of Delos, told his story in vision form, he borrowed not only from the Hebrew tradition, but also from Greek mythology to convey the message - that the God of life and light will finally overcome the forces of evil and darkness. The biblical story as a whole is rooted in the conviction that finally God will subdue the darkness. It is the same conviction that underlays the beloved fairy tales of our childhood. That is faith’s conviction. That is hope’s ground - God is love. Love triumphs. Truth triumphs. Therefore, trust. Now, that’s the story; that’s what we celebrate. Just to tell you that straight out may get us into an intellectual discussion and you might say, "Well, the data is © Grand Valley State University �The Fairy Tale Is True Richard A. Rhem Page 5   ambiguous." You might end up not trusting; maybe you would become a cynic. But, let me tell you a story - deeper than reason can probe. You might then feel it and know it beyond knowing. Don’t you see it - the baby a sign of hope, of a future, of life? Don’t you hear the angels sing? Haven’t you seen a special star? Don’t you hold absolutely to much that you cannot rationally describe or defend? If you have eyes to see, ears to hear ...You know it’s true. The fairy tale is true Trust Hope Be of good cheer, All will be well. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e7f38e808835dfc95e1c04cfcf536539.mp3 42babc195984ed26cb1f9067f3f65645 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 Series Songs of Liberation Scripture Text Luke 2:7, Revelation 12:5 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-0-19971228 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-12-28 Title A name given to the resource The Fairy Tale Is True Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 28, 1997 entitled "The Fairy Tale Is True", as part of the series "Songs of Liberation", on the occasion of Christmastide I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 2:7, Revelation 12:5. All Will Be Well Apocalyptic Story Trust https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1989eea9dfa8b14a230505f9b61ceeab.pdf 5dddf1a82436b221dca8701ea7279b0b PDF Text Text The Faith of Jesus Vindicated Easter Sunday Text: Ezekiel 37:9; Romans 1:4; Mark 16:6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan April 11, 1993 Transcription of the spoken sermon …breathe upon these slain, that they may live. Ezekiel 37:9 …declared to be Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 1:4 … Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, He has been raised. Mark 16:6 I often have maintained that if Lent is properly preached, if one has been true to the Gospel and honored the Way of Jesus, Easter is just a matter of saying, “The Lord is risen.” In this case, this Lent, we have been speaking of The Faith of Jesus, and this morning I want to say that the faith of Jesus was vindicated by the Living God who brought Jesus to life from the dead. Note that the resurrection of Jesus is not really something so significant about Jesus. It is not something that happened because of some intrinsic quality of Jesus, something that would separate Jesus from us, his brothers and sisters. Easter is not the celebration of something that Jesus did. It is the celebration of something that God did. God raised Jesus from the dead. What we celebrate today is a mighty act of God, the Living God, the God whose breath is Spirit. The God whose breath enlivens and inspires. The God who creates in the first place and is able to call the dead to life. We serve the Living God who is able beyond human possibility, beyond human extremity to say ‘yes’ when we’ve said our final ‘no.’ Let me say it one more time. Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived, and he lived the way he lived because he believed the way he believed. He believed in a gracious God who had drawn near. A God whose presence was unbrokered, available to all. A God who included rather than excluded. A God of the abandoned. A God who forgives, full of grace. Jesus not only believed that, but he lived it out and proclaimed it, and in so doing he ran afoul of the established borders of society: religion, politics, all of those who had a vested interest in the status quo, and keeping things as they were. Jesus was a © Grand Valley State University   �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 2   destabilizer. Jesus ran counter to conventional wisdom. He challenged the assumptions on which people lived without ever examining them. Jesus destabilized the status quo, and they killed him. Easter is God’s reversal of that human judgment. Easter is the vindication of the faith of Jesus. In raising Jesus from the dead – and he really died – the creed says as much, for it says, “They buried him.” This was no masquerade. God called him to life from the dead in order to say Jesus was right, and Jesus’ way was God’s way, and Jesus’ life was the Life. And so we celebrate today the act of God in the vindication of the way of Jesus, and the faith of Jesus. Let me ask you a question for your Easter meditation. It’s a very important question. In the midst of all the beauty and wonder, the grand music, the lovely flowers, the festive occasion, which we experience just now, let me ask you this question. If the cross were the last chapter, would you follow Jesus still? If there were no Easter glory? If there were no grand triumph? If there had been no public vindication, would you follow the way of Jesus nonetheless? I suppose what I am really asking you is, “Why in the depths do you follow Jesus? Why do you call yourself Christian?” Is it because in all of the light and splendor of a moment like this we have that triumphant note, “The Lord is risen!” The one who said, “Because I live, you too shall live.” Is this then the way to victory and to triumph? Is it the guarantee of life beyond life and all of that? Do you follow Jesus for that reason? Then perhaps you will hesitate a bit as I raise that question to you. If the cross had been the last word, would you still follow Jesus? Would you still believe in that way, in that truth? I have been wrestling with that question, and my answer is, “Yes I would,” falteringly, too often half-heartedly, and always inadequately. But even if Good Friday were the last chapter I would want to live as Jesus lived, and believe as Jesus believed. Think about him for a moment again. He was a grand person. Think of the magnificence of his life. Think of the freedom with which he lived. Don’t you love him for the way in which he stared down all of the imposing structures of society? The way he challenged the conventional wisdom. The way he simply refused to be one more sheep in the mass. Don’t you love him for that freedom, for that courage? For that consistency. For that faithfulness that, even in the darkness of Gethsemane, could get out the words, “Nevertheless not my will but Thy will be done,” which was a commitment to the way that he had gone from the beginning. It was staying the course. It was being true to the vision. It was sealing what he believed with his very life. The compassion of the man! Breaking through the taboos of his day. Reaching out. Embracing the abandoned. Touching the leper. Gathering in the sick, the children. The humility of his life. Washing the feet of his disciples. Finally offering his life. Would you say ‘Yes’ to Jesus, even if the cross were the end? I would. I believe that to live that way carries its own reward and is an end in itself. I think that’s really the only way one can really follow Jesus. Not following him because of what he promises us. Not following him because of some external threat, as though there is some gun at my © Grand Valley State University �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 3   head if I don’t. Not following him out of a sense of obligation, but following him finally because I love him! And I want to be like him! I want my life from the inside to be what I see his life to be, no matter what the end is. I’d better not say that loosely, glibly, because to say that is to say ‘No’ to so much of my American, twentieth-century culture that has shaped me. I am more a product of my culture than a critic of it. It means saying ‘No’ to that precious American individualism over against the needs of community. Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to that wisdom of the street that says, “Take care of Number One.” Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to my consumerist culture that would acquire, and acquire, and secure. Saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus means saying ‘No’ to the philosophy that winning is not only the best thing, but is the only thing. Would you follow Jesus if we had ended in the darkness of Good Friday at noon, with the thumping of the organ, and the forsakenness of the one who died the way he lived? Well! I anticipate your question. And perhaps your question would be, “Then doesn’t this make any difference? Then isn’t there any need for Easter? Isn’t this essential? Doesn’t this add anything?” And I would say, “Yes, it certainly does.” Easter is the foundation of hope in the midst of that struggle to follow the Way of Jesus in our world that crucifies him over and over again. In our world of Somalia’s and Northern Ireland’s and Bosnia’s, and Israel’s and Palestine’s, and Latin America’s, and poverty and sickness, and oppression and tyranny, and greed, and all of that. In the midst of that human scene, this gives us a ray of hope because it says to us that love will not finally be crucified. The things for which Jesus lived, and the things for which Jesus died, are the things that matter to the God who created them in the first place, the God who is able to speak a word that will raise the dead. Easter gives us hope so we might be faithful in following Jesus, where otherwise we could live only with despair, and we look at the victim and only promise more tragedy, with no alleviation of the awful darkness, which is so much a part of the human scene. If Good Friday were the last word, if the Cross were the last word, then history is a terrible tragedy. Then there is unrelieved suffering. Then there is nothing to scatter the darkness. Then I will be true to Jesus, and I would rather die as Jesus died, than to live the way the world tells me to live. But I would have nothing to say to all of those who suffered, and who continue to suffer. I would have nothing to say to those who bear the burden of the human story. Then the victim would always be victimized by the murderer. Then the violated one would always be trampled by the rapist. Then God or the powerful and oppressor, would always lord it over those oppressed and downtrodden. Then human history would be one unrelieved story of crucifixion. Then I would not know, I would not have a clue that there is something in this cosmic reality, some grace, some heart at the heart of things, some love that will not finally allow the darkness to prevail. I need Easter, lest I despair. I need Easter, lest the tragedy finally wear me down. I © Grand Valley State University �Faith of Jesus Vindicated Richard A. Rhem Page 4   need Easter to keep on believing and trusting and hoping. I need Easter to keep on following. When the Romans decimated Jerusalem in the aftermath of the events that we celebrate today, a band of Jews fled south to the fortress of the Massada and they barricaded themselves in that almost impenetrable fortress. The Romans threw up great ramparts, great building projects in order finally to be able to assault that fortress, and when they finally succeeded they found that band of Jews had fallen on their own swords and taken their own lives rather than be taken. But in the ruins that you can visit even now, there is a room that was the synagogue where they worshiped. In that synagogue when the ruins were excavated they found a fragment of a manuscript. The manuscript was of the prophet Ezekiel. The fragment that they found was Ezekiel 37, read this morning “…a valley of dry bones exceedingly dry.” And the words of the Lord, “Son of man, can these bones live? Thou knowest, O Lord.” And the word of the Lord is prophesied to the bones and the wind blows, or the Spirit blows, and the bones take on flesh and are joined together, and the bones become a living army standing up, brought back to life from death. God’s possibility in the face of human impossibility. God’s people have always been a people of hope, even of joy because, in the face of every human circumstance, they have been able to say, “Nevertheless.” I would follow Jesus if Good Friday were all there were. But thank God there’s Easter Sunday. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c21b12681b83a601466472bbb20c4bd6.mp3 ad0097c6290260a401f7188d54c1b431 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Easter Sunday Scripture Text Ezekiel 37:9, Romans 1:4, Mark 16:6 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19930411 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-04-11 Title A name given to the resource The Faith of Jesus Vindicated Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 11, 1993 entitled "The Faith of Jesus Vindicated", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ezekiel 37:9, Romans 1:4, Mark 16:6. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Followers of Jesus Hope Nature of God Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a25b4beabe4a88ee7abdaa83888a8030.pdf 621082e18e9ee27ce2c90176e9f901cb PDF Text Text   The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development, By M. Eugene Osterhaven (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982) Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Publication of Review Unknown With the publication of The Faith of the Church, Professor M. Eugene Osterhaven has given the Church and a generation of his students to whom he dedicates the work a lucid and concise manual of Christian theology in which he has immersed himself and which he has taught in a long and fruitful teaching ministry. His students will not fail to recognize their professor in the discussion of the Faith as it is here presented in its historical development from a Reformed perspective. Osterhaven defines theology as “the deliberate and careful consideration of the Christian faith.” Convinced of the necessity of theological reflection on the Faith of the Church, Osterhaven finds the norm of theology in the Scripture and its method in listening to the record of God's self-disclosure found therein. Systematizing is a necessary activity of the human mind which “seeks to relate whatever material is given it into an intelligible pattern” (p. 6), but theological reflection must not be understood as barren intellectualism, for the faith of the Church “comes out of the experience of God's people struggling to hear his Word in the context of life.” (p. 7) Following a discussion of method and approach, Professor Osterhaven deals with Christian doctrines in the order of their historical development beginning with “the Faith of Israel.” He deals with the doctrines of God, Jesus Christ, Scripture, Man, Sin and Grace, Hope and History, and Atonement. Then, reflecting his method of treating doctrine in its historical development, Osterhaven deals with the Reformation (“The Recovery of the Gospel”) and goes on to treat Justification by Faith, the Church and the Sacraments, giving an excellent treatment of the thinking of Luther and Calvin on these subjects. Chapters 13, 14 and 15 constitute an interesting and helpful discussion, which is not common to manuals of Christian doctrine. Osterhaven discusses Luther’s conception of “The Freedom of a Christian;” what he maintains is the key to Calvin's theology, “Order and the Holy Spirit;” and, “Experiential Christianity,” a © Grand Valley State University   �Eugene Osterhaven, Faith of the Church, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2   discussion of religious experience as it grew out of the Reformation and found expression in both the mysticism and activism of Dutch Pietism and Puritanism. Chapter 16 deals with “Eschatology: The Kingdom, The Spirit, and The End.” Osterhaven touched Eschatology earlier (Chapter 7) when discussing the thought of Augustine but he takes it up here again to acknowledge the theological development of the twentieth century in the face of the crisis of meaning brought on by the cataclysms of history which have been a part of our experience. Brief reference is made to Barth, Cullmann, and a more extended discussion of VanRuler and Pannenberg concerning the place of history in the design of God. Professor Osterhaven concludes this study with a chapter on “The Relevance of The Faith,” “to focus on the relevance in such a world of Christian theology and the faith of the Church” (p. 213). The author’s personal conviction is clear. There is only one remedy for this world’s ills: God himself in the person of Christ, God-become-flesh, who has effected redemption and opened the way to reconciliation and blessing. That faith, the message of salvation proclaimed by the apostles, and the theology which studies and articulates it are as relevant today as ever. (p. 213) Stressing the need for Christian foundations and understanding well theology's critical function – “...reflection on anything and everything from the point of view of the biblical revelation” (p. 217) – as well as theology’s universal nature, Professor Osterhaven calls the Church to its task so to articulate the Faith that it will “make possible the development of a true humanism.” (221f) Citing Pascal, Osterhaven closes with the strong conviction that the true humanism is “a view of man which sees him, though full of contradictions, as a creature made by and meant for God.” (p. 223) In being guided through the historical developments of the Faith of the Church, one is immediately impressed with the author's thorough knowledge and understanding of the material presented. This is no superficial survey of Christian doctrine, but rather a concise summary of the main lines of the faith made possible only by a life-long acquaintance with the material as well as a serious commitment to the truth of the Faith confirmed in deep Christian experience. The Christian Faith here portrayed is the classic Reformed understanding. If any criticism is to be offered, it is not for what is presented but for what is not acknowledged; there is little cognizance taken of the seriousness of the criticism of the Faith from within the Church through the sifting of the foundations by the critical biblical studies of the last two hundred years and from without the Church through the development of Post-Enlightenment thought, both philosophical and theological, and the growth of secularism. © Grand Valley State University �Eugene Osterhaven, Faith of the Church, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3   The author calls us to the critique of modern culture and declares the relevance of the Faith for our contemporary situation. The Faith here presented provides the foundation for the task. One misses the wrenching that is involved in testing the faith by the fires of modern criticism whose seriousness does not come to expression. It remains for us to take the Christian foundations here so lucidly set forth and translate them into the language of contemporary culture that the ancient answers may continue to sound forth, demonstrating the relevance of which the author has no doubt. This is an excellent study which will be useful to the whole Church. It is a fitting capstone to a long and effective teaching career and the strongest confirmation of its truth is the life of the author, the life of a Christian man, deeply loved and deeply respected by all who have had the privilege of sitting at his feet and being shaped by his faith and life. © 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 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. 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 RA-4-19820101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Church School Herald Journal 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> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1982 entitled "The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development", on the book The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development, written by Eugene Osterhaven, it appeared in Church Herald. Tags: Faith, Church, Reformed, Theology. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Church Faith Reformed Theology https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1efd6ba1b071b67e28da5062ff8ae102.mp3 d731b069b6cd2bc929595626d5614eca 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 Once Upon a Time... Scripture Text Genesis 3:1-10, Romans 5:12-21 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20021027 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-10-27 Title A name given to the resource The Fall Into Authentic Humanity 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 October 27, 2002 entitled "The Fall Into Authentic Humanity", as part of the series "Once Upon a Time...", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 3:1-10, Romans 5:12-21. 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/51803c8c1e1adb46ff17df9350e2e5dc.jpg 2e3fe4b6725a3a3af6478ca2aaa53ad0 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 Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PR6011.O74 F37 1900 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 DC-01_Bindings0260 Title A name given to the resource The Farringdons Description An account of the resource Binding of The Farringdons, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, published by D. Appleton and Company, 1900. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1900 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/865bbec8269dc658c5947a2d3884f836.mp3 5b8fce305f8c303cd6844abd01fc47f1 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 Scripture Text Acts 2:28, 32-33 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-0-19860518 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05-18 Title A name given to the resource The Feeling That Remains When the Concept Fails 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 May 18, 1986 entitled "The Feeling That Remains When the Concept Fails", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 2:28, 32-33. 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/6fd22b2aa4aa037e7ffa01ca4989cd13.pdf e68daca02ce78ece3e492822f9835b01 PDF Text Text The Feeling which Remains When the Concept Fails Pentecost Sunday Isaiah 6: 1-8; Mark 1: 9-15 Richard A. Rhem Spring Lake Country Club Spring Lake, Michigan May 23, 2010 Prepared text of sermon Another Pentecost – The Festival of the Holy Spirit – fifty days after Easter. And next Sunday – Trinity Sunday – the Lord’s Day which brings the annual church year to its culmination after completing the cycle once again of the story of Jesus from birth to death-resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. We are gathered on this Sunday not accidentally – I chose it in consultation with Mr. Bryson because this is Pentecost and next Sunday is the celebration of the Trinity. Consequently it allows us to mine the deep riches of the Christian tradition – its themes, liturgy and music. But even beyond the rich traditional sources for worship, is the focus of the theme itself – this evening Pentecost and Trinity. The last time we gathered as a community of friends it was at Christmas. The time before that it was All Saint’s Day. You see the pattern. I confess I love to celebrate these Holy seasons; it gives me a reason to dig once more into the story, the story of Jesus, the church’s story and relive again the moments of rich celebration and the message and meaning of these markers, these high points of our shared faith tradition. This is the shared story that has formed and shaped us, inspired us and given us hope and courage, comfort and consolation. I do love it. I love going back to the old story, the ancient celebrations, seeking to grasp the depths of truth that came to expression in the story and then reflect on how to bring to fresh expression from our historical moment what was seeking to come to expression in the ancient story and in the early Church Fathers. In fact, I have had half a notion to propose we form a church and we call it The Church of the Holy Seasons. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? We could set up an annual calendar – Christmas, Ash Wednesday/Lent/Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost/Trinity. I think I could handle four or five sermons a year. As for Mr. Bryson, he is still engaged about fifty-three Lord’s Days a year, so it would be no problem for him. © Grand Valley State University   �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 2   The Church of the Holy Seasons – I like that! Not bothered by buildings or budgets or staff – well, just a few tired ministers and a few wonderful volunteers gathering a community of old friends with many rich memories and shared story who still find meaning, guidance, hope and joy in the Story of Jesus and challenge in the Way of Jesus. The Church of the Holy Seasons with the service beginning at 6:00 and the bar opening at 7:00. Well, I play with you a bit about the Church of the Holy Seasons, but as for the Holy Seasons, I am serious. I love them and am still moved as we celebrate them together. The Seasons, the High Holy Days, tell a story. The story is obviously told in the cosmic, historical thinking of an ancient age. The world, the cosmos, the evolutionary unfolding of being as we know it, even with its deep mysteries still hidden, was not at all in their knowledge or understanding, but that does not mean they did not wonder about and wrestle with ultimate questions of life. They were conscious, self conscious, conscious of the other. They experienced birth and death, nature in its beauty and terror. And as far back as we have knowledge, they were religious in the sense of coming to terms with the Mystery of Being, with the meaning of human existence. Our own Christian tradition flows out of the Hebrew religious tradition and that tradition came to full expression in the Axial Age, the period usually dated from 800–200 before the Common Era. In China, India, the Middle East and Greece, without any interplay between them, there was an awakening of the human spirit and a new self-consciousness. I don’t mean to go into this in depth but only to say that there was a profound wrestling with the Mystery of Being, the meaning of life, and the cosmic reality. The great eighth-century prophets of Israel are part of this landscape and it is out of this historical nexus that our Christian story arose. This is a huge subject and I am not pursuing it any further except to say that our ancient story, which in many respects appears to be naïve, even child-like, was not that at all. With what knowledge was available to Isaiah and Jeremiah and the rest of the Hebrew prophets and temple priesthood, they probed the ultimate questions of the human situation and sought to find a meaning and pattern in history’s unfolding, observing the temple rites, offerings and prayers. It was out of the womb of Israel that Jesus was born in the time of the Roman imperial domination of Israel and Judah. And the life, ministry and crucifixion of Jesus occurred in an ancient time but a time in which history was recorded. And the early Jesus movement, sensing still the presence of the crucified Jesus, declared his resurrection and were convinced Jesus whom they understood to be the Messiah or Anointed One was pouring out his spirit – that was the Spirit of God – on them, empowering them to tell his story and invite the world to believe in him whom they believed to be one with God. And they believed as well that © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 3   they were living on the edge of history whose curtain would soon fall and time would be no more. Of course, they were wrong on that. They had no clue about where they were on the calendar of history. But regardless of their ignorance of where they were in history’s calendar as well as their ignorance of history’s other great civilizations and, indeed, of the cosmic drama of 13 plus billion years of cosmic emergence, they were not ignorant of the existential reality of being human in the perilous historical journey. I go into this because here we are celebrating Pentecost and looking ahead one week to Trinity Sunday. Were our ancient forbearers simply naïve, unknowing and not to be taken seriously? If so why celebrate the Holy Seasons that stem from their story? The point I am trying to make as we celebrate the Festival of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Trinity is that those ancient observances were a human response to deep religious experience – the experience of encounter with the Sacred Mystery of all being, or, in the shorthand of symbol, the experience of the Presence of God. The theologian Paul Tillich understood religious observance as “ultimate concern” and the term God as a symbol for the Ultimate. Tillich’s term was “The Ground of Being” which was an attempt to move that ultimate mystery from a, perhaps too familiar, personal category. Yet, if our being at its highest is the personal, it is unlikely that some aspect of the personal will be denied to the sacred mystery. Whatever! I stammer and stumble because I am trying to bring to expression an inexpressible reality. The most orthodox of Christian theology spoke of God’s incomprehensibility. Yet it has been a universal experience of humanity that God’s presence is known – in silence, vision or voice and responded to in the rich diversity of patterns of religious observances. And one such pattern of response has been the celebrating of the story of Jesus in the respective festivals of the Christian Year. My title for this meditation is perhaps a bit mysterious but that is only to be expected for a discussion of the experience of God, of the Sacred Mystery of all Being – “the feeling which remains where the concept fails.” This statement is a quote from a classic theological text, The Idea of the Holy, authored by Rudolf Otto described in the New World Encyclopedia as follows: Rudolf Otto (September 25, 1869 – March 5, 1937) was an eminent theologian and religious scholar in the German Protestant tradition. He is particularly remarkable for his contribution to the phenomenology of religious consciousness and his work in the fields of comparative religion and the history of religion. Based on his research and observation, Otto © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 4   developed the notion of the “numinous” to express the reality of the sacred as the defining element of religious experience. Otto thus stressed the unique and essentially non-rational nature of religious reality, one that he saw as irreducible to other elements. This stood in stark contrast to the commonly accepted view of his time that the real essence of religion lies in universal ethical teachings that can be rationally justified. In the late 18th, early 19th century when the Protestant Christian theological endeavor was trying to come to terms with the Enlightenment that sought to reduce Christian faith to rational explanation and ethical teaching, Otto raised a forceful “No!”, claiming religious experience is a human experience that cannot be reduced to reason or ethics; rather, it is its own reality, a category of human experience beyond rational categories. In the forward by Otto to the first English edition (1923) Otto wrote: This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for metaphysics, makes a serious attempt to analyze all the more exactly the feeling which remains where the concept fails and to introduce a terminology which is not any the more loose or indeterminate for having necessarily to make use of symbols. Otto registered a strong statement for the reality of religious experience – the experience of the “wholly other,” a designation for God which Karl Barth later picked up and popularized. The German title, Das Heilige, would be translated “the Sacred” or “the Holy”. The sub-title was “On the irrational element in the idea of the Divine and its relationship to the rational element.” Thus Otto in rigorous scholarly fashion was intent on taking into account both the rational and the irrational elements in the encounter with the Sacred Mystery – or, better, the rational and the trans-rational. It was his insistence on the trans or supra rational that set him apart from the climate of opinion of his times. Making a strong protest against the then current “domestication” of religious experience, his work made a strong impression and has had a renewal of interest from 1990 to the present, even though, as might be expected, he was criticized by conservatives because his insight called in question the exclusive claim of Christian theology, recognizing as he did, the common nature of religious experience in whatever tradition. He was criticized also by those who saw religion as simply ethics with a touch of passion. In spite of criticism from right and left, his work remains a significant marker for the reality of the religious phenomenon as a non-reducible, original category in its own right and, obviously, his work is a key element in the movement toward inter-religious dialogue and the study of comparative religions and the history of religion. The feeling which remains when the concept fails – I suspect that statement fascinates me because maybe it defines me – literally from youth trying to understand rationally what I have experienced beyond reason – the feeling that © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 5   cannot be denied even when I cannot explain it in terms of the concepts of rational discourse. The band of Jesus’ followers no doubt stayed together, no doubt bewildered, no doubt wondering what was next, no doubt sharing their loss, their grief and yet their sense that somehow, someway He was with them still. “He lives,” they exclaimed. They went back to their Scriptures, they tried to make sense of their experience. And then it was the Jewish Festival of Shavuot, the commemoration of the giving of the Ten Commandments fifty days after the Exodus. Jews came from throughout the empire to celebrate the Festival in Jerusalem and it happened – an overwhelming sense of the Presence of the Spirit of Jesus who was understood to be the Messiah, the word for anointed in Hebrew – the Spirit of Jesus which was the Spirit of God. It was an experience of the presence of God and they knew the ecstasy of being lost in wonder, love and praise. We have the event recorded in Acts 2. The story as related there must have an historical core whatever the actual event entailed. I am not really concerned with precisely what happened except to say as the Jewish Jesus Movement moved out and eventually became a Jewish/Gentile Jesus movement, indeed, the Christian Church, this event was looked back to as the birth of the Christian movement. That there should be an encounter with God was not novel. I read from Isaiah 6, the familiar record of Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple in the eighth century B.C.E. wherein he heard his call and responded, “Here am I, send me.” In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty… and the angelic hosts called Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory. Isaiah writes of his horror before the awesome one, only to be touched, cleansed and assured by the angel ministering at the altar. What do you make of that? I also read from Mark’s Gospel. Before there was Pentecost or Easter or Good Friday, there was Jesus’ ministry. For Isaiah it was a time of crisis – the king was dead. For Jesus it was the Roman Imperial domination. John the Baptist was leading a Jewish renewal movement. Jesus came by and was baptized by John and as he emerged from the waters …he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Mark then tells us that the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and then interestingly Mark tells us, after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news. Then Mark tells us Jesus called his disciples and the preaching tour in Galilee ensued. I don’t think I ever juxtaposed the vision of Isaiah and the baptismal epiphany of Jesus before but it is interesting that both occurred at a time of political/social crisis. Both were grasped by a calling. Isaiah spoke of a people walking in darkness seeing a great light, a people to whom a child was born who would be among other designations the Prince of Peace. He spoke of the birth of a child who would be named Immanuel, a name signifying “God with us.” And again he wrote of a shoot from the stump of Jesse upon whom the Spirit of the Lord would rest. Don’t hear me attempting as is common in classic orthodoxy to see Isaiah predicting the birth and ministry of Jesus. What I am really attempting to suggest is the reality of the encounter with God, the reality of spiritual experience wherein is sensed a calling to point to an alternative world – a world marked by justice, compassion and peace. This was Israel’s vision at its finest as it came to expression through the prophetic word. And the same was true of the ministry of Jesus – a vision for which he was crucified by the established powers of Temple and Empire. So here we are on Pentecost. We have a story, the story of Jesus who emerges from the story of Israel and, in the wake of his life, death and ongoing presence, there is an overpowering experience of Jesus’ continuing presence and power calling those gathered followers to get on with the cause, to proclaim Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. And we are here this evening because they did! The Jesus Movement was born and 2000 years later the story has reached us – the story of the Way of Jesus, the way of love, the way of peace. Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday. I’m sure you have been bored to death with sermons on the Triune God. I remember one I preached a few years ago – “One plus One plus One = One”. Rather cute I thought. Some of the finest minds the human family has produced have wrestled in deep philosophical endeavor to understand, define, describe the doctrine of the Trinity. Profound human thought has labored at the task. In a sermon from Riverside Church in New York City, the late great preacher, William Sloan Coffin, © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 7   referred to the primary author of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, Tertullian, and then wrote, I mention Tertullian’s debating because all doctrines really are born in debate. They are correctives, a way of saying “No, no, it’s this way, not that!” “God in three persons” is a corrective to a monotheism too narrow to take in Christ, and a corrective to all forms of dualism that seek to divide the world between spirit and matter, or appearance and reality, or the forces of good versus the forces of evil. “Three in One” says “One God, one world.” The theological struggle to bring clarity to the nature of God has had its place and in no way do I denigrate the theological endeavor of the centuries of the Christian tradition. As I said above, that task has engaged the finest minds of the human family over the centuries. I do think however we can perhaps see the whole religious phenomenon, including the Christian faith, more simply from where we are in the unfolding human story. All genuine religion is trinitarian. There is the mystery, the holy source, ground and goal of Being. There is the breakthrough of that Holy One, whether to Moses, Isaiah or Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed. And out of the respective encounters and callings there emerges a vision, a light, a teaching, a way. And the visionary responds to the encounter and call and gathers a community which adopts the vision and follows the way, creating rites and rituals, prayers, observances and sacraments, by which to keep the story alive and to be reminded of the way, and by means of which to teach the convert and the rising generation. The observances form the rhythm, the liturgy of life as it were, and shape the community, giving it form and identity. That’s why I, admittedly playfully, suggest we form the Church of the Holy Seasons. It is in the annual observance of the flashpoints of the Christian story that we remember the Story, that we are moved in our depths by that which has formed us, that we are touched anew with the Grace we first knew as we embraced the story and sensed we are embraced by the good and gracious God toward which it all points. The Holy Trinity? Simple: The Creative Mystery, our Source, Ground and Goal, has become human – has a face and breathes on us the breath/wind of life, so we know beyond knowing, for where the concept fails there is a feeling that remains and it is love and grace and peace. The Church of the Holy Seasons – we need a name because Christ Community Church is a name no more. In an E-zine, Ian articulated very well why it was time © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 8   – I would say overtime – that the name be changed. The logic of names and the reason for the change are expressed very well. I agree totally. Sometimes one understands oneself best by realizing what one is not. Ian and his leadership people have named themselves by that they are becoming and have become. Only one statement with which I disagree in Ian’s piece – saying they had many names submitted that expressed the need to “move from a narrow Christian name to something more universal and inclusive.” I suggest Christ Community was not a “narrow Christian name;” quite the contrary, it defined our movement to becoming a truly ecumenical community. Furthermore we put into practice the insight of Rudolf Otto that there is a common element in all religious experience – the revealing of the hidden mystery that is God beyond all human conceptions. Interfaith experience was a marvelous dimension of our community life. What that did, however, was, in understanding the other, help us to understand ourselves at a deeper level. I would suggest we became more Christian, that is, more reflective of the Spirit of Jesus even as we affirmed the truth and beauty of other ways. I bring this up because it is a teaching moment – maybe to create clarity as to why you are here and not there. One makes a choice to experience the Universal in the particular or to seek a Universal without particular definition. It is possible our brothers and sisters will be proven right over time. Perhaps the particular traditions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and all other traditions will fade and die in their particularity. If so some new vision/way/tradition will rise and fulfill the hunger of the human heart for the experience of God. To be honest, I’m not interested in that. I have no need or even curiosity about such a possible spiritual future. Bless those who do but as for me it is the Church of the Holy Seasons – it is the Holy Mystery that has a human face by whose grace the Spirit mantles my whole being. I would be so blessed if my children’s children’s children were marked with baptismal water in the sign of the cross. If our future generation were familiar with a table set with bread and wine, if they got goose bumps singing “Silent Night, Holy Night,” “O, Sacred Head, Now Wounded;” if they thrilled to the first organ chords of “Christ, the Lord, is risen today” and stood with moistened eyes as the choir sang “The Hallelujah Chorus,” if they sang “Spirit of the Living God, Fall afresh on me” and if they experienced moments so freighted with eternity that they could but sing Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty Heaven and Earth are full of your glory! Want to join me in the Church of the Holy Seasons? © Grand Valley State University �Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem Page 9   Reference: Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). The Idea of the Holy. First published in 1918; Second edition, Oxford University Press, 1958. © 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 Scripture Text Isaiah 6:1-8, Mark 1:9-15 Location The location of the interview Spring Lake Country Club References Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy. 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1958 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-0-20100523 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-05-23 Title A name given to the resource The Feeling Which Remains When the Concept Fails 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 May 23, 2010 entitled "The Feeling Which Remains When the Concept Fails", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Spring Lake Country Club. Scripture references: Isaiah 6:1-8, Mark 1:9-15. 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 Genuine religion as trinitarian Pentecost https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be020c7fcf8cb03bfa426a4356089e08.pdf 895857fe09ab396a36d661fd1400712d PDF Text Text The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Richard A. Rhem The Community Artist and Speaker Series First Presbyterian Church Grand Haven, Michigan April 19, 2015 You might wonder why one would reach back to an obscure phrase taken from a rather heavy theological writing nearly one hundred years old to entitle a lecture today. I must admit I’ve shaken my head at myself many times in these past weeks of preparation for this lecture – shaken my head for agreeing to speak in the first place and, beyond that, for choosing this subject. A couple of years ago I gave what I declared to be my last lecture. The idea of a “Last Lecture” comes from a “Last Lecture” delivered at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. Randy Pausch on September 19, 2007. He had terminal pancreatic cancer – a fact known at the time that he spoke. His lecture was entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” He died on July 25, 2008. I really did think this kind of engagement was probably behind me. But with the invitation to give this lecture I couldn’t refuse, in spite of the wise counsel of Nancy, my wife. She probably didn’t want me to embarrass her in this fine congregation where she was baptized, confirmed and where she faithfully worshiped. When word got out that we were to be married, the pastor at the time said to me, “You will do anything to get my members, won’t you!” But, back to the question – why would I choose such an obscure subject? The answer I know stems from my obsession with the question of God – the question not whether God exists, but how to image God, how to speak of divine action, how to experience God. You might wonder how one could spend his whole life as a pastor/preacher/teacher and not have that figured out at age 80. I might respond that the problem of some pastors is that they figure it out too soon and avoid the anguish of the wrestle for the truth of God. For me God is and has been a moving target. From a wonderful home and family steeped in Reformed Christian faith blanketed with deep Dutch pietism, I have been on a journey trying to understand intellectually what I have always known experientially and that is the clue to my title selection – The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails. The title comes from a book, written by a German scholar, Rudolf Otto, a university professor of theology. He was born in 1869 and died in 1937. The book, Das Heilige, published in 1917, was translated into English by John W. Harvey in © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 2 1923 as The Idea of the Holy. A second edition was published in 1949 in which was included a Foreword to the first English edition by Rudolf Otto. In that Foreword Otto wrote: This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for metaphysic, makes a serious attempt to analyze all the more exactly the feeling which remains where the concept fails….” Otto defined the Holy as that which is numinous – in Otto’s definition, a “nonrational, non-sensory experience of feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self.” Numinous derives from the Latin numin (divine power). The numinous is a mystery marked by fascination and terror at the same time. It must be noted that the terror and fascination is not simply an experience within the being or mind of the human, but that which exists outside the one experiencing the numinous as mystery. In his Preface to the second edition of his translation of Otto’s work, Harvey writes: The word ‘numinous’ has been widely received as a happy contribution to the theological vocabulary, as standing for that aspect of deity which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational or ethical terms. But it is Otto’s purpose to emphasize that this is an objective reality, not merely a subjective feeling in the mind; and he uses the word feeling in this connexion not as equivalent to emotion but as a form of awareness that is neither that of ordinary perceiving nor of ordinary conceiving. Certainly he is very much concerned to describe as precisely and identify as unmistakably as possible, by hint, illustration, and analogy, the nature of the subjective feelings which characterize this awareness; but that is because it is only through them that we can come to an apprehension of their object. The ambiguity attaching both to the English feeling and the German Gefühl should not therefore mislead us. We do after all speak of feeling the beauty of a landscape or feeling the presence of a friend, and our ‘feeling’ in these cases is not merely an emotion engendered or stimulated in the mind but also recognition of something in the objective situation awaiting discovery and acknowledgement. It is analogously to such uses that Otto speaks of the ‘feeling of the numinous’ or (less aptly) the ‘numinous feeling’. As one of his compatriots, the philosopher Rickert, put it: ‘by the “numinous” is indicated not the psychological process but its object, the Holy’. So far then, from stressing the place of the subjective state of mind in the religious experience, Otto’s emphasis is always upon the objective reference, and upon subjective feelings only as the indispensable clues to this. (p. xvi F) © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 3 Thus the Holy Mystery is not something simply in our mind but it is the experience in mind and heart that points beyond itself to the Mystery – to God. I use heart and mind – perhaps better to speak of our being. Otto was saying clearly the experience of God transcends the mind – reason cannot discover the Holy Mystery – the concept fails! But reason hitting the ceiling, as it were, feeling remains – we “know” what cannot be known but only experienced. In answer to my opening question, why one would reach back to theological writing nearly one hundred years old for a title to a lecture today – it identifies my spiritual journey – an ongoing journey stimulated anew by this occasion – the heart/mind wrestle for understanding the deep mystery of our human being before the face of Mystery. As I said above, God has been for me a moving target. I am probably only 180 degrees from the God of my childhood which I carried into my early ministry. God was in heaven, having created the universe and the human being along with all life on earth. In the fullness of time that same God visited the planet Earth in the Word made flesh, Jesus: life, death, resurrection, ascension and we await the grand finale – the great judgment morning, the issue of which will be salvation or damnation – Heaven or Hell. As I relate that vision of God and creation and its issue, it seems so far away and long ago. I was a theist. The term derives from the Greek theos, meaning “god.” I suspect most of us at least began there and perhaps many of you are still there, you not having wrestled with the God question. My early preaching and teaching were from that perspective. But eventually that conventional conception of God was called in question as I engaged in pastoral ministry. Questions arose. I won’t bother you with the stories, the issues, the questions, but eventually I needed to go back to school to get the education I never had, largely because I was not open to learn. I was most fortunate to be able to return to study, to engage in graduate work in The Netherlands, the University of Leiden, with Professor Hendrikus Berkhof. My choice of him was sealed when I first met him in his study in his home. A widely recognized scholar, he was as well gracious and cordial. As I arose to leave I noticed a mimeographed paper pinned to the drape that separated his study from the rest of his house. I went to read what was written; what was written changed my life. The lines were those of Alfred Lord Tennyson: Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. I remember the moment vividly. I had found my professor! © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 4 For those who have been with me for some time, this is a familiar account but I must, in this retrospection, underline it here because I was at a critical point in my life and ministry. My “little system” had hit a wall. My whole ‘system’ was based on the absolute authority of the Bible as the God-breathed, inerrant, infallible truth. I was devoid of any sense of how the critical studies of Scripture had revealed it as a very human product that was a witness to revelation – that is, the report of an experience of unveiling, not the unveiling itself. I came to view Scripture as a human, fallible witness whose purpose was not to teach history or provide a scientific account of creation but in stories, myths and parables to witness to the Creator, Redeemer God. I really had to start over, to begin again to find a understanding of God, of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection – in a word, a fresh understanding of Christian faith. My mind had been challenged to think critically even though I never lost the sense of the grace of God that embraced me. Mind inquiring; Heart resting. That was my situation as I returned from four years of serious study and began again to lead a congregation. The wrestle for the truth of God engaged my mind as I experienced very great grace indeed from the people who invited me to continue my quest as their pastor. Along the way on one’s journey there are landmarks that one recognizes as turning points in one’s journey. One such critical moment for me was reading a book on Christology by the British New Testament scholar John Knox. In his discussion of the pre-existence of Jesus, which he took as symbolic story, not literal fact, he related how such a symbolic story functions for those who have moved beyond a literal view of Scripture. For a story like this can speak to us of matters beyond our understanding only if it has also spoken to our understanding – and, within the limits of our powers, been understood. There are two conditions under which a significant symbol loses (or, perhaps better, is shown to have lost) its vitality and power. One of these is when our hearts no longer need it, when all we want to say or need to say (or to have said to us) can be said without it. The other is when our minds, failing to discern in it the coherency of truth, are forced to reject it. For our hearts cannot finally find true what our minds find false. If they could, we should be hopelessly divided and any firm grasp of reality would be impossible. What we mean by ‘the heart’ in this connection is not something alien or counter to the mind, but is the mind itself quickened and extended. The wisdom the heart has found, if it be wisdom and not fantasy, is the same wisdom the mind all the while has been feeling after, if haply it might find it. It is a wisdom which, far from by-passing the understanding, enters through the doors of it, fills and stretches the space of it, and only then breaks through and soars above it. © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 5 (The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, p. 106f) For our hearts cannot finally find true what our minds find false. I wrote it this way: The heart cannot rest where the mind cannot follow. If I were to have one statement to summarize my spiritual journey, that would be it. That journey from far right orthodox conservative to the liberal left end I can explain simply due to the fact that my mind, exercising critical rationality, creates the only possibility for my heart to be at rest. I suspect someone might ask then why I so value the claim of Rudolf Otto that the experience of God lies not within reason’s grasp but only in the feeling that remains when the concept fails. To the extent I understand myself, I desire to be fully aware of the amazing world of exploding knowledge of which we are a part. An honest spiritual quest for the experience of God must be open to the whole spectrum of human knowledge. Otto’s claim is not that “the concept” not be preserved to the end but rather when reason’s quest is exhausted, one will not have experienced God because, as he insisted, God is not apprehended at the end of the human exercise of our critical faculties but only in the feeling that remains when reason’s probe has come up empty. Yet, if faithfully persevered to its end, failing to come to the experience of God, there is a feeling that remains. As we have noted earlier, Otto was saying the experience of God transcends the mind – the concept fails, but beyond the mind there is a feeling – not a subjective feeling, but a sense of the “numinous” – that aspect of deity which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational terms. Otto uses feeling not as an equivalent to emotion but as a form of awareness that is neither that of ordinary perceiving or of ordinary conceiving. As noted above, one of his contemporaries, the philosopher Rickert, explained “by the ‘numinous’ is indicated not the psychological process but its object, The Holy. Otto’s emphasis is always upon the objective reference, and upon subjective feelings only as the indispensable clues to this.” (p. xvi f). In her monumental study The Case for God, Karen Armstrong confirms Otto’s thesis. She puts the God question, the whole human spiritual endeavor, in the context of the whole human story. The persons, schools, movements to which she points and which she discusses have long been familiar to me through long years of theological work. But the picture she paints, the story she tells casts a fresh light on the whole human effort of “groping after God.” The book is divided into two parts. Part I deals with “The Unknown God,” covering the centuries from 30,000 B.C.E. to 1500 C. E. Part II explains “The Modern God” (1500 C.E. to the present). There is a richness and fullness in the story she tells and I will in no way give a full analysis of the work. What I do hope to do is lift up what is so striking in her work as it relates to our present theme _ © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 6 the relation of the heart to the mind, faith to reason, religion as a way of life and practice and religion as a rational dogmatic system to be assented to by our reason. With voluminous documentation, Armstrong established her major thesis that historically, from the earliest evidence of religious activity until the advent of the modern period, religious practice as ritual found transcendence in myth. She notes that many date the beginning of the modern period with Columbus’ voyage in 1492. While still a solidly Christian nation with Catholic monarchs, Spain was in an age of transition. Armstrong writes, The people of Europe had started their journey to modernity, but the traditional myths of religion still gave meaning to their rational and scientific explorations. (p. 162) But that would change in the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the early breakthroughs in the investigations of the natural sciences, for example the work of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Armstrong gives a rich picture of the interplay of reforming religion – Catholic and Protestant and the unlocking of the secrets of the universe. With the advent of the modern period, religious practice changed and, Armstrong claims, has brought us to the present unhappy place of aggressive, dogmatic fundamentalism and equally aggressive, militant atheism. In the pre-modern period religion was not primarily something people believed but something they did – its truth acquired by practical action. For example, she explains it is no use imagining you will be able to drive a car if you only read the manual or study the rules of the road. It is this perspective Karen Armstrong brings to the whole purview of religious history. The insight, wisdom and comfort of good religion are not the result of believing certain “truths” or creedal propositions but disciplined practice. She points to the musician lost in her music or the dancer inseparable from the dance – a satisfaction, she contends, that goes deeper than merely “feeling good.” It can lead to “ekstasis” – a “stepping outside” the norm. Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. This will be one of the major themes of this book. It is no use magisterially weighing up the teachings of religion to judge their truth or falsehood before embarking on a religious way of life. You will discover their truth – or lack of it – only if you translate these doctrines into ritual or ethical action. Like any skill, religion requires perseverance, hard work, and discipline. Some people will be better at it than others, some appallingly inept, and some will miss the point entirely. But those who do not apply themselves will get nowhere at all. Religious people find it hard to explain how their rituals and practices work, just as a skater may not be fully conscious of the physical laws that enable her to glide over the ice on a thin blade. (p. xiii) © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 7 For those who engage in religious practice – meditating, participation in liturgy and ritual – witness to the discovery of a transcendent dimension of life. That has been a fact of human life, but it was impossible to explain what that transcendent dimension was in terms of reason. Armstrong writes, During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time that historians call the early modern period, Western people began to develop an entirely new kind of civilization, governed by scientific rationality and based economically on technology and capital investment. Logos achieved such spectacular results that myth was discredited and the scientific method was thought to be the only reliable means of attaining truth. This would make religion difficult, if not impossible. As theologians began to adopt the criteria of science, the mythoi of Christianity were interpreted as empirically, rationally, and historically verifiable and forced into a style of thinking that was alien to them. Philosophers and scientists could no longer see the point of ritual, and religious knowledge became theoretical rather than practical. We lost the art of interpreting the old tales of gods walking the earth, dead men striding out of tombs, or seas parting miraculously. We began to understand concepts such as faith, revelation, myth, mystery, and dogma in a way that would have been very surprising to our ancestors. In particular, the meaning of the word “belief” changed, so that a credulous acceptance of creedal doctrines became the prerequisite of faith, so much so that today we often speak of religious people as “believers,” as though accepting orthodox dogma “on faith” were their most important activity. (p. xv) That paragraph really expresses the heart of Armstrong’s contention as she addresses our contemporary situation with The Case for God. She does a marvelous job of describing the rise of modernity as it emerged from the late medieval period – the early development of the scientific method, the inductive method of empirical research and experimentation. She chronicles with clarity the triumph of logos in the mastering of the natural world, the growing consensus that logos was the sole means of acquiring true knowledge and how, in turn, the theologians sought by means of rational thought to express religious truth. Such a move by the religious scholars to abandon mythical thinking and seek to establish God-talk and spiritual reality by means of the canons of human reason – while understandable given the climate of opinion of modernity, especially the Enlightenment – was a disaster for it is an impossibility. And, further, it has led to the rejection of the spiritual dimension of our human experience and the abandonment of religious practice wherein the human family had found hope, comfort and healing. She describes the consequences of the move in the modern age of religious discourse from myth to reason. © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 8 This rationalized interpretation of religion has resulted in two distinctively modern phenomena: fundamentalism and atheism. The two are related. The defensive piety popularly known as fundamentalism erupted in almost every major faith during the twentieth century. In their desire to produce a wholly rational, scientific faith that abolished mythos in favor of logos, Christian fundamentalists have interpreted scripture with a literalism that is unparalleled in the history of religion. In the United States, protestant fundamentalists have evolved an ideology known as “creation science” that regards the mythoi of the Bible as scientifically accurate. They have, therefore, campaigned against the teaching of evolution in the public schools, because it contradicts the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis. (p. xv) Armstrong points out that atheism is rarely “a blanket denial of the sacred per se” but most often a rejection of some particular conception of the Divine. This can be demonstrated in the rise of classical Western atheism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as its present expression. Atheism is therefore parasitically dependent on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes its reverse mirror image. Classical Western atheism was developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, whose ideology was essentially a response to and dictated by the theological perception of God that had developed in Europe and the United States during the modern period. The more recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris is rather different, because it has focused exclusively on the God developed by the fundamentalisms, and all three insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion. This has weakened their critique, because fundamentalism is in fact a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend. But the “new atheists” command a wide readership, not only in secular Europe but even in the more conventionally religious United States. The popularity of their books suggests that many people are bewildered and even angered by the God concept they have inherited. (p. xvi) But the whole broad picture of human knowing has undergone and is undergoing a major shift in understanding. Our era has no name except “post-modernity.” Obviously the label points to the contention that we as a human family in the pursuit of truth, knowledge of our world, have moved beyond the assumptions of the modern age with its certainty of logos as the only and final arbiter of truth. Postmodernity, the American philosopher John D. Caputo contends, should be “a more enlightened Enlightenment, that is no longer taken in by the dream of pure objectivity.” © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 9 Armstrong concludes her chapter on “Death of God?” quoting Caputo: If modern atheism is the rejection of a modern God, then the delimitation of modernity opens up another possibility, less the resuscitation of premodern theism than the chance of something beyond both the theism and the atheism of modernity. (p. 317) Armstrong concludes the section, “…how best can we move beyond premodern theism into a perception of ‘God’ that truly speaks to all the complex realities and needs of our time?” That is really the question in my mind which called out these deliberations – the need to move beyond the traditional theism which still prevails in much of the Church and Christian practice and yet be alive to an experience of the Mystery beneath, above and beyond our cosmic journey. Armstrong summed up our contemporary human religious situation as “the present unhappy place of aggressive dogmatic fundamentalism and equally aggressive, militant atheism.” That being the case, how can we move beyond such an impasse in which situation recent religious surveys indicate a growing percentage of people registering as “nones” – simply dropping out of religious engagement. Armstrong suggests “the only viable ‘natural theology’ lies in religious experience” and she counsels rather than looking for God “outside ourselves”…in the cosmos, we should, like St. Augustine, turn within and become aware of the way quite ordinary responses segue into “otherness.” Otherness – experience that creates the feeling that remains beyond all intellectual pursuit, the sense of something that can only be trusted, never proved, yet because of the experience no proof is required. In the New Testament the Johannine writings have been most helpful to me in wrestling with the God quest. John’s Gospel begins, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Someone has translated that – In the beginning was the Intention. I find that helpful because it removes the term with so much baggage; everyone “knows” what God means. And then in verse 14, the Intention became flesh or human, and in verse 18 we read, “No one has ever seen God but the Intention that became human made God known.” That Intention in flesh, of course, is Jesus. To be fair to the text, the writer intends Jesus in flesh to reveal the God of Creation. Nonetheless imagine with me. Could it be that the Intention behind creation is revealed in the Way of Jesus? © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 10 Cosmologists tell us that our cosmos reaches back 13.7 billion years and who knows the future eons of time. And they speak of multiverses. Further, the more they know, the greater the mysteries of the unknown grow. But that is not our quest nor our problem. Here we are, the human race on planet Earth in all its richness of plant and animal life. What if the Intention for planet Earth, for humankind, was the Way of Jesus as reflected in the Sermon on the Mount? For example, Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. And again, You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous…Be perfect (mature), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (mature). In Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, we read, Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. In the First Letter of John we read, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God…. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. The writer repeats the statement of the Gospel, No one has ever seen God. But then he greatly expands where God may be found – not just in Jesus but, If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. He writes further, God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Am I arranging John’s writings to say what I sense is a possible description of the Creative Source of reality? Is reality the fruit of Love? Of course I am. But, what if the biblical writer was trying to say more than he knew? What if the Intention of the whole creative process is Love? We are not doing very well, one might respond, and that is sadly true unless one takes the really long-range view from human origins, the rise from savagery, to the present, once again beset by © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 11 religious violence, yet with hope for a more humane world if only love’s way, the Way of Jesus, were enfleshed. Let me review: we are seeking beyond traditional theism and atheism some ultimate that creates a feeling beyond reason, a feeling that remains and assures us there is ultimate meaning to our human existence. I turned to the Johannine writings suggesting the Divine Intention is Love embodied in the human. Let me set before you a current situation facing our nation – the negotiation with Iran and give some background on the whole nuclear threat. The big issue today is trust. The President and Secretary of State insist it is not just trust but trust and verify. Nonetheless trust is key. In his book House of War, James Carroll gives the history of an early nuclear critical decision. I addressed this history a few years ago, from which I quote. Let me refer to just two critical moments in the history through which we have lived. The first moment was what to do with the newly discovered nuclear power. Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote a memorandum to President Truman. Carroll writes: It was another of those events dated September 11, each one the center of a world in collision with other worlds. The impact of such collisions is our subject. On September 11, 1945, four years to the day after the groundbreaking of the Pentagon, fifty-six years to the day before the Al Qaeda attack on the Pentagon, less than a month after Japan’s surrender, and just over a month after the detonation of the Nagasaki bomb, Stimson composed an urgent “Memorandum for the President,” which began, “Subject: Proposed Action for Control of Atomic Bombs.” First Stimson told the President what the dawning of the nuclear age meant: If the atomic bomb were merely another though more devastating military weapon to be assimilated into our pattern of international relations, it would be one thing. We could then follow the old custom of secrecy and nationalistic military superiority relying on international caution to prescribe [sic] future use of the weapon as we did with gas. But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into the old concepts. I think it really caps the climax of the race between man’s growing technical power for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control and group-control – his moral power. If so, our method of approach to the Russians © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 12 is a question of the most vital importance in the evolution of human progress… The crux of the problem is Russia. Carroll comments further: “To put the matter concisely,” Stimson wrote, he proposed that the United States take immediate steps to “enter into an arrangement with the Russians, the general purpose of which would be to control and limit the use of the atomic bomb.” He suggested that by bringing the Soviets into our confidence, they would have reason to believe it when Americans said that “we would stop work on any further improvement in, or manufacture of, the bomb as a military weapon, provided the Russians and the British would do likewise.” This meant, and Stimson proposed it, that Washington would “impound what bombs we now have in the United States provided the Russians and the British would agree with us that in no event will they or we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless all three governments agree to that use.” Give up the secret. Give up the monopoly. Give up sovereignty over use. Give up control of existing bombs. Stimson, in the cover letter that accompanied this memo, summed up his proposal by using the word “share” twice. (p. 113f) Carroll relates how Stimson’s grasp of the situation with Russia in light of the atomic bomb was countered by Secretary of State James Byrnes. Carroll’s account is so fascinating because he gives us a glimpse behind the scenes from the perspective of history as to the tensions and arguments that raged at the time. Writing of Stimson, Carroll relates, So now he warned that relations with Moscow “May be perhaps irretrievably embittered by the way in which we approach the solution of the bomb with Russia. For if we fail to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicion and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase.” This reference to the atomic bomb “ostentatiously on our hip” is a tip off that this memo was essentially an argument against fiercely anti-Soviet positions then being taken by Secretary of State Byrnes, who had already proven to be something of a nemesis. Stimson had, the week before, criticized the way Byrnes was preparing for an upcoming meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London: “Brynes [is] very much against any attempt to © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 13 cooperate with Stalin. His mind is full of the problems with the coming meeting of the foreign ministers and he looks to having the presence of the bomb in his pocket, so to speak, as a great weapon to get through the thing he has.” Very much against Byrnes, in one of the most remarkable statements ever made by an American statesman, Stimson presumed to assert in his September 11 letter to Truman, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show him your distrust.” I conclude the first critical moment by underscoring these last lines – the matter of trust. Trust or fear leading to mistrust; fear that often blooms into paranoia and a world community marked by paranoia is a dangerous place. Do you sense that the whole disastrous tragedy of the Cold War could have been avoided? Do you sense that at that critical moment in the history of the twentieth century trust could have changed the impasse of terror through which we lived on the brink of disaster? One more critical moment – the breaking down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. We remember it well – the euphoria, the relief, the high hopes for a world at peace. From James Carroll filling in the background of the Reagan/Gorbachev encounters, I was struck by the stature of the Russian leader. It was he, not Mr. Reagan that created the possibility and effected the reality of the end of the Cold War. But this I point to because for the United States it was another missed opportunity – a missed opportunity to disarm the nuclear weapons that both sides stockpiled because of that earlier missed opportunity when we could have averted that arms race before it began. Russia wanted to disarm; we did not. I find it fascinating – even amazing that we repeat the score over and over. I am quite aware that much is at stake and I am far removed from centers of power and the inner workings of international affairs. Nonetheless, I will live and die in the Way of Jesus, the way of love, of grace calling for trust. Speaking thus, please understand I claim no divine insight or infallible truth. This role for me is one of bearing witness to my best wisdom and understanding. I am well aware the Way of Jesus is a costly way that goes against all worldly wisdom. Jesus was crucified. © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 14 Following in his steps, Gandhi was assassinated. Following in his steps, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Love as embodied in Jesus calls for loving the enemy, for trusting, for risking all for peace. Costly to be sure, but it must be abundantly clear Violence begets violence; Hate begets hate; Distrust begets distrust. What if the Eternal Intention was really enfleshed in Jesus? Then living in radical love is the only way to realize peace on Earth, in the cosmos. God is not to be found in our rational inquiry. The quest hits a wall. If God is Love, then to love is to come to an awareness of God in the feeling that remains where our rational search has failed. Sometimes our human experience itself would give us a clue to Love at the core. Let me close with two illustrations – one from history, one from the arts. Here is a report from Flanders, Belgium, December 24, 1914, as related by Jeremy Rifkin in his book The Empathic Civilization. The evening of December 24, 1914, Flanders. The first world war in history was entering into its fifth month. Millions of soldiers were bedded down in makeshift trenches latticed across the European countryside. In many places the opposing armies were dug in within thirty to fifty yards of each other and within shouting distance. The conditions were hellish. The bitter cold winter air chilled to the bone. The trenches were waterlogged. Soldiers shared their quarters with rats and vermin. Lacking adequate latrines, the stench of human excrement was everywhere. The men slept upright to avoid the mud and sludge of their makeshift arrangements. Dead soldiers littered the no-man’s-land between opposing forces, the bodies left to rot and decompose within yards of their still-living comrades who were unable to collect them for burial. As dusk fell over the battlefields, something extraordinary happened. The Germans began lighting candles on the thousands of small Christmas trees that had been sent to the front to lend some comfort to the men. The German soldiers then began to sing Christmas carols – first “Silent Night,” then a stream of other songs followed. The English soldiers were stunned. One soldier, gazing in disbelief at the enemy lines, said the blazed trenches looked “like the footlights of a theater.” The English soldiers responded with applause, at first tentatively, then with exuberance. They began to sing Christmas carols back to their German foes to equally robust applause. © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 15 A few men from both sides crawled out of their trenches and began to walk across the no-man’s-land toward each other. Soon hundreds followed. As word spread across the front, thousands of men poured out of their trenches. They shook hands, exchanged cigarettes and cakes and showed photos of their families. They talked about where they hailed from, reminisced about Christmases past, and joked about the absurdity of war. The next morning, as the Christmas sun rose over the battlefield of Europe, tens of thousands of men – some estimates put the number as high as 100,000 soldiers – talked quietly with one another. Enemies just twenty-four hours earlier, they found themselves helping each other bury their dead comrades. More than a few pickup soccer matches were reported. Even officers at the front participated, although when the news filtered back to the high command in the rear, the generals took a less enthusiastic view of the affair. Worried that the truce might undermine military morale, the generals quickly took measures to rein in their troops. The surreal “Christmas truce” ended as abruptly as it began – all in all, a small blip in a war that would end in November 1918 with 8.5 million military deaths in the greatest episode of human carnage in the annals of history until that time. For a few short hours, no more than a day, tens of thousands of human beings broke ranks, not only from their commands but from their allegiances to country, to show their common humanity. Thrown together to maim and kill, they courageously stepped outside of their institutional duties to commiserate with one another and to celebrate one another’s lives. An accident or reflective of the deepest core of our human nature – the enfleshment of the Eternal Intention? One more story from the drama Les Miserables. Jean Valjean finally free from twenty years’ imprisonment for stealing bread to feed his sister’s family. He finds hospitality at the house of the Bishop but in the night he steals the Bishop’s silver. The police approach him, bring him to the Bishop, as he had claimed the Bishop gave him the silver. The Bishop confirms his story claiming he did give the silver to Jean Valjean. And then after this act of pure grace, the Bishop tells Jean Valjean he has claimed his soul for God. By grace transformed, Valjean goes on to live an extraordinary life marked by grace upon grace. The drama ends with Valjean, an old man, sung to by the young woman he rescued as a child. She sings, To love another person is to see the face of God. In the film version Valjean is greeted at the Gates of Paradise by the Bishop whose act of grace transformed his life. Angels and those whose lives he touched © Grand Valley State University �Richard A. Rhem The Feeling Which Remains Where the Concept Fails Page 16 guide him into Eternal Light – one of the most powerful dramatic moments one can imagine. Indeed, to love is to experience beyond reason’s deepest probe, a feeling beyond reason’s search or word to convey. Two stories of love in human experience, one historical, one a drama. Do they not move us at the core of our being? And might that feeling stem from an awareness of something ultimate, of the Love that is at the core of Being? Of course, there is no proof for that because reasoned proof has no place in the quest for the Ultimate Reality, call it God or call it Love. But I have a Feeling…! © 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 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Event Grand Haven First Presbyterian Church, The Community Artist and Speaker Series Location The location of the interview Grand Haven, Michigan References Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige, 1917, John Knox, The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, James Carroll, House of War, Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization 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 RA-3-20150419 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-19 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource The Feeling Which Remains Where The Concept Fails 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> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 19, 2015 entitled "The Feeling Which Remains Where The Concept Fails", on the occasion of Grand Haven First Presbyterian Church, The Community Artist and Speaker Series, at Grand Haven, Michigan. Tags: Search for God; Mystery of God; Love at the Core of the Universe; Religious Practice. Scripture references: Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige, 1917, John Knox, The Humanity and Divinity of Christ, Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, James Carroll, House of War, Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/755364e6737cac9e9d4b30d5945636b9.jpg cbc3ebf87677a3ee00c1e972605c575b 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 Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3537.O934 F54 1902 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 DC-01_Bindings0458 Title A name given to the resource The Fifth String Description An account of the resource Binding of The Fifth String, by John Philip Sousa, published by The Bowen Merrill Company, 1902. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1902 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/25fe20afb99a203d1c025c4d85962bc0.pdf c322e8723b1bca6f0c1acef08a43ef53 PDF Text Text April 11, 2020 I am currently on Day 30 of quarantining at home and there are still at least 19 days to go. I think it is likely Governor Whitmer’s “Stay Home Stay Safe” shelter in place order will get extended. The order was originally signed on March 23 and was meant to last through April 13, and is now lasting through April 30. Nearly every day over the last month has been an emotional rollercoaster, fluctuating sometimes hourly between feelings of helplessness, depression, gratitude, peace, and hopefulness. Some days have been harder than others, and I truly have to take everything day by day. As of April 3, the CDC recommends that everyone wear masks in public now, not just those that are ill, and it’s unsettling to walk around grocery stores seeing everyone’s face covered. I miss being around people and feeling connected. Taking daily walks and connecting with friends over FaceTime has been helpful. I’m staying in Grand Rapids away from my family for the shelter in place. Originally, I’m from Wayne County which is currently experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 in the United States. My mom works in a hospital and my dad works with prisoners, so we decided it would be safer for me to stay in Grand Rapids to limit exposure. It’s been hard to be away from my family, and I can’t help but worry about them, but we are all being cautious and staying safe as best we can. I am an occupational therapy student in my second semester of graduate school, and just finished up my fourth week of online classes. It’s taken me a lot of time to process my thoughts and feelings amid everything that’s going on, but I feel like I can articulate it better now. The first two weeks of this were just surreal and felt like I was living in a dystopian fever dream, but I’m finally settling in to a new “normal.” First and foremost, my faculty have gone above and beyond to make the transition to online learning as easy as it can be, and their unwavering dedication to students remains truer than ever. They check in often with emails and video messages, and they have all made themselves available to talk over a myriad of platforms. They are keeping us on track with our content by posting presentations and online modules though I haven’t had any synchronous lectures yet. They are also doing “wellness checks” and making sure we are all hanging in there mentally. It is so evident they love and care for us as people first and students second, and I am so grateful to go to a school with such dedicated faculty. The other students in my cohort and I compiled a video to say hi, share our thanks, and just let our faculty see our faces. It was a fun project to put together and reminded me that while we are all physically apart, the sense of family and community remains. My cohort and my faculty truly feel like family to me, and I miss seeing them in class every day. I am a huge extrovert, so it’s been really tough emotionally and mentally to be away from everyone. However, on March 31, five other girls from my program and I chalked messages of encouragement (while maintaining social distancing and staying 6 feet apart) on the Medical Mile for our healthcare workers and it was very moving to see them smiling waving at us from within the hospital and know that our little act of kindness mattered. I am constantly being reminded that there is still good coming from this, and you don’t have to know how to sew face masks or make face shields in order to do your part. Here are some photos of the messages we shared: ��Without invalidating the bright spots that give me bursts of hope, the transition to online learning has been uncomfortable and disorienting. It’s so hard to be pulled out of our normal class routine when so much of our learning is clinical and hands on through lab and fieldwork experiences. I was in a fieldwork placement working with children aged 0-3 that was canceled. My second rotation that was set to take place in the summer has already been canceled and will be replaced with online simulations. Our professors have adapted labs to be done online at home, but it does not have the same effect as being in class. Additionally, with spring semester being online and summer semester still up in the air, I calculated that up to 33% of my master’s degree might be completed online. Not exactly the educational experience I had envisioned, but I have no choice but to go with it and trust that my incredible faculty will ensure I receive the high-quality education characteristic of Grand Valley. As sad as I am to be out of school for 2-3 months, at the end of March GVSU closed the CHS building to accommodate potential patient overflow from Spectrum Health, our lab departments donated 90,000 gloves to local hospitals, and our engineering college is currently producing face masks to help the PPE shortage. As always, I am still proud to be a Laker. Unsurprisingly, there have been some technical difficulties and blunders during this transition that have been a test of flexibility and adaptability. On April 6, my research team (myself and 3 other students) defended the proposal for our master’s project to our committee members via Zoom meeting. For attire, this meant a blazer on top and my pajama pants on the bottom! When we finished defending our presentation, the committee instructed us to leave the meeting so they could discuss our proposal and log back on in 10 minutes. I logged back onto the meeting as they were mid-deliberation and I couldn’t help but start laughing! We were all laughing, and it was definitely some comedic relief. The joys of relying on technology for everything these days. In case anyone is wondering, we passed the defense and get to proceed with our research! Additionally, I have been very fortunate in that I have been able to keep working during this shutdown. I work for the University Libraries as a Research Consultant, and our peer learning services have gone entirely online. It’s been a trial and error process, but I think it’s going well, and I feel grateful to still have a source of income. I used to sit at a table and work side by side with students to help them find research or talk about sources, and now I do it over Google Meet! A student shares their screen with me over the meeting, and I talk them through using Library Databases, developing search terms, etc. It’s been an interesting learning curve, but a very valuable experience and I’m glad we are able to continue supporting students as we wrap up the semester. Plus, it is nice to be able to stay connected with my boss and coworkers! Personally, I have struggled to find a structured routine at home that allows me to get things done at home, and it’s been very challenging to stay focused. It has been mostly challenging to compartmentalize and complete assignments knowing that thousands of people are dying and that our healthcare workers on the frontlines don’t have adequate protective equipment. I frequently get distracted when I’m working as I think about what the world will be like after this and worry about all the things in the future that will be permanently altered, both in my personal life and on a broader scale (national and global). I read an article about how we’re all �essentially going through the grieving process and it is so true. We’re grieving the loss of our routines, events being cancelled, the people we are losing to the virus, the economy, the state of the world in general. I try not to think about how I am being affected personally when it’s so much worse for so many people, but it’s hard not to be upset and anxious and distracted when the long-term prognosis for this is grim and sobering. It is all very overwhelming to think about while also trying to finish the semester. To wrap this up on a more positive note, over the last month I have seen some of the best of humanity. Yes, some people are hoarding toilet paper and being incredibly selfish, but that is all being outweighed by more people stepping up to be there for each other. Local restaurants have been ensuring children still get fed while school is cancelled for the year, automotive factories have halted production to make ventilators, people are sewing facemasks at home to donate to healthcare workers, and so much more. In order to help any way I can, I donated blood this last Tuesday (April 7) and the nurses said they’ve had to turn people away because all their appointments were full. These are wild, unprecedented times, but I am seeing that when the whole world has stopped, all that’s left is the people. We are all alone together, and we will get through it together. This is a quote I came across a few weeks ago as everything began shutting down that I’ve found helpful and comforting: “Conversations will not be cancelled. Relationships will not be cancelled. Love will not be cancelled. Songs will not be cancelled. Reading will not be cancelled. Self-care will not be cancelled. Hope will not be cancelled.” It is an important reminder that we will get to the other side of this together, and I am hopeful that we will be better for it. � 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 COVID-19 Journals Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Libraries Description An account of the resource This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled. The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. 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 The First 30 Days Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lowengruber, Natalie Description An account of the resource Journal of GVSU student Natalie Lowengruber's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020-04-11 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Epidemics Grand Valley State University College students Personal narratives COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COVID-19_2020-04-11_LoewengruberNatalie Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e622183f1e0cd091317afc0bbf39bdf2.mp3 abb62bb54b8c5ad6015d8b2001d3fcdb https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/144bbe34a716e35d9da20af0d9dd2d6f.pdf 7ca02a1137396715bda1969816873676 PDF Text Text The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Text: II Corinthians 5: 17; 6: 2 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Eastertide II, April 6, 1986 Transcription of the spoken sermon When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun. II Corinthians 5: 17 …The day of Salvation has dawned. II Corinthians 6: 2 May I teach you a rather difficult word, which for most of you would not be part of your ordinary conversation? It is ontology. It is the science of Being. It is a branch of Philosophy, which studies the essence of being or the structure of Reality. It derives from the Greek word for “being,” ousia. Ontology refers to what is: the structure of Reality, the way things are. Now, what has Ontology to do with the Gospel of Eastertide? Very much, indeed. Easter changed the Ontological structure of the Cosmos. With the Resurrection of Jesus, God created a whole new world, a new reality. The Gospel is the announcement of that new world. To "hear" the Gospel is to be introduced into a whole new Ontology. To realize this and to grasp it by faith is to experience The First Day of the Rest of Your Life. Paul had experienced it. Jesus revealed it to him as the Risen Lord in a vision. The whole structure of Reality was changed for Paul. In one of his letters he expressed it this way: When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun. For Paul, in Jesus' death and resurrection, the day of salvation has dawned. © Grand Valley State University   �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Let us begin by listening to what the text is teaching us about the way things really are - the reality of our world and thus the reality of our situation. …there is a new world, the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun. As we have moved together through Lent, Holy Week and celebrated Easter Sunday, we have been aware of two worlds, two kingdoms. We heard Paul's story: A man of impeccable credentials, according to human standards of judgment, who says, But all such assets I have written off because of Christ…. I count everything sheer loss, because all is far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. …all I care for is to know Christ, to experience the power of his resurrection… Paul ranked ahead of his fellows when judged by the performance principle. But that driven, compulsive need to establish and secure himself yielded no peace. Then he met Jesus. He learned life was not an achievement to be gained, but a gift to be received. He began to live by grace. It was the first day of the rest of his life. We have learned that grace does not free us from responsible commitment, but frees us to love as we have been loved. That is, to love unconditionally. That is the way God loves us. He demonstrated His love to us in that while we were yet enemies Christ died for us. Thus we saw that it is out of the abyss of love that grace flows, embracing us, melting our defenses, overcoming our weakness and our fear, our hostility. But on Palm Sunday we became very much aware that while the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of love and grace, has taken root in our old world in Jesus, yet the old world rages on refusing to let go. Jesus enters the City defenseless and vulnerable. He is totally free of worldly entanglement because he is wholly God's man. Because he is wholly God's man, he moves into the hostile environment where death awaits him with calm assurance. Unconditional love clashes with the established powers of this world. The High Priest announces the death sentence. Jesus is crucified. On Good Friday it would appear that the way of love is doomed to be crushed out by the way of expediency. And then dawned the Third Day. © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Easter was the first day of the rest of the world. There was an Ontological Shift on Easter. The Creator raised Jesus and created a new world. He re-created the world as far as His relationship with the human family is concerned. The point is, something happened. On Monday morning it was not business as usual. It was an Easter world - a whole new Reality. That is why I bother you with that strange word "Ontology." I want to stress that the world is changed; Reality is changed. The old world continues. We continue to be part of the old scene. But the old world is gone, in reality! This is an Ontological Shift, a shift of cosmic proportions. I have become more aware of this recently. I am aware I have not proclaimed it strongly enough, confidently enough. That is why the Easter message pointed to the God Whose power effects that which is beyond all human potential. Too much of my ministry and my preaching has been within the narrowly prescribed limits of human possibility. Sometimes I think I am only beginning to glimpse the gracious power of the God of unconditional love. We have been too much focused on the human response, not enough on the objective reality of the new creation. Listen again to the text: There is a new world, the old has gone, and a new order has already begun. Do we believe it? Do we live accordingly? Whether we do or not, the Truth remains. Whether we believe it and appropriate it is not the measure of its truth. Our response does not create the new reality and our lack of response does not detract from the reality. So will you hear the word of proclamation? The day of salvation has dawned. I was reading an Easter sermon preached by the great Karl Barth. He went regularly to the Basle prison to preach to the prisoners. He who could command any pulpit in the world chose to preach at the local jail because he said if I preach in the Cathedral, people will come to hear Karl Barth. If I preach at the jail, the prisoners will come to hear the Gospel. He preached on Jesus' words, "Because I live you, too, shall live." To these prisoners he spoke of Jesus who lived for them. In great simplicity he pointed to Jesus living for us and dying for us. And he spoke of the promise: You will live also. And he explained: Yet the significant fact to remember is precisely not an obligation we are invited or urged to fulfill, so that we may, or may not, live. We are not © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 4   merely given a chance; nor is an offer made to us. "You will live also" is a promise. It is an announcement referring to the future, to our future. "You will live also" succeeds the present of, and our presence in, the "I live" like two succeeds one, B succeeds A, the thunder succeeds the lightning ... You are a people whose future issues from my life and hence does not lie in your sin and guilt, but in true righteousness and holiness. Not in sadness, but in joy, not in captivity, but in freedom, not in death, but in life. From your present participation in my life, you may anticipate this and no other future. (Deliverance to the Captives, p. 31F) He goes on to stress that Jesus is not only our future, but also our present. Not the world with its accusations and we with our counter accusations. Not even the well deserved divine wrath against us, let alone our grumbling against God, or our secret thought that there might be no God after all. Therefore, not we ourselves, as we are today or think we are, make up our present. He, Jesus Christ, his life is our present: his Divine life poured out for us, and his human life, our life, lifted up in him. This is what counts. This is what is true and valid. (p. 32) He then stresses that no one must think himself excluded, too insignificant, too sinful, too godless. And then he invites each one there present to join him at the Lord's Table. There in the Bread and Wine is the sign of what he had been saying in the message. Jesus Christ is in our midst, he, the man in whom God himself has poured out his life for our sake and in whom our life is lifted up to God. Holy Communion is the sign that Jesus Christ is our beginning and we may rise up and walk into the future where we shall live. ... My brothers and sisters, I do not want to oppress or compel any one among you when I add: Shall we not all here present go to the Lord's Table together? Holy Communion is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ himself is for all, as surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. (p. 33F) There I see a preacher acting on the Reality of the new world which was born on Easter. We get so bogged down in checking out the human response that we lose sight of the Reality. We forget the Ontology of the New Creation. We wonder if someone has true faith – whether his life is morally pure, whether one understands the contents of the faith. All the things that come subsequently we worry about first and instead of a grand invitation to a new Reality to which we welcome people, we erect all kinds of barriers that discourage and turn away. © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Perhaps rather than keeping this Table of our Lord's here in the antiseptic atmosphere of the sanctuary, we should move it out on the highway and pass out bread and wine to those traveling past. What would happen if, with authentic excitement in the face of the Reality Shift of Easter, we went out and shared the wonderful news of what is really true! Something has happened. The day of Salvation has dawned. Of course, we cannot be unconcerned with the response. The new world has dawned but it is possible to live in the death grip of the old. It is for those who are in Christ that the new world becomes reality in their experience. Therefore in our announcement of the new Reality we point to him. We must tell the story of Jesus, of his life, his death and resurrection. We must invite our neighbors to receive what has been provided and is fully offered. And we must ask ourselves if we who believe in him have really entered into the newness that he has created. Again I must confess that too much of my own concentration and too much of the traditional message of the Church deals with the death and resurrection of Jesus in terms of forgiveness, dealing with the past and too little emphasis is placed on the power of God to change our lives – really change our lives. Too much of my concentration and the concentration of the Church has been on getting the lost snatched from Hell fire and into the safety net of the Church. We want to get people saved!! But what does that mean? For too many of us that has meant out of Hell and into Heaven - no matter in what state and once we get people in, we can relax a bit. Whether we consciously operate this way or not, underneath this has been a powerful motive in the Church's outreach. But it misses the whole point of what we claim to be trying to do – get people "saved." Salvation's root is the same as the root of salve. Salvation is healing. It is to bring the person toward wholeness. God is not interested in making us pious or religious; He would make us human. That is what He created. That is the intention of recreation. The Church Father Ireneaus understood that long ago when he wrote, The Glory of God is a human being fully alive. What is it, then, to be "in Christ?" - Literally it is to be lifted up to God in the Anointed One - the one anointed with Spirit, one full of God. The context of this great text is illuminating. Paul's apostleship was under attack. He is a man sold out to Jesus Christ – making him known, announcing good news, calling all people to the new world now open to them. © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 6   We will all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ. Our lives will be laid open an awesome thought. He senses a divine imperative to carry out his apostleship, his own life an open book. He is simply responding to what has been revealed to him. In verse 14 Paul writes: For the love of Christ leaves us no choice, when once we have reached the conclusion that one man died for all and therefore all mankind has died. His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease to live for themselves, and should live for him who for their sake died and was raised to life. The purpose of Jesus' death and resurrection is to incorporate us in him in the death to the old world and the rising to a whole new order of things. He goes on: With us therefore worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate of any man; even if once they counted in our understanding of Christ, they do so no longer. Why? The one in Christ is a new creation! The old is gone. The new has come. Well, how does that fall out? What does that mean in the everyday affairs of an ordinary human existence? It means a new understanding - a change of mind. This is the meaning of repentance “Metanoia,” the Greek word, points to a change of mind. Our thinking needs to be straightened out – about God: That we no more resist Him in our weakness and hostility, fearing He will rob us of life, but rather see Him as He is - the loving One Who comes to us in our weakness and hostility with total vulnerability in order simply to embrace us with a mercy that knows no limit, setting us free for the first time to be fully human. about what it means to be fully human: We see it in Jesus, totally open to the Father, totally open to the neighbor, living out the unconditional love of God in covenant human relationship. Is not to be "in Christ" to be filled with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God? Is it not to live in the conscious flow of God's life, His energy, His grace, seeing ourselves not as buckets to get filled but as channels to let flow through us the Divine life? To be "in Christ" is to live consciously in the Kingdom of God, knowing one is no longer bound to live according to the Kingdom of this world. It is to be done with © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Page 7   the old way of doing things - the tit for tat world of vengeance, retaliation and vindictiveness. It is to be done with the world of selfish indulgence, of selfasserting, of defensiveness and the strenuous compulsion to justify oneself. It was reported on national news last evening that a millionaire died and left her two million to a few friends and casual acquaintances. She left this word with her will. "To my children I leave nothing. I want them to receive in my death what they gave me in my life." Think of it! Think of dying with that kind of bitterness. You say maybe the kids deserved it. Maybe they did. That that is the old world. According to the canons of the old world, God should leave us in our self-constructed hells. He could write a similar note: "I leave you in your death what you created in your life - Hell." But He showed His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. I feel sorry for the poor woman. I'm sorry her children neglected her. Perhaps she could not change them, but she could have changed her mind, her attitude. She could have let love fill her, driving out the anger and vindication. How? By looking to Jesus. By understanding God's love, by receiving it and then letting it fill her heart. Think of standing before Jesus when one's last act was an act of retaliation and bitter resentment. Will Jesus' eyes flash with fire? No, they will be wet with tears. Will he say, "Go to Hell"? No, he will say, "My child, my child!" And what will the dear woman respond? "They got theirs! I’m finally happy!"? No, but rather, "O my God, what have I done?" Think of it, friend. The day of healing has dawned. This is not just Pollyanna talk. Christ is risen! There has been an ontological shift in Reality. A new world is here, the old is done away with. You don't have to live according to the canons of the old world, filled with brokenness, pain, hate, resentment. Look to Jesus. Know that God raised him from the dead, thereby creating a whole new possibility. He died - one for all, once for all. He arose - one for all, once for all. God's Spirit filled him, the Anointed One, the Christ. Now the Risen Jesus pours out that same Spirit on all flesh - so we shall celebrate on Pentecost. Let go. Open up; entrust your life to the Risen Lord who brings you into the presence of the Father and gives you the Spirit by which you can be freed from the old, brought into the new. Be healed by the love and grace and power of God Who needs from you simply the word "Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus." He will! And it will be the First Day of the Rest of Your Life! Amen. © Grand Valley State University �The First Day of the Rest of Your Life Richard A. Rhem Reference: Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives. First published 1961. © 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 Eastertide II Scripture Text II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI References Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives, 1961. 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-0-19860406 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-04-06 Title A name given to the resource The First Day of the Rest of Your 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 April 6, 1986 entitled "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Eastertide Grace Inclusive Resurrection Salvation Transformation Unconditional Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/42d84774e61585679a95a167fcc60476.pdf b29bbb1aa0fc90dd08707fef391ddfec PDF Text Text THE FIRST PEOPLES INTERNATIONAL INDIAN FAIR AND TRADE EXPOSITION POW WOW LOCATION/REGISTRATION DATES 2nd ANNUAL FIRST PEOPLES CONTEST POW WOW JUNE 8, 9, AND 10, 1990 CAMP ROTARY PARK International Dancers and Drummers - Team Dancers Jingle and Grass Dancers Categories 29 Mile Road - east of Van Dyke - Ray Township North of Detroit **** NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES OR DRUGS PERMITTED ON THE GROUNDS CASH PRIZES AWARDED ALL CATEGORIES **** CALL (313) 756-1350 for Camping Details GRAND ENTRY: Saturday 1:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m. Sunday: 1:00 p.m. No exceptions - Point System will be used. HOST DRUM: Blue Lake Singers Head Man Dancer: Dennis Shanaqit Head Woman Dancer: Kathy Gibson Head Veteran: Truman White MC: Thurman Bear Head Judge: Allard Teeple Head Judge: Bucko Teeple Arena Director: Bud White Eye Contact: Patrick Naganashe 543-8037 DANCE REGISTRATION: Opens on Friday, June 8th at 6:00 p.m. and closes June 9th at 12:30 p.m. DONATIONS: Pre-Sale Tickets $5.00 Adults - $2.00 Seniors $1.00 youths 6 • 12 POW WOW CALLS ONLY POW WOW CHAIRMAN: Patrick Naganashe Gate Prices: $6.00 adults- $3.00 Seniors & & $2.00 youths 6 • 12 WEEKEND PASSES: $8.00 TRADERS Traders Registration Deadline: June 1, 1990 Cheryl Borton· Trader Chairperson@ (313) 773-7148 Native American Indian Traders ONLY • Indian Food Booths SPECIAL EVENTS 5-K RUN (Keep Ahead of the Wind) HORSESHOE TOURNAMENT.. PRINCESS PAGEANT•. ARCHERY TOURNAMENT .. LACROSSE THROW .. ELDERS LEGENDS AND CHILDREN'S GAMES .. MICHIGAN WILDLIFE DISPLAY GATES OPEN AT 9:00 a.m. TO PUBLIC - SATURDAY· SUNDAY FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL "Camp Rowy . 3 Mile• Southeastern Michigan Indians, Inc. in Warren, Michigan Supported by N East ol Van Dykl ~-......__*-t(313) 756-1350 or 756-1351 PUBLIC WELCOME Supported by: ~~~L 4'[0 q~~~~ ~ c~~~ a------1 1'-~N'S M-59 20 l.fde Rd Camp Rotary PROCEEDS s TO CHARITY � 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 Native American Publication Collection Subject The topic of the resource Native Americans Indians of North America Anthropology Indians of North America -- Michigan -- Periodicals Michigan Description An account of the resource Selected digital surrogates of published and unpublished materials from the Edward V. Gillis Native American publication collection dealing with different aspects of human culture and anthropology, with an emphasis on Native American people, events, organizations, and activities in Michigan. Includes newsletters, event programs, flyers, posters and other printed materials. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gillis, Edward V. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/446">Edward V. Gillis Native American Publication Collection (RHC-14)</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-02-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Relation A related resource Gi-gikinomaage-min Project (Kutsche Office of Local History) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-14 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1958-2000 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/446">Edward V. Gillis Native American publication collection, RHC-14</a> 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 RHC-14_first-peoples-international-indian-fair_1990-06 Title A name given to the resource The First Peoples International Indian Fair and Trade Exposition, June 1990 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-06 Description An account of the resource The First Peoples International Indian Fair and Trade Exposition flyer, Ray Township MI, June 8-10, 1990, collected by Edward Gillis included as part of his Native American publication collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource South Eastern Michigan Indians Inc. Subject The topic of the resource Indians of North America -- Michigan -- Periodicals Indians of North America Michigan Michigan -- Grand Rapids Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/900db80ff0e28917e7f3b5ae903fbb05.jpg 1003faf2ee420db8edced5b0ee4b44ea 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 Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3501.D317 F55 1908 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 DC-01_Bindings0418 Title A name given to the resource The Flying Death Description An account of the resource Binding of The Flying Death, by Samuel Hopkins Adams, published by The McClure Company, 1908. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908 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/8c9dc5c56ac7d2e3f557745ca1d8f078.JPG 8fcc32e6fa727a1d1bc8e22332e4caef 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 Ronald Oakes collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Oakes, Ronald Description An account of the resource Collection of photographs by Ronald Oakes, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, and in the U.S. National Guard in the Iraq War. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968/2005 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/628">Ronald Oakes Vietnam and Iraq war photographs (RHC-80)</a> 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 Iraq War, 2003-2011 Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Veterans Photographs Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Relation A related resource Veterans History Project interviews, RHC-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-80 Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 RHC-80_Oakes-Iraq-DSCF0820 Title A name given to the resource The former Iraqi VIP building on FOB Q-West showing Cruise missile damage Subject The topic of the resource Iraq War, 2003-2011 United States--History, Military United States. National Guard Military life Soldiers Photographs Description An account of the resource The former Iraqi VIP building on FOB Q-West showing Cruise missile damage. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Oakes, Ronald Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ronald Oakes Vietnam and Iraq photographs (RHC-80) Relation A related resource Veterans History Project interviews, RHC-27 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Iraq War Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg 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/535d957200e30dafccae0b5bbb13dbbf.jpg cb9ff016a37c43a1ce19a2c2de456afa 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 Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PR6025.A79 F6 1903 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 DC-01_Bindings0244 Title A name given to the resource The Four Feathers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richardon, Rome (Designer) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Four Feathers, by A.E.W. Mason, published by The MacMillan Company, 1903. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1903 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/0702a5ccd440a311ffe2f321968d7447.mp3 a54f1b9013c9d0013b83b50db0351c13 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 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-0-19991125 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-11-25 Title A name given to the resource The Freedom and Joy of Generosity Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 25, 1999 entitled "The Freedom and Joy of Generosity", on the occasion of Thanksgiving Day, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2395d27a15dabdf321db877b530243b9.mp3 7c495a26f09c9d04db10d0620bec547f 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 The Mystery of God's Sovereign Grace Scripture Text Jeremiah 18:6-9, Romans 8:28 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19870927 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-09-27 Title A name given to the resource The Freedom of the Sovereign God Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound 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 September 27, 1987 entitled "The Freedom of the Sovereign God", as part of the series "The Mystery of God's Sovereign Grace", on the occasion of Pentecost XVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 18:6-9, Romans 8:28. 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/8a45108a7936544c09d211098e24f523.mp3 1f9059873a3baf0f843136c83ec5c727 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Lent IV Series The Way to Life Scripture Text Galatians 5:13, John 10:15, 18 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-0-19860309 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-03-09 Title A name given to the resource The Freedom That Issues in Commitment 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 March 9, 1986 entitled "The Freedom That Issues in Commitment", as part of the series "The Way to Life", on the occasion of Lent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Galatians 5:13, John 10:15, 18. 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/d9377009a2d8f113feac321a91f3ddc5.mp3 502606dc0e7c9d2550fbc88be14e3309 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/09ef6059d68b37c6db634e4c1aa19272.pdf fea165154707bc31dbc4e418e02f504f PDF Text Text The Freedom to Embrace Pentecost VI Hosea 11:1-9; Romans 11:25-36; Luke 23:32-34 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan July 8, 2001 Transcription of the spoken sermon Some two or three years ago, more or less, on a broadcast by Paul Harvey, he read an "Impatient Letter From God." I shared it with you a while back, but it says so well with some humor what I want to say this morning that I'm going to share a few paragraphs again: From: God To: My Children on Earth Re: Idiotic Religious Rivalries My Dear Children (and believe me, that’s all of you), I consider myself a pretty patient guy. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get it right. And about evolution? Boy, nothing is slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to take place, cell by cell, and gene by gene. I've been patient through your fashions, civilizations, wars and schemes, and the countless ways you take Me for granted until you get yourselves into big trouble again and again. But, I want to let you know about some of the things that are starting to tick Me off. First of all, your religious rivalries are driving Me up a wall. Enough already! Let’s get one thing straight These are Your religions, not Mine. I'm the whole enchilada; I'm beyond them all. Every one of your religions claims there's only one of Me (which, by the way, is absolutely true). But in the very next breath, each religion claims it's My favorite one. And each claims its bible was written personally by Me, and that all the other bibles are man-made. Oh, Me. How do I even begin to put a stop to such complicated nonsense? Okay, listen up now. I'm your Father AND Mother, and I don't play favorites among My children. Also, I hate to break it to you, but I don't write. My longhand is awful, and I've always been more of a "doer" © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 2 anyway. So ALL of your books, including those bibles, were written by men and women. They were inspired, remarkable people, but they also made mistakes here and there. I made sure of that, so that you would never trust a written word more than your own living heart. You see, one human being to ME — even a bum on the street — is worth more than all the Holy books in the world. That's just the kind of guy I am. My Spirit is not a historical thing; it’s alive right here, right now, as fresh as your next breath. Holy books and religious rites are sacred and powerful, but not more so than the least of you. They were only meant to steer you in the right direction, not to keep you arguing with each other, and certainly not to keep you from trusting your own personal connection with Me. Which brings Me to My next point about your nonsense. You act like I need you and your religions to stick up for Me or "win souls" for My sake. Please don't do Me any favors. I can stand quite well on My own, thank you. I don't need you to defend Me, and I don't need constant credit. I just want you to be good to each other. And another thing: I don't get all worked up over money or politics, so stop dragging My name into your dramas. For example, I swear to Me that I never threatened Oral Roberts. I never rode in any of Rajneesh's Rolls Royces. I never told Pat Robertson to run for president, and I've never EVER had a conversation with Jim Baker, Jerry Falwell, or Jimmy Swaggart! Of course, come Judgment Day, I certainly intend to ... The thing is, I want you to stop thinking of religion as some sort of loyalty pledge to Me. The true purpose of your religions is so that YOU can become more aware of ME, not the other way around. Believe Me, I know you already. I know what’s in each of your hearts, and I love you with no strings attached. Lighten up and enjoy Me. That’s what religion is best for. It was on a spring-like Lenten Wednesday evening this past season that the meditation which I offered seemed to connect with a number of people, because in that meditation I explained how I had become such a flaming liberal and arch heretic, that it was really a process over many, many years. There were a number of people who said to me, “You know, you really ought to do that on Sunday morning.” I don't generally do that kind of thing and yet, when it continued to surface now and then, I thought finally, “Okay, let’s do that.” Last week we talked about the freedom of the nation and the privilege we enjoy as a free people, but today I want to talk about that which personally has given me the greatest freedom of my life: the freedom to embrace the other without qualms, without feeling awkward or clumsy, without defensiveness or tentativeness or distancing or alienation, just simply to open my heart and my © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 3 arms to embrace the other. And it didn't come easily because I was nurtured in a very strong tradition, the Protestant tradition, the Reformed tradition, Calvinism as expressed in Dutch Reformed piety that had a pinch of mysticism about it, deeply traditioned in that old Reformed faith that had a very great gulf built between those who were the children of God and those who were not, those who were saved and those who were lost, those who were chosen by God and those who were damned by God. The eternal election of grace is something that I grew up with. After seven years of pastoral experience, the first four which were right here, my little system was showing signs of wear; it was beginning to crack, because you know the human situation isn't always clean and neat. It's often very messy. It doesn't fit all the categories. There is not always a rule or a prescription for every human situation. Suddenly we are confronted with something that, "Where do we go to find the answer to this?" After seven years of pastoral experience, I really needed a new beginning. I needed to look again. My European experience of four years was an existential quest much more than an academic quest. It was for me to find a Gospel I could preach honestly with authenticity, because I was running into some walls that I couldn't get over. So, I went to Europe and there met my dear Professor Berkhof who had invited me to visit him when I came and see whether or not we might work out something. I went to see him, and on his drape was pinned that little scrap of paper that had the words of Tennyson, "Our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken light of Thee, and Thou, O Lord, art more than they." I said to myself, "I think I've found my man." This was exactly what I needed because, if there's anything I had, it was a little system. If you didn't grow up as I did in Dutch Reformed piety and theology, you're not even going to be able to understand what I'm going to talk about now, because you have to have been born with this thing to have any comprehension of it at all, to take it in at all. But I grew up on that national Dutch flower, the tulip. Now, most of the world, in order to trace its heritage, seeks its roots. Dutch people seek their bulbs, and the bulb blossoms into a tulip, and the five petals of the tulip are five propositions of Christian faith understanding as it was given to me: TULIP, an acrostic for five significant points of doctrine. The T stands for total depravity, which simply means that being human, you're a dirty rotter. Being human, you're guilty as sin. Being human, you're a fallen creature. Being human, you're lost. So, what is God going to do about it? God is going to unconditionally choose or elect some. Not all. And it’s unconditional. This is something deep in God, deep in eternity. It has nothing to do with a person's righteousness or lack thereof, a person's response or lack thereof. It is an unconditional election. A part of the © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 4 human race, only a part. Some are saved, some are lost. The U stands for unconditional election. Those who are totally depraved and unconditionally elected, it is for them that Christ died. Limited atonement, the L. Well, there's a sense in which Christ died for the world, but not seriously; Christ died for the elect. Limited atonement. And, of course, being totally depraved as you are, and unconditionally elected as you are, and having had Christ die for you, then you will be irresistibly drawn by grace. There's no way you can get out of it. You can kick and scream and howl, but God will get you. Irrestible grace, the I in TULIP. And you who are totally depraved and unconditionally elected for whom Christ died as a limited atonement, who have been irresistibly drawn by God's grace, will be preserved unto all eternity. The preservation of the saints, the P. There you have it Once you get in the little scheme, you can't get out of it. It is totally, logically coherent. If you start it, you have to end up where it ends up. TULIP. "Our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be..." My little system was running on fumes. In my study, I began to probe the nature of God's grace, really the nature of God and the extent of that grace. I was nervous about the fact that some people from the foundations of the world were chosen in Christ, and other people simply were damned. They were the reprobates. They didn't have a chance. Of course, we made our own choice to fall in Adam. You were there, weren't you? But, having made that choice in Adam, there was no way to get out of it, and if we were not chosen by God, curtains. That was not sitting easily with me and so, as I came back here in 1971 and in subsequent years, I was dancing all around those subjects. I was probing, testing, preaching and teaching in a time of experimentation, to which most of you were subjected and about which you were very gracious, indeed. Then in 1985, the church constituted a theological journal and I was invited to be on the Board of Editors and, becoming one of the editors, I had to begin to write. For me, that was a great opportunity, because I had to begin to put down clearly some of the stuff I had been thinking about. You know, in preaching one can be fuzzy. Old Dr. Harry Jellema years ago came one summer Sunday and, as he left, he winked at me. He always would say something in Dutch to me and light up his pipe. But this time he winked at me and said, “Studied ambiguity is the secret of success.” He knew where I was fussing around. Most people didn't. They just sang, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and went out of here happy as a bird. © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 5 But, now I had to begin to write, and that’s in black and white and that’s public. The Board of Editors said to me, because we were talking about these things together, “Why don't you write on the extent of grace, the covenant of grace?” I said I would and I began to do some research for that, and one of the great aids that came to me was from that wonderful house organ of the Christian Reformed Church known for its piety and its orthodoxy and its ecclesiastical, political analysis, The Banner, in a guest editorial which is entitled, “Who is Saved?” I said, “Ah, this is it. Now I’ll know. Who is saved?” The writer is a brilliant mind who writes exceedingly well and, with great lucidity, he set forth the wonders of a universal grace - all saved. He made it so appealing, but then he said, but it won't wash. No, he said, God must decide who is saved and God must save them. In Calvinist orthodoxy, God wants to save everybody: I Timothy 2:4, "And God can save everybody." God arranged for the death of Christ to radiate sufficient power for the salvation of all. God also orders the Gospel preached to all. But, at the end of the day, God abandons some. God wants everybody saved, but never intends to save all. God wants everybody saved, but doesn't plan on it. The reprobate are heartbreakingly, finally, disastrously lost. God could save them, but he doesn't, and nobody knows why. Probably none of us needs reminding that this is a painful scheme. The awfulness of it comes home to us when we look at the spiritual rebellion of a son or daughter. Could it possibly be that God has never intended to save this precious person? Well, I put the magazine down and read no further, because that was a scheme painful, indeed. It was too painful for me. It was one of those moments, one of those transforming moments when suddenly you see everything. You see something differently. You know. You know that that is not true. You know that system has a terrible distortion in it, and so suddenly it is like shackles fall off and one begins to think again. Now, imagine it. This is a very lucid, clear, unambiguous presentation of Reformed Calvinism, and if you are consistent with that system, you might have a son or a daughter who’s kicking over the traces, sowing their wild oats in a state of rebellion, turning their back on you, heedless of your pleas, and you would have to contemplate the possibility that God never intended to save them. I had to say I don't believe that. I cannot believe that. That is not any God that I could worship. Of course, being deeply imbedded in the tradition which claimed to find its source in the scriptures, I had to go back to the scriptures. It's really interesting. It is the same old book, but when one puts on different glasses, one sees things one never saw before. For example, that beautiful passage in Hosea, chapter 11, where God talks about how tenderly he tended to Israel as a child and Israel rebelled, and God says, “Okay. My wrath is on you. You're going to be destroyed.” And then God says, “How can I give you up? My compassion warms within me. I © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 6 will not destroy Ephnam, for I am God, not human.” That God, you see, a God of passionate, fierce love and grace and mercy that would not give up. Or, Paul struggling with that question of Israel, “Why, Why did Israel reject Jesus?” Paul had seen it – Paul, this Jewish Pharisee, this blue blood rabbi – he saw in Jesus this one whose grace had broken the bounds of Israel and flown to the whole world and he wanted to take it to the whole world, but his own brothers and sisters didn't see it. He said, “I would that I could be accursed if only they would see it. They have a zeal for God, but not according to righteousness. What’s going on?” Well, I [Paul] think what's going on is that Israel's rejection is so that the Gospel goes to the Gentiles. And then eventually the Gentiles, receiving the grace of God, will cause envy in Israel and then – then all of Israel will be saved. God has consigned all to disobedience according that God may have mercy on all. Hosea 11:32. I said, “Oh, Paul? You're getting close to a universal conception of grace. Or a conception of universal grace.” And, of course, it has to do with the nature of God, and where do we see the nature of God more clearly than in the face of Jesus? And when you see him on the cross, the victim of the violence and the bigotry and the prejudice, the hatred of the human family, what does he do? Does he respond in kind? No. He says, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing." He sees through, he penetrates through their ignorance, through their defensiveness, through their hostility; he sees through them to something deeper. He says, “Father, forgive them. They just don't understand.” That's a picture of God, that kind of grace, that kind of mercy. Now, you see, God didn't drop those words out of heaven, but this was the deepest intuition of Hosea's heart, this is what Hosea sensed God must be like. This is Paul's insight. He was wrong about the timetable of God's redemptive scheme. He was wrong about a lot of things, but he saw something about the grace of God and that to which he witnessed. This word of Jesus - there wasn't any court recorder there. There wasn't any microphone on the cross. What Jesus had been, what he had embodied, how he had impacted them caused them to write this word, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," because that is reflective of who Jesus was. And Jesus is reflective of who God is. So, little by little, I became more and more certain. I knew, not only that that theological system was broken and that I had to free myself of it while continuing to listen to it and respect it, but I knew that the news was better than ever I had dreamed and I found a freedom within, a freedom to embrace. I found a new joy. I found that I could open up to people. I found that I wasn't awkward anymore. My body language didn't reflect the fact that I had to keep you at arm's length until you step over this line and become one with me. I didn't have to get anybody to step over any line. All I had to do was to be the embodiment and the witness of © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 7 a grace of God that embraces us before ever anyone heard our borning cry. What a relief. What a freedom. What a joy. As I was preparing that Lenten message, there was on my desk an article from Sports Illustrated which I never read, but somebody had found an article that they thought was probably good for me to read, and I thought to myself I don't have time to read this today. It's a long article. But, I made the mistake to read the first page, and then it was page two and three and four, and this amazing story of a black basketball coach who was a Catholic, in Berlin, Ohio, in the very midst of this Mennonite Amish country. The Amish are the conservative ones; they have horse and buggy. The Mennonites are the liberal ones; they have trucks. But, they're all very much of a piece. Wonderful people, strong community. Into that community comes a black Catholic basketball coach. I can't go into the whole story, but they resisted; he turned the other cheek. His presence was transforming. It's a wonderful, amazing story of how one individual, embodying a marvelous kind of grace and charisma, became a transforming angel in the midst of a whole community. Best of all, he brought trophies and big championships to Berlin, Ohio. Then, at age 48, a malignant brain tumor was found, and he died. In his death vigil they came, surrounding his bed day and night. They came, past alumni who had gone across the country; the whole community was there day and night at his side. The whole community was thrown into a terrible grief at its loss. This black Catholic in Mennonite country was buried in St. Peter's Catholic Church in Millersburg, a few miles away, because, of course, there were no Catholic churches in Mennonite country, just like there are no black people. No Catholics, no blacks. A black Catholic now is being buried in a village far away and everybody goes, former players, present players, Mennonites, Amish, black Baptists who were his relatives, white Catholics who were part of his congregation - the whole congregation was full for his funeral. The article concludes that at the funeral, just before Communion, Father Ron Aubrey gazed across St. Peter's, Coach's Catholic church. The priest knew that what he wanted to do wasn't allowed and that he could get into trouble. But, he knew Coach, too, so he did it. Invited everyone to come up to receive the holy wafer. Steve Mullet glanced at his wife in her simple clothing and veil. "Why not?" she whispered. After all, the service wasn't the bizarre ritual they had been led to believe it was. Wasn't all that different from their own. Still, Steve hesitated. He glanced at Willy Mast. "Would Coach want us to?" "You got it, Bubs," said Willy. So, they rose and joined all the black Baptists and white Catholics pouring toward the altar. All the basketball players, all the Mennonites, young and old, busting laws left and right, busting straight into the kingdom of heaven. Isn't that wonderful? I know about that. I know about that freedom to embrace, no longer having to worry that it’s up to me to do God's work. Just to be able to witness to an amazing grace that is broad enough to cover the whole human © Grand Valley State University �The Freedom to Embrace Richard A. Rhem Page 8 family and that will finally bring us all home. Ah, that's really to live - by grace, by George. © 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 Scripture Text Hosea 11:1-9, Romans 11:25-36, Luke 23:32-34 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-0-20010708 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-07-08 Title A name given to the resource The Freedom to Embrace 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 8, 2001 entitled "The Freedom to Embrace", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hosea 11:1-9, Romans 11:25-36, Luke 23:32-34. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Compassion Exclusivism Nature of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f398785ab36f92a74e1bf47cb64cb4e7.jpg 42ea431b29e8cd255acdd97c94d2c923 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 Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PN6071.B7 S4 1911 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 DC-01_Bindings0174 Title A name given to the resource The Friendship of Books Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stewart, Bertha (Designer) Description An account of the resource Binding of The Friendship of Books, edited with an introduction by Temple Scott, published by The Macmillan Co., 1911. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1911 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives