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The Lost Cause of Christmas
Advent III
Text: I Samuel 2:8; Luke 1:52-53
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
December 17, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Last week I spoke a bit about Christmas and its drivenness and the frenzy of the
season that can be so distracting for us that we fail, ironically, to do the very thing
the Advent season is for, which is to wait, to be quiet, to contemplate. I spoke of
that because I think it is an important fact of which to become aware, to be
conscious. I didn't really mean to-be "Rev. Grinch," throwing a wet blanket on
your celebrations, and it was not one more preacher's harangue about keeping
Christ in Christmas or scolding you for the commercialization of the day. That is
not how I understand preaching. My task is not really to scold you or to drive you
or impose guilt upon you. My task as a preacher is to hold up a slice of life and
invite you to think about it, invite you to think with me about it in order that we
might come to full consciousness of our lives, in order that we might come to an
awareness so that we live our lives and are not simply lived, in order that we
might live from the inside out, and so I try to hold up that slice of life and invite
you to think with me. This is really a conversation in which you are invited to
think about it with me. Receive it not as some authoritarian proclamation, some
declaration from above, some dogmatic utterance which is absolute. It's more
often tentative.
Someone went out last week and, apparently agreeing that the days could be
frenzied and we could be driven in our life, said, "Now, next week tell me how to
unplug." Well, as a matter of fact, we can't unplug. We are so thoroughly woven
into the fabric of our cultural experience that what we have to do is live, learn to
live with attention, and the only way that we can overcome that drive that would
snuff out the spirit and stifle the emergence of spirit in our lives is through
awareness and consciousness. But we cannot disengage from our social, political,
economic structures, the whole social context in which we live. We could try to
escape life somehow, maybe, flee to a monastery or a convent, but that's not
possible for most of us. We're going to have to deal with life and all of its variety
and all of its diversity and all of its seductiveness and all of its pressures and, in
the midst of that, do our best to live with awareness that we might be intentional,
that we might realize our fullest humanity and our greatest potential.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Lost Cause of Christmas
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker the other day and clipped it out. The scene in
the background was probably the Himalayas and there was a cave in front of
which was sitting one of these Eastern gurus and there was a young man sitting in
front of him with his backpack on, and the caption under the cartoon was, "Don't
you think if I knew the meaning of life, I wouldn't be sitting in this cave in my
underpants?"
That's the way I feel often when I prepare to come here to try to say something
with enough significance to get you out on a Sunday morning in a blizzard when
you might well read the paper with a cup of coffee. So, hear me again this
morning as I address the idea of the lost cause of Christmas.
By the lost cause of Christmas, I want to set before you the almost impossibility of
us celebrating the Christmas miracle as it originated in this world. I want you to
think with me this morning about the fact that for people like us, it is almost
impossible to observe Christmas according to its original meaning and intention
– almost impossible, because the Christmas story is a story about a revolutionary
movement toward liberation. It has a particular historical, social, economic,
political context, and in the last decades we are becoming more and more aware
of the times of Jesus, the time of Jesus' birth, the nature of the life of the average
person the majority of which were peasants at the time that Jesus came into this
world.
I hope this afternoon sometime you take a moment and read the page in your
liturgy from a book, The Message of the Kingdom, by Richard Horsley and Neil
Silberman. Horsley has another excellent book that I did not quote called The
Liberation of Christmas, and these scholars have taken what we know now about
the concrete historical context of Jesus' birth and life and, in setting that forth,
have come to understand the birth stories, as I believe they were intended when
they were written by Matthew and by Luke. The context of the world into which
Jesus came was a world in which the people of Israel, God's, people, Jesus'
people, were a people occupied by a foreign power, a backwater province in a vast
Roman empire, and there was social disruption brought about by heavy taxation,
loss-of land, movement to cities, and the ever-present Roman legions. The period
is spoken of as the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.
The Romans were not bad people. In fact they were wonderful administrators.
They are still revered for the law, the administration of government of which they
were geniuses. But, nonetheless, the bottom line was the Roman legion, and there
was the exploitation and the oppression of the poor of the provinces, and the
people to whom Jesus came were a marginalized people who were voiceless and
powerless, and the Song of Mary, is a revolutionary ballad. The closest I could
come to in thinking about a parallel in our own experience would be the song “We
Shall Overcome."
There is tremendous power in music, tremendous emotional power that unites
and bonds human beings in a cause or a movement- and those songs, in Luke's
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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gospel the Magnificat which I read a moment ago, the song of John, the
Benedictus, the song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis, those songs which were based
on the psalmody of the people of Israel’s past – Mary's particularly, as I
mentioned, very much dependent on the song of Hannah. Those songs that
celebrated the birth of Jesus were revolutionary ballads, which celebrated the
mighty act of God moving for the liberation of God's people. "The mighty cast
down from their thrones, the lowly lifted up,,.the hungry fed, the rich turned
empty, away." The world is turned upside down in those songs. The way of the
world as experienced by those poor and dispossessed people is turned upside
down. There is a reversal of circumstance, and God is praised in a spirit of
Doxology with great joy because now God has acted, God has moved, and those
songs and the birth stories of Matthew and Luke are probably some of the earliest
records we have of that early Jesus movement that was a revolutionary
movement, looking for a change of historical circumstance, moving from being
the underdog to the possibility of a humane existence. I don't think that, if we
look at those songs carefully and if we put them into the context of which we are
becoming more and more aware, the social, historical, economic, political context
at the time of Jesus, there can be any question about that. Those songs continue
that grand tradition of the Hebrew prophets who saw the possibility of an
alternative world, of an alternative kind of community.
And so, I say to you what must be obvious - it is extremely difficult for us to
celebrate Christmas in its original meaning and significance, because we just have
nothing in common with the poor, marginalized, voiceless and powerless people
among whom Jesus was born. We naively identify with those people. We put
ourselves in the skin of Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Simeon and Anna,
the people of Israel to whom the Lord came, but, as a matter of fact, if we're
honest, we're on the other side of the line. We are Rome. We are empire. We are
affluent. We are powerful. We call the shots in our world, and for us to celebrate
Christmas in its original meaning and significance is to undercut ourselves and
the status quo, which has dealt very kindly with us.
Now, that isn't so profound and I think it must be clear if we think about it for a
moment. The reason that Jesus was crucified, my old Lenten theme put concisely,
is that he died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. The autnorities,
ecclesiastical and political, of the day of Jesus, rightly saw him as a threat to the
world as it was organized at that time. Any time a world is organized in any time,
those who are the power brokers are not going to want that world to be changed,
and they are not going to be happy with the prophetic voice which suggests an
alternative possibility. So, I simply make the point - for us to celebrate Christmas
is pretty much of a lost cause.
So, what have we done? Well, I talked about one possibility last week. We have
made a holiday out of it, and it's a wonderful holiday. Friends gathering together,
families coming home, beautiful trees and flowers, the sights and sounds and
fragrances of the season, all the remembrances of Christmases past, all of that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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wonderful, beautiful, warm, human experience. Nothing wrong with that. We've
made the Christmas mystery and miracle into a wonderful holiday.
I emerged from my lofty perch last night only to find that Nancy was channel surfing. When Nancy surfs, she is bored. Now, on most Saturday nights she is
bored because I am incommunicado from about Saturday noon until I get here
Sunday morning, I grunt. That's all. But I emerged long enough to come down
into the bedroom where she was surfing the TV only to see that Lawrence Welk
had arisen from the dead and there he was! It was the conclusion of what must be
a famous Christmas special that is probably trotted out every year about this
time, and I entered just at the end of the program where Lawrence Welk said,
"And here comes Santa Claus," and Santa Claus came out in all of his regalia and
all of his splendor and the band struck up "Joy to the World, the Lord Has
Come!" I said to Nancy, "God has just spoken to me. I'm going to write this down
so I don't forget it." Precisely, precisely. On this wonderful holiday, Santa Claus
comes and the band plays, "The Lord Has Come, Joy to the World!"
In the Church we have done another thing with it In the Church we managed to
celebrate Christmas by weaving it from its original intention as a social protest, as
a social critique, and moved it to the personal experience of salvation. We sang it
a moment ago as a supplication and one of my favorite carols, "0 Little Town of
Bethlehem, Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today." It's wonderful.
Nothing wrong with that, either. The personal experience of being in communion
with God, being at peace with God, the experience of grace and forgiveness, my
goodness, how could I be against that? It is very, very important. It is just that
that is really not what Christmas was about. Christmas was about an alternative
kind of community, a different kind of society, different power arrangements,
different economic arrangements.
Now, if Jesus had been about personal salvation, Jesus may have gone about to
people and said, "Are you saved? This is how you can be saved, if you will repeat
this formula, if you believe in me, your sins will be forgiven and you will have the
hope of heaven, the promise of something in another time and another world."
The Gospels were not good news about the fact that a person can be reconciled
with God through Jesus Christ. Paul talks about that, but then Paul thought the
end was right around the corner and so he was excited about the fact that this
treasure of Israel was for all people and all people could come into this experience
of grace in this God of Israel, and of course, he identified this with the death and
resurrection of Jesus which you don't find in the Gospels.
The birth stories in Luke serve as a preface to his Gospel, which is about the life
and the ministry and the teaching of Jesus, and Luke tells us in those birth stories
how he understood this Jesus. How he understood this Jesus, according to the
Gospel that we read every Christmas, is that this one was the act of the eternal
God coming into human experience in the flesh of Mary's child in order to change
the world. But, we've been able to salvage some of the spirituality and the piety of
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Richard A. Rhem
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the holiday by turning it into the possibility of personal salvation and making of
our Christian religion, frankly, a salvation cult. That's what we are, and we invite
people to faith in Jesus, to receive forgiveness and have then heaven's gates open
wide. Go through your hymnal, read your Christmas carols and just see how we
have domesticated and spiritualized the story of the birth of Jesus. I don't mean
to ruin the carols for you but, if you read them perceptively over against what was
quite obviously the intention in the original story, you will find that we have
made of this revolutionary liberation document an event, a matter of personal
piety and salvation.
So, what are we to do? We can recognize, for one thing, that throughout the
centuries the Christmas story has regained here and there its original intention,
because there have been peoples who have read the story and found hope and
been inspired and have initiated movements toward liberation and freedom.
Most recently in our own experience we know of Liberation Theology that
originated among the poor, particularly in Latin and South America, in what they
call base communities where the poor folk, the peasant folk would come together
in homes and study the Gospels and they actually read themselves into the story.
As I said a moment ago, we tend to identify with Anna and Simeon and Mary and
all of them, when really we have to identify ourselves with the Roman Empire.
These base communities of people that are dispossessed and socially outcast,
marginalized and powerless, read themselves into the story and are able to
identify with it and it has become a tremendous source of ferment and a
movement toward more justice and equity and it has had that revolutionary
intent realized in many of those communities. Interestingly, the Vatican has
silenced some of the leading voices of Liberation Theology because the Church, in
order to maintain its establishment status, doesn't want to rock the boat and get a
peasant rebellion going, and so the Church has officially said you may not talk
about the original meaning of Christmas. Continue to speak about saving souls.
You can have the most wonderful personal spiritual experience in the world and
no one's going to care. You can be just as pious, just as devoted, just as full of
faith, just as sure of your salvation as possible, and there is not a tyrant or a
dictator or a politician anywhere who will bother you. It's only when you begin to
speak and act like Jesus did that you get into trouble. But, the stories have been a
stimulus for that through the centuries.
Still, here we are. What are we going to do? How are we going to celebrate
Christmas, being in the position we are? Here I am white, male, affluent,
powerful.
The nation went through an extended period of time without knowing which
candidate for the Presidency actually won, and now we know. Some voices are
being raised about the fact that there are minority groups that have been
disenfranchised, and I don't suppose we're ever going to know the full story of
everything that went on, or really who got what numbers of votes. But, I wonder
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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if there is anything to that. Is it a fact that minority people were herded down to
get registered and that they went to vote, and once they went there, they didn't
really know what they were doing? That's a possibility, isn't it? And one shouldn't
be too surprised about that. For whatever reason you might defend it or attack it
today, the Electoral College originally was instituted in order to ensure that the
elite would rule, and as a matter of fact, when the elite rules, things go better. For
people like me, at least, they do.
But, now, I wonder if there is anything to the claim that the poor and the
marginalized were disenfranchised. Jesse Jackson says so. I don't like Jesse
Jackson. I worry about the fact that I don't like him and I really ask myself, "Is it
because he's black that you don't like him? Is it because he's black that your first
response is negative?" I don't think it is; I think it's because of the curl of his lip
and the shape of his moustache, but then, my mother didn't like my moustache,
either. So, I have to say, when he comes on the screen, I don't want to hear him,
and when he talks about a mass demonstration of minority folk on Martin Luther
King's birthday in January, I say, "Jesse, we've just been through a rather
strenuous period of time. Can't we get on with life? Can't you drop it? You're
nothing but an opportunist, anyway. Why don't you just let it go?"
And then, I realize that I'd jolly well like it to be let go. In fact, I wouldn't change
anything if it were up to me, if nobody complained. If there wasn't somebody out
there, a gadfly, an irritant, a revolutionary, with all of his flaws and all of his
foibles, if there wasn't somebody agitating, I wouldn't do anything about the
world. What can a white, male, heterosexual, powerful, affluent person do to
capture something of Christmas?
If I were a woman, I would use the revolutionary, ballads to get equal rights. If I
were a person of homosexual orientation, I would use it in order to gain respect
and dignity and be accepted just as a human being. But I'm on top of the heap.
Any protest that changes anything is going to diminish my privileged position.
How can I celebrate Christmas? Holiday cheer? Revel in my personal salvation?
And then, these words from Rudy Wiebe. I don't know who he is, but I like what
he wrote:
Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live.
You show wisdom by trusting people.
You handle leadership by serving.
You handle offenders by forgiving.
You handle money by sharing.
You handle enemies by loving.
You handle violence by suffering.
In fact, you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody,
Toward nature,
Toward the state in which you happen to live,
Toward women,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Toward slaves,
Toward all and every single thing,
Because this is a Jesus society and you repent, not by feeling bad,
but by thinking different.
Maybe the only way I can be honest with Christmas and honest to God is to work
at thinking different.
References:
Richard Horsley and Neil Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus
and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World. Grosset &
Dunlap, 1997.
© 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
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Advent III
Scripture Text
I Samuel 2:8, Luke 1:52-53
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Richard Horsley, Neil Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World, 1997.
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-20001217
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2000-12-17
Title
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The Lost Cause of Christmas
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 17, 2000 entitled "The Lost Cause of Christmas", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Samuel 2:8, Luke 1:52-53.
Advent
Awareness
Incarnation
Intention
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The Gift of Sabbath
Text: Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12, 15; Mark 2:27
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 3, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I smile a bit as I think about bringing a sermon on the subject of the Sabbath. I
suppose it has taken me several decades in order to preach with passion and
conviction the fact that the Sabbath ought to be rigorously observed. That is
because of the way I was raised in my family home as a child. The Sabbath was
observed very, very carefully. The Sabbath day was absolutely predictable; it
never varied. If we, in the summertime, rented a cottage at a neighboring lake, we
would move out on Saturday. That’s when the rent began, of course, but we
would go back home on Saturday night and do the Sunday ritual and go back on
Sunday evening for the week’s vacation. There was no frivolity, there was no
playing. When I think about the Sabbath as I experienced it as a child and as a
youth, I don’t think it was exactly the intention of the Sabbath observance
prescribed by the Ten Commandments.
We got up early in the morning, off to 9:30 church. My mother stayed behind.
Part of the meal was prepared on Saturday night, the rest she prepared on
Sunday morning because when we got home after church and Sunday School, we
had to sit down immediately to eat because my father had to get a brief nap
before he gathered my mother and me up and we went off to pick up my
grandparents, and then they went to the Dutch service in the afternoon. I was left
with some aunts, “unclaimed jewels” they were. Then they came back from the
Dutch service for coffee and cookies and the extended family all came around. It
was quite nice, really. And then we had to hurry home for a light supper in order
to get back for the evening worship.
When I was a younger child, it was Junior Christian Endeavor on the Sunday
afternoon, and when I got a little older, it was Intermediate Christian Endeavor
before the evening service. And then, of course, because I was a mistake and
came along rather lately, I got dragged along, my poor parents being burdened
with me, and so I always had to go out for coffee and cake after the evening
service. Now, that’s a Sunday! That’s a Sunday. When I think about it, I smile
because obviously it was so contrary to the intention of Sabbath. That’s the way
Sabbath was observed and I also am mindful of the fact that for my parents, for
our household, it was the total social structure of our life. The whole social
© Grand Valley State University
�The Gift of Sabbath
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
structure of our life centered around the church and therefore, I guess it didn’t
appear to be an oppressive thing to them or an abusive thing at all. For a child? It
was a long day. When I was in college or seminary I heard the old Presbyterian
minister who was a great preacher, Donald Grey Barnhouse, who experienced
that in his Scottish Sabbatarian practice as a child, who said of the hymn, “Day of
All the Week the Best, Emblem of Eternal Rest,” “If heaven is like a Sunday, I
don’t know if I want to go there.”
Well, that rigorous observance of Sabbath which had so much value is also very
difficult to keep going without it slipping into legalism. That’s a tension that we
simply have to live with. If we’re going to do something religiously, if we’re going
to do something rigorously, then there is a kind of obligation about it which, if we
miss the glow of it, can be perceived and experienced as an oppressive legalism. I
think in my own Dutch Calvinist roots there was a lot of legalism which a child
simply has to endure, failing to see the intention behind the practice. So, I have to
smile a bit when I think about how important I believe Sabbath observance is at
this point in my life, the observance of Sabbath as that principle of punctuating
one’s life for rest and for refreshment and for worship, for the contemplation of
God’s creation, and for the remembering of God’s grace. The point of my message
this morning is that we have lost the Sabbath principle. It is almost non-existent
in our society today and we are paying the price for it.
We live in this marvelous, exciting age in which we have been able through the
application of intelligent mind, reason, skill and competence, to create a culture
that is so filled with possibility. We have mastered so much of the universe. We
have performed technological miracles. We have possibilities undreamed of only
a generation or two or three ago. We call these things labor-saving devices, or
time-savers, and the irony is that the more we have developed the capacity to
save time and to multiply our productivity, we have not found more leisure or
rest, but we have become more driven.
I do believe that we live at a frenetic pace and part of it is simply because we can.
Look at all the gadgets and technology that are at our fingertips in order for us to
do so much more than ever could have been done before, having created more
time.
I heard on the very early CNN Headline News this morning that we are working
more hours than ever before, according to a study just out, and the minority
populations among us are having to work even more just in order to keep up. We
live in a society where I am sure there are those of you out there who would say
it’s absolutely essential for us to maintain our standard of living to have two
incomes in the home. And so, we become a people who are driven by our success.
We become the victims of all of that which is possible for us, and there is precious
little consciousness of Sabbath in terms of rest and cessation. We escape in
exhaustion to the weekend, not the Sabbath. And then, because we’re rather
affluent and we have so much possibility, what we do on the weekend of escape in
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�The Gift of Sabbath
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
order to let our hair down is rush off some place! We pack our cars and we have
to keep up two places and we complain about that, but yet, we wouldn’t give that
up. We have all kinds of toys to enjoy and, of course, the weekend is just
crammed with the wonderful good old American religion. It happens in the
stadiums around the country, many of them brand new, with all kinds of creature
comforts, wonderful professional sports. Football starts today, doesn’t it? There’s
college football on the weekend. I mean, you can cram the whole weekend full
with wonderful exhilarating experience until you are so exhausted you can’t wait
to get back to work in order to get exhausted again and to rush into the next
weekend. Are we not in a frenzied pace? Are we not the victims of all the
possibility and the prosperity and all the capabilities that are ours?
The Sabbath principle is almost non-existent, and I think that is a kind of
syndrome that feeds on itself and we are in one of those spinning modes where
we don’t seem to be able to get off the trolley.
I heard on National Public Radio a few weeks ago some report about the German
economy, the fact that they are being forced to open up more business hours
through the week. Germany is probably the most highly structured European
society, although The Netherlands is not far behind. In the 60s when I was in The
Netherlands, there were just so many hours that a business could be open and so
in the weekend on Sundays, most of the stores were closed. If you needed a
pharmacy, it was printed in the paper as to what pharmacy in, for example, the
city of Leiden, would be open. But, the government regulated how many hours it
could be open. This was a humanitarian principle; it was for the well-being of the
workers, for the well-being of society at large, and it was, I am sure, a residue of
the old Dutch Calvinist Sabbatarian principle. But, I heard just recently that there
is tremendous pressure being put on the German economy, the German
government, to allow businesses to be open more hours because they are losing
business in a world that is global, connected by the Internet where you can shop
anywhere, 24 hours a day, and if you are closed, you have lost out.
Well, it’s just an illustration of the fact that in our world we are going faster and
faster and faster and the frenzied pace is dizzying and instead of finding ourselves
able to relax and take time because of all of the possibilities, the array of
technological devices, we are caught up in it, and it is for that reason that I preach
this sermon, to being you to awareness of the human need for Sabbath. It may
sound like a complaint, like a Jeremiah, and I don’t mean that at all, and as I
said, if it slips into a legalism, it can become coercive and very negative in its
effect, but I want to hold Sabbath before you today.
Let me just say a couple of things about the Sabbath in its biblical rootage.
Obviously, in the first place, it is a gift. It was intended as a gift for the
humanization of the creature. It was not some prohibition, even though it
involved a prohibition. But, its heart, its purpose, its thrust was not prohibition,
but invitation, invitation to catch one’s breath, invitation to cease and desist. It
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�The Gift of Sabbath
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
was a recognition in the wisdom of that early Hebrew culture of the need for life
to be punctuated with pauses, the need for life to have those boundaries and
limits to that unceasing, relentless cycle of work and labor and productivity. We
have become managers, anxious, wanting to subdue and subject and to dominate,
and the Sabbath principle was contrary to that human drive. If you take the whole
Sabbath cycle, every seven years and every seventh seven years, every 50 years,
that is, there was to be a cessation of that driving determination to produce and
to accumulate and to acquire and to master. Every seventh day the human being
was called simply to be, to be a human being rather than a human doing, simply
to stop and to contemplate, to catch one’s breath, to get out of the rat race, to let
go and to be. The intention was that it be a wonderful gift. There are great social
implications in the Sabbath observance because it was not only for you, but for
your servants and for your animals and for your land. The intention was that the
whole created order needs time, time to be.
The great Jewish Rabbi Heschel speaks of the Sabbath as the cathedral of time.
The great European cathedrals are sacred space, but the Sabbath is sacred time.
It was an oasis; it was a resting place; it was a very, very great gift. It was a gift
that was marked by the cessation of work, of labor. And once again, that can
become legalistic and that is not its intention. Although the Sabbath in the
Hebrew Creation account is the seventh day, the Christian movement moved it to
the first day in celebration of the resurrection, it could as well be the third day or
the fifth day. The point is that life have a rhythm of work and rest. The point is
that we need to have the cycle broken and when we have that cycle broken, the
intention is that we not work, that we, indeed, rest.
I don’t know where our drivenness comes from. Some might point to our
Calvinism or our Puritan roots or whatever it may be, but while the biblical
account recognizes the necessity of labor, that work was not an end in itself. In
the creation account, the seventh day was the climax. It wasn’t a mere interlude.
All one’s labor, all one’s energy, all one’s action was to culminate in rest, delight,
contemplation of the wonder and the miracle of life, recognition that one is not
one’s own creator, recognition that one is borne along in a process, recognition
that finally this whole created order is the gift of God. One could say it’s the
contemplation of creation according to the Exodus account, for if you read in the
20th chapter, the Sabbath commandment is in light of creation. But, if you go to
the Deuteronomy account, the Sabbath commandment is based on the need to
contemplate salvation or grace. You were slaves and God set you free. And so, it is
a cessation of work but not as an end in itself, but as an opportunity to delight in
the wonder of life and the miracle of life and the glory of life. The Sabbath is a
time to be open to God.
If we don’t have those seasons and days and rituals and actions, prayers, stories,
sacred myths - if we don’t have them, God dies. God dies in our awareness.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�The Gift of Sabbath
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
I was reading Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God and I came across that
paragraph which I put in your insert. Just since the modern periods of the
Enlightenment everything has been tried to be reduced to rationality, where the
myths are exploded and perhaps the rituals and the cult looked at divisively. But
if we don’t have sacred space and sacred time and sacred language, God becomes
a non-factor. We can become very numb, very dull to our rootedness in the
Divine.
Thomas Moore, in The Care of the Soul suggests that it is not a case of
remembering and so observing, it is a case of observing and then remembering. It
is important for you to come here week after week and to be reminded in a hymn,
in some word of scripture, some statement from the pulpit - it’s important to
come here in order to be made aware again, to be called to attention again,
because we can dull to it, we can die to it. Dag Hammersjold says God does not
die on the day we fail to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day that our
life is no longer illumined by a radiance whose source we can never discover.
I need to be reminded. I need to be reminded that creation is God’s gift, life is
gift, and all is grace, and so I need this time, I need this time to come and to hear
“When Morning Gilds the Sky, my heart, awakening, cries, ‘May Jesus Christ be
praised.’” “This Is My Father’s World, I rest me in the thought,” or “Amazing
Grace, How Sweet the Sound.” I need to be gathered in this community where
there is birth and there is death, where there is health and illness, where there is
joy and there is sadness - I need to reminded that I am a part of the bundle of life.
I need to have time. If I don’t have time, if I don’t take time, if I don’t make time,
I’ll lose part of my humanity and it’s not that God is going to be angry with me,
it’s that I’m going to lose the sense of the presence full of grace. It’s not that I’m
going to go into free-fall; it’s just that I’m going to forget that underneath are
everlasting arms.
The gift of Sabbath, dear God, how we need it. How I think all of us probably
need a lesson or two from my father and mother. (I didn’t think I’d ever say that.)
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and 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
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XIII
Scripture Text
Exodus 20:8, Deuteronomy 5:12, 15, Mark 2:27
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20000903
Date
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2000-09-03
Title
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The Gift of Sabbath
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 3, 2000 entitled "The Gift of Sabbath", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Exodus 20:8, Deuteronomy 5:12, 15, Mark 2:27.
Awareness
Community of Faith
Worship
-
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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
�
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
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
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KII-01_RA-0-20000312
Date
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2000-03-12
Title
A name given to the resource
The Face and the Flesh
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
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.
Awareness
Divine Intention
Lent
Way of Jesus
-
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2d279fd1234638f9256a6c15a2a04505
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PDF Text
Text
The Experience of God
From the series: Spirituality in the Modern World
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 139; Mark 1:9-15 Text: Genesis 1:2; Psalm
139:7; Mark 1:10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
February 18, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
While I was on vacation, I had time to read the paper. I never bother with it the
rest of the year, but there, a cup of coffee and the paper, and Nancy - it is a way to
lull away some time. I was reading a couple of papers a day, and in the Sports
section there was the talk about the difficultly the Los Angeles Lakers were
having, possibly not able to repeat this year the championship because Phil
Jackson, the Coach, has a problem. He doesn't have one star, he has two. Any
time you have two stars, you have problems, right? You have this hulk of a man
called Shaq, who is there because of hulk and some ability, and you have one with
incredible athletic ability, Kobe Bryant, and of course, superstars would like to be
the center of attention and, consequently, the Lakers' fortunes were not too good
at that point. I think they have done a little better since, but I'm not going to hold
my breath as to whether or not they repeat, I don't really care. After all, this is
Piston territory, although we don't admit it always, but the interesting thing
about that disturbance in the Laker lineup was that it reminded me that Phil
Jackson, the coach, was a coach with some meditative dimension to him. He had
been raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, his parents were both
Pentecostal preachers, and one of the worst things that can happen to you when
you grow up in a Pentecostal home is if you don't as an adolescent get the "gift,"
and he never got the "gift." His tongue just kind of laid there and it didn't "take"
with Phil and he felt guilty about all of that, but he was a great athlete and he
found great success, eventually playing in the NBA himself, and of course, his
fame was with the Chicago Bulls. I hate to mention that name in this territory,
too, but one has to do what one has to do. Coaching the great Michael Jordan and
the Jordanaires, and winning three championships and all of that good stuff. He
had a great success record there, and I thought to myself, what is he going to do
in Los Angeles?
A friend here gave me a book entitled Sacred Hoops, by Phil Jackson, with an
Introduction written by then-Senator Bill Bradley. They were both in the NBA
together. In Sacred Hoops, Phil Jackson tells his story, and it is a very good read,
actually. He tells a bit about his very rigid Christian upbringing, which he has not
© Grand Valley State University
�The Experience of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
turned his back on, but to which he has added a touch of Buddhism. He got into a
little Zen Buddhism and meditation. He learned how to sit on a cushion and cross
his legs and breathe deeply and get mindful. But he was telling that, when he had
Michael Jordan on the court, the other players were so enamored with Jordan's
moves, that they would just sort of stand there and forget they were part of the
team, too. What he had to do was weave them into a team and of course, with an
outstanding star like that, that is not so easy, because all of us want to be in the
center stage, and how do you create what he said is really a spiritual matter?
Teamwork is a spiritual matter. And so, his own spiritual experience, his
experience with contemplation, helped him to enable his players to bond together
and to become a team and, of course, the success was evident. The word that Phil
Jackson used about his own experience as a Christian, nonetheless, weaves some
Buddhist meditation into his life. The word that he used was mindfulness. It's a
good word. Mindfulness.
It so happens that the book I was going to use on Tuesday evenings, John Hick’s
The Fifth Dimension, speaks about mindfulness with Hick discussing Buddhism
particularly, Hinduism a bit, but particularly Buddhism. Mindfulness, as John
Hick says, brings one to total awareness of the moment, when one pauses long
enough and, if you want a technique, through the breathing in and breathing out.
Seeking to empty the mind of all distractions, one becomes mindful, and this,
with practice, can become a way of being; it can pervade more and more of life so
that we live in the present moment, not crippled by fears and shame of the past,
not paralyzed by anxiety about the future, but being very much alive and alert
and aware of the present moment. With practice and the spiritual disciplines, this
can become more and more the demeanor of one's life, so that one finds a deeper
level of serenity and peacefulness. It's a good word - mindfulness. Being
consciously aware, aware of one's self and of one's world in the present moment,
being present, here and now, in this moment.
As John Hick says, all of the great religions recognized, in our human experience,
some form of distortion. We all know it; we can look into our own lives, we can
follow the course of our historical circumstances; the newspaper, the television is
full of all kinds of this distortion of human life. As Hick says, you in the Western
tradition, of which we are a part, know the story. We tell about that, the story of
Adam and Eve created in Paradise, perfect, and their rebellion, their
disobedience, their fall into sin. Really, in the biblical story and in the traditional
Christian explanation of things, everything that is wrong with the world is a
consequence of that original sin, that initial misstep, that sin that brings guilt,
that brings alienation, that offends God, that creates the gulf between God and
the human person, and the need for redemption, the need for the whole
redemptive scheme of things in order that that gulf may be bridged and
reconciliation may happen. That is the Christian story; it is the Jewish story,
more or less, the idea that the distortion of the human situation is the
consequence of sin, bringing guilt, bringing alienation.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Experience of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
But, as Hick points out, and I am sure we are aware, in the eastern religions, it is
not a question of sin and guilt and alienation, but rather, the distortion of life is
the consequence of false consciousness. We just don't "see" correctly. We just
don't "get it." There is a false consciousness and that false consciousness causes
me to live as an egocentric being, causes me to live as one who is threatened by
the other, causes me to live greedily and graspingly, causes me to follow the
instincts that are in me as an animal that has emerged out of the jungle with
survival skills. Those skills that enabled the race to preserve itself are still with us
very much, because we may be spiritual beings, but we have not divested
ourselves of that animal nature, and so we know ourselves to be creatures who
are beckoned upward and dragged downward, and we live in that tension. In the
east, the insight, the understanding is that failure to live with awareness and with
peace is the consequence of a false consciousness. We don't "see" truly; we don't
"see" correctly, we don't get the real picture. We distort it because of our
egocentricity and all of that which impinges upon us. So, whether it is the
Western Christian-Jewish-lslamic traditions, or the Eastern traditions, one
explains it one way and another explains it another way; the fact is that they
agree on that dis-ease and that distortion.
I really enjoy listening to Boyd Wilson as I am unwinding from my sermons, and
it always impresses me, as he presents the other great traditions, how the forms
are different, how we do it, how we image it, how we imagine it, and the concepts
are different, but it is all the same, really. It is that human situation in a distorted
reality. There is that yearning for God, that thirst for the sacred, for the holy, that
love of peace and wholeness that seems always to elude us. And so, in one story
or another, in one tradition or another, we are dealing very much with the same
thing.
It does seem to me frankly that, from what we have learned from science about
reality, about the natural world, about the universe, our cosmology today which is
totally different than the cosmology of the biblical writers, our cosmology really
fits a lot better with an eastern insight, because we are emerging. We are a part of
the process. Fifteen billion years from "Big Bang," here we are, creatures who
have become conscious, and in the Buddhist understanding and in the eastern
tradition, it is not that God is "out there," God the creator who is some kind of
craftsman or engineer who put this thing together; but rather, God is in the
process, the creator- Spirit, the creative spirit, and this process which has come to
expression in us so that we are actually the consciousness of the cosmos. With us
the cosmos gets a voice, with us the cosmos comes to awareness, and we are able
to be aware of and to articulate and name the wonder and the mystery of the
whole creation. Here we are and God is in us, because as God is in all reality, with
all of the great traditions affirmed, so God is in us. And so, I think, frankly, the
eastern traditions have an edge on our western tradition in the fact that they have
always looked inside, not outside, for God. The experience of God is within. You
don't go beyond, but rather, into the depths of one's own soul and recognize that
we are the unique human expressions of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Experience of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Now, here, let me tip you off - this is a dangerous statement. This will keep you
thinking for a while. Are you ready?
Could it be that self-awareness is the experience of God? Could it be that if I
really came to the awareness of the depths of my humanness, that I would be
contemplating God? The images of God that we have are terribly important for
the way we think and the way we behave and how we feel about ourselves. If God
is offended by my sin and my guilt and alienated from me, if God is a lawgiver
and judge, then I may well feel in the universe like Phil Jackson felt in his own
family home when he didn't get the "gift," not measuring up. Falling short.
Unworthy.
But, if, on the other hand, I am the universe come to consciousness, or another
way of saying, if I am that sacred coming to awareness, if I am the human
expression of the eternal god, then I am a part of the whole. Then there is no
separation or alienation. I may still get myself into all of the rotten mess into
which humanity can get itself, but it will be a consequence of false consciousness,
not that God is angry with me, but that I have failed to see who I am. The wonder,
the mystery of being the self expression of God, and that perception of things can
make a huge difference in how I feel about myself and about God and about the
whole of reality.
All of these things are in all of the great traditions and certainly what I am
suggesting is a little bit radical. It isn't often said quite that blatantly and bluntly,
that self-consciousness is really God-consciousness, that self-awareness is
awareness of the divine within, but it is in our tradition - "The Spirit of God
brooded over the deep," in the creation story, or of hovering over the deep,
brooding, creating. Psalm 139 - is there anything more beautiful than that? Isn't it
a powerful expression of the experience of God, the God who is closer than our
breath? "Thou hast searched me, O God, and known me. Where can I flee from
thy presence? Night and day are the same to you. You formed me in my mother's
womb. I am wonderfully and mysteriously made."
And then the anger at those on the other side, "Why don't you slay them," only to
come back to that moment of awareness to say, "Search me, O God. Know my
heart." Beautiful! Powerful! So, it's in there, even though the imagery both in
Genesis and the Psalmist is still that image of God "out there," or a kind of
supernatural theism; nonetheless, the sense of intimacy is there, the presence
when God is there.
But, what about Jesus? Jesus coming to his baptism, joining the John the Baptist
movement? Of course, if Jesus is the divine intruder, the second person of the
Trinity, dipping down here to do the job for us, to get us fixed up with God again,
then you can see his baptism as something other, but we have come to think
about Jesus in the genuine, authentic humanity in which I believe he is
portrayed, Jesus in the social context of his day, Jesus living in a time when there
was exploitation, when there was oppression, when the heel of Imperial Rome
© Grand Valley State University
�The Experience of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
was wringing all of the life out of the peasant class, when the cities were
expanding and commercialism was expanding, and people were suffering in
hopelessness and helplessness. It was in that kind of a context that Jesus came on
the scene and joined John the Baptist, who was a rabid apocalyptic who said,
"This is so dark and this is so black, God must soon come to damn the wicked and
vindicate the righteousness." Jesus identified with John, not in a vacuum but, in
a real historical, social, economic situation, Jesus identified with that movement.
Interestingly, as he is driven off into the wilderness, we're told in the gospel story,
he struggles in the wilderness with the evil one; he wrestles. What did he wrestle
with? "Who am I? Who is God? What am I about? What is my calling, what is my
mission? Is John right? I don't feel right with John."
And he leaves the wilderness temptation and the power of the Holy Spirit and
what does he proclaim, doom and gloom about to happen? No, he proclaims the
good news, the year of the Lord's favor, and he is able to communicate with those
people who had not a prayer that they were people of dignity, they were human,
they were people of worth, they were children of God, they were children of the
covenant, and they flocked to him because he gave them some reason to live,
some meaning. He was a prophet, but he had that word for that moment, and
they knew it was true. He gave people again the sense of human dignity and
worth. Filled with the spirit.
What was he? He was God-aware, he was self-aware. He taught them to see God
in the lilies of the field and the sparrows. He taught them that God is as close as
their breath. With that, one would have thought that Jesus might have been a
Buddhist.
The experience of God is always so difficult to nail down. I got a call in the middle
of last evening from my old friend, Bud Ridder, who has preached for us here. He
said, "What are you preaching on tomorrow?" I said, "Oh, God." I told him it's not
easy trying to preach out of a whole new paradigm. I could make it so much
easier for myself. He said, "Oh, I know." I said, "You know, I got so desperate a
moment ago that I actually sat with my eyes closed and checked out my breathing
for at least two minutes." You see, I'm really the worst one in the world to be
talking about this because it has never worked for me. I've never had a decent
prayer life. I can't meditate. I want to talk ideas. I want to keep it on an
intellectual level. So, I'm the worst one in the world to try to be telling you about
this, and I stumble and stammer because there is something here.
If Jesus were to come today, what would he say to us? I wonder if, once again,
he'd be the one with the word that connected because the time was right. I
wonder if he would suggest to us that rolling blackouts in California are a sign of
things to come. I wonder if he might say, "You know those rolling blackouts in
California? What you really need to do is just generate more energy. Just find oil
wherever it is. It doesn't matter where it is, whether it's in a nice, natural
environment or not, just get the energy going, keep the industry going to keep the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Experience of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
consumption going, because haven't you learned from your television set that you
really are consumers? The television stations that are owned by the producers
who push the goods to make us think that we will be less than human if we don't
have it all?" Jesus would probably say, "Just find more energy. Rape the earth."
Now, it's true that only a small percentage of earth's children are profiting by that
and most of earth's children are living in poverty and hunger, and it's also true
that, if you keep going at that rate, you're going to devastate the natural
environment, but what the hell? You'll be dead."
That's probably what Jesus would say, eh? We'd certainly hear something
different from him, wouldn't we? We'd have to kill him again. You bet we would.
I don't imagine that Ralph Nader is of the stature of Jeremiah or Isaiah, but it
was interesting to me how the political parties, Republican and Democrat both,
aligned with the fact that he was the enemy. I mean, he disrupts things. Life is
good when it's in the hands of the power brokers of the age. Then they can play
us. Then they can make us puppets and we just kind of go along with the flow.
Here's a guy who has the audacity to ruin an election.
Well, what's all that got to do with anything? It has a lot to do with the experience
of God. I think Jesus would have something to say to us and I think some day
someone will come with a word. Look what happened in India with Gandhi, that
little Indian man. He talked about non- violent resistance and catalyzed a whole
people. Sometime, when the time is right, and the right words spoken, things
change. Unfortunately, however, most of us good people are so invested in the
present that even when we begin to see it, we fight it. Now, I'm a part of that
problem because if Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, Exxon, Mobil, Sony, Motorola,
and Compaq do not do well, you're going to have an aging preacher and his wife
on your hands. You're going to have to take care of us. We're invested, folks. You
see, I'm not pointing any fingers. It's just something to think about.
The experience of God comes in moments of self-awareness, when I realize that it
is not my game, but I am a part of some wonderful, mysterious whole, that my life
is bound into the bundle of life, and that God is present, the God of the
beginning, the God of the end, and the God who is with us in the meantime, and
if I can ever see, by God, I will see, and it will be God in me.
References:
John Hick. The Fifth Dimension:An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm.
Oneworld Publications, 1999.
Phil Jackson. Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior.
Hyperion, 1995.
© 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
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Lent I
Series
Spirituality in the Modern World
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:2, Psalm 139:7, Mark 1:10
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Phil Jackson. Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior. Hyperion, 1995. John Hick. The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm. Oneworld Pub., 1999.
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KII-01_RA-0-20010218
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2001-02-18
Title
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The Experience of God
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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audio/mp3
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 18, 2001 entitled "The Experience of God", as part of the series "Spirituality in the Modern World", on the occasion of Lent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, Psalm 139:7, Mark 1:10.
Awareness
Consciousness
Presence of God
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4d1b83c09fef75cd185c897cfb7e8ebe.pdf
b41a62410c41d94744ec7216ddcc306d
PDF Text
Text
The Breath of God – The Life of the World
From the Eastertide sermon series: Credo
Text: Genesis 1:2; Ezekiel 37:5; John 3:8
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost Sunday, May 22, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"... a mighty wind (Spirit) that swept over the surface of the waters." Genesis 1:2
“I will put my breath (wind, spirit) in you and you shall live." Ezekiel 37:5
"The wind blows where it wills; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it
comes from or where it is going. So with everyone who is born from Spirit.” John 3:8
I have a very simple but a very wonderful word to share with you today on this
Pentecost Sunday. I want to say to you that the breath of God is the life of the
world. You've been around with me long enough to know that "the breath of God"
is simply another way of saying "the spirit of God" or "the wind of God." For the
Hebrew word Ruach means "spirit" or "wind" or "breath". In the Hebrew it has
that enlivening, energizing vitality about it: the wind as a tempest, the wind as
moving power, the wind as energy. It was the Ruach of God in the story of
creation that shaped the cosmos. As we said earlier today at the baptismal font, it
was the breath of God moving through the chaos, bringing creation to its fullness.
It was the Ruach of God that caused Israel to have hope in its exile, the Ruach of
God which caused the dry bones to come together in that vision of Ezekiel, that
vision which spoke in metaphor of God's promise that that exiled people would
come to life again. Then resurrection so to speak, would be through the Ruach of
God. It was the Ruach of God or the breath of God that breathed, which blew
through Mary and caused the Word to take on flesh and to dwell among us. And
on the day of Pentecost that Ruach, spirit wind of God, rushed through that early
community of the followers of Jesus turning them inside out and sending them
out into the world.
The unfortunate thing for us is that the Hebrew word Ruach that had about it this
energy and vitality was translated into the Latin vispiritus, and into English by
the word spirit. And for us, the word spirit is intangible. It's invisible. It's kind of
ghostlike. In fact, the German translation is gist and we even speak in an older
form of the Apostles Creed of the Holy Ghost. So there is something spooky about
it, something intangible about it – quite the opposite of the imagery of the
Hebrew word Ruach.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Breath of God–The Life of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
What I want to say to you this morning is that it is that breath of God or that wind
of God that gives life to the world, to all that is. Psalm One Hundred and Four, I
said, is such a beautiful poem because it makes that point that every living thing
– snails, and worms, and grubs, and birds, and the animals of the field, and the
trees of the forest, and the meadows, and the skies, and the seas, and ourselves –
is alive with the life of God!
It seems that in the modern age, since the Enlightenment, with all of the past
accomplishments of the natural scientists and the explosion of technology, there
has come into our lives a compartmentalization, a division, so that we do this on
Sunday and then go out to the rest of the week to do our lives where life really is.
Others have no moment like this hour of worship, because life for them is lived
altogether outside the sanctuary, and they're getting along just fine. Human
powers, human ingenuity, technology, scientific experiment, production, the
corporate world, all of that going on without any reference to God. There we live a
profane life.
Profane means, literally, outside the temple. We come into the temple, then we
speak of the sacred. And to this day in life, there has been that distinction
between the sacred and the profane. What I want to say to you this morning is
that the celebration of the sacred, such as we do today, is in order to recognize the
sacredness of the whole of life.
But what has happened in our modern western civilization, western culture, is
that the vast majority of our brothers and sisters live a purely secular life without
any reference, without any recognition that it is the breathing of God that keeps
all things in being.
Someone from the outside could say to me, "We don't need God. That's just a
hypothesis. The world is just a phenomenon that's there. It's just an accident the
way things have developed. We can live purely out of our own resources." And I
have to answer that is as reasonable as what I am claiming. But I'm claiming the
opposite. I'm claiming that everything that is, is because God keeps breathing. As
the Psalmist said, "God withholds God's breath and they wither and return to the
dust. God breathes and they are created and renewed." That goes not simply for
some spiritual realm of our human experience, but that goes for our bodies. That
goes for our physical universe, our natural world, for the totality of reality. It is all
God-breathed, moment-by-moment incessantly. God holds all things together.
And we live and we celebrate and we can delight in the totality of it because it is
all a consequence of the breath of God. On this Pentecost hear me say that I
believe the breath of God is the life of the world.
I had an experience recently on a beautiful morning, much like this morning. I
had to go into Grand Rapids for breakfast. I came down Route 45 to Allendale, to
Eastmanville, and then took Leonard Road into Grand Rapids. And if you haven't
taken that route recently, do it again. It courses through valleys. There are
wonderful green hills. That day the trees were coming out in marvelous blossom.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Breath of God–The Life of the World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
There were jonquils and farmyards. There were cattle staring at me with those
large eyes. And because it was still cool at that hour, their breath was causing a
bit of a vapor, almost a kind of mystical something in that morning light. It was a
brilliant, shining morning. I had my sunroof open. The fresh air came in. After
the long Michigan winter, I said, "Dear God this is it! Spring has come!" And
when I began to tell somebody about it, I said, "It was almost a spiritual
experience", when as a matter fact it was precisely a spiritual experience. It was
exactly a religious experience because a spiritual or religious experience is simply
the experience of the world in the conscious awareness of the breathing of God
that makes it all possible and invites us to delight in it.
I had another experience, not too long ago while I was on vacation. It was Sunday
afternoon, on a Florida intercostal down in Marco Island. It was a ramshackle,
broken-down, old, beat-up tavern scene, the kind of place where you find yourself
a small table under a little thatched palm roof to keep out of the sun. Tied up to
the nearby docks people were eating brats and hot dogs and there was a musical
group (though not nearly as good as the Weideman family but with a certain
similarity!) and the people washing down excessive numbers of brats and hot
dogs with excessive liquids of various kinds. They had tied their boats
together,"rafting" out from one another as it's called.
I looked at that scene and I said to myself, "Dear God, in the church, we are
missing it. We few Christians coming together decrying the worldliness of the
world and the unspirituality of people. We are growing smaller and smaller, and
it's getting tougher and tougher, and we have to shout louder and louder, and run
faster and faster. And I thought, "We're missing it." What we ought to do is not
simply invite people next weekend to come "casually" (for a casual Sunday) into
the sanctuary, What we ought to do is all go to the shores of Lake Michigan
somewhere and have a "kegger", and some hot dogs, and a hot band. Then at
some point, give me just ten minutes. Give me just ten minutes for me to tell
them that all of this sand dune, and sky, and sea, and the wonder of the world is
all there to be enjoyed and be delighted in because God keeps breathing. It isn't
an accident. It can't be taken for granted. It ought not to be presumed upon. We
don't need to retreat to the temple to feel God's breath! If only we are aware, in
that moment, that all that surrounds us is enlivened by God!
A moment of awareness, that's what prayer is. A moment of attention, that's what
prayer is. Attention and awareness to the breathing of God in a jonquil, in a tulip,
in the forsythia, in sand, in sky, in food and friends. It should cause us to wonder
and worship because the breath of God is the life of the world. Rather than living
out in the world by my wits as best I can and sneaking into church on the
weekend to be refueled, I ought to come here to this sanctuary to do sacred
things, in sacred space, in order to go out and to see that all of space, and all of
life and all of its lusty delight is the gift of God who keeps breathing, and
breathing, energizing, vitalizing, enlivening us to be fully human, all to the glory
of God. Isn't that wonderful?
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/640a377c649abf2ce6f0b5604e5e2fd1.mp3
ee1cc2466376609b228ebb9c2644017a
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
Genesis 1:2, Ezekiel 37:5, John 3:8
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19940522
Date
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1994-05-22
Title
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The Breath of God - The Life of the World
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 22, 1994 entitled "The Breath of God - The Life of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, Ezekiel 37:5, John 3:8.
Awareness
Panentheism
Pentecost
Presence of God
Sacred
Wonder
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5cee72a8c1657378d2e1154927845729.mp3
9fdb41bd8560f68bdce9cd00c8fc188b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ffd6b6f8c17f45c7bd2c4424d4b9b84e.pdf
d379a9143b9f0469ff3a99c059afb731
PDF Text
Text
Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
From the series: The Human Face of God
Text: Matthew 3:2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 26, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The subject of the sermon, this week, "Seeking Justice in a Brutal World," is
always announced a week ahead of time and it's usually put together many weeks
ahead of time, but I like to discipline myself to announce it at least the week
ahead of time because it sensitizes me to the things that I encounter in the course
of the week. This week it was a couple of pieces on the evening news, on a couple
of different evenings: one about a therapist who is working with children through
art therapy, trying to get them to bring to expression the fear and the rage and the
anger that they feel, children who have witnessed the murder and dismembering
of a father or a mother, little tykes, and the therapist saying that, with what they
have been through, they have been scarred psychically for the rest of their lives.
One bright-looking little fella who is asked, "Can you ever forgive the Russian
soldier who killed your mother?" simply says, "No." Think of such a world in
which we live where that is a part of the puzzle.
Then, on another evening, there was a piece about a Russian town. The scene
opened with some old Russian gentlemen sitting on their stools on the ice, icefishing, and I think the cameraman very purposely focused on a fish that had just
been caught, still flopping. One sees the fish in the death throes of the dance of
death, flexing its body, striving for another breath or swallow, but obviously
dying. And then the camera switched to Katja, an attractive young woman who
has been driven into prostitution, something she said she would never have
thought of, except that she has a two-year-old daughter for whom she must
provide and there is no other way for her. You see the night scenes with her along
the road with the truckers stopping, negotiating for her services. Then it switches
back to the old men on the ice who talk about the young men in the town, none of
whom have employment, all of whom have been driven to thievery, to drugs, to
alcoholism, and the old men say, "We didn't have it very good, but we had a
subsistence. These young men - they don't have any place to go." The camera
pans three obsolete, old monster factories, factories that once were productive
and gave the people of the town work and at least a subsistence wage, but
factories now obsolete, inefficient, outmoded and outdated which have not been
able to make it in the most recent revolution in Russia, the revolution to the free
© Grand Valley State University
�Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
market. And so, you have human tragedy of that sort, human beings with no way
to support themselves in a situation where, generations before them, people lived
and at least were able to negotiate life. But now it seems so dark and so hopeless.
I watched that piece and I thought, "Dear God, it's a brutal world." There are so
many people that hurt so much and so many that fall through the cracks.
In literature, I dislike stream of consciousness pieces; I can never understand
them, but you're getting a stream of consciousness sermon this morning, because
I went from Chechnya to that Russian town to a night in Boston in the 60s when I
saw "Dr. Zhivago," which remains one of my favorite films, and I saw the Czarist
Russia with its obscene opulence, its wealth, and its insensitivity to the suffering
peasants, the masses, and then the Revolution and the liberators who overthrew
the Czarist regime and established their Socialist government. I can remember
my disillusionment when I came to realize that the liberators, liberated through
violence, became violent oppressors fully as deadly as the regime that they had
replaced. It was kind of a coming of age for me when I realized that violence and
oppression are not the prerogative of the haves nor the have-nots, but of both.
Whoever happens to have power, it seems it eventuates in oppressiveness,
domination and violence and human tragedy. I thought how interesting that the
Socialist revolution that overthrew the Czarist regime and brought in the Socialist
pattern under which those old fishing men had at least subsisted has been
replaced by another revolution, one we have applauded, the revolution of the free
market, with its competition which has put out of commission the whole town,
creating more human tragedy and despair.
Now before you budding entrepreneurs who have broken into the Russian market
turn me off, and you Left bleeding-heart liberals start applauding, let me plead I'm not making a political statement, nor an economic statement. I am talking
about the injustice, about the brutality of the human situation. I'd like to have
you join me in trying to feel it somewhat this morning, because this isn't about
the free market or about Marxism; this is about the human situation which is so
marked by so much pain. That may seem a modest goal, but at least it brings me
to deal with the biblical lessons this morning in a way that I never would have
done growing up and in my early years. I was brought up, as I'm sure you were,
with the wise adage that you never, in polite company, talk about religion or
politics. And I was trained and nurtured in the understanding that religion and
politics don't mix.
Can you imagine my dismay and my amazement when I come to realize that the
Hebrew prophets that formed the background of the Christian Gospel and the
Christian Gospel whose forerunner was John the Baptist and whose incarnation
was Jesus Christ and whose apostle was Paul, that that whole story arose out of
political and economic situations marked by brutality and injustice? I guess if you
would ask me to mark some of the most significant ways in which my
understanding of the Gospel of the Christian tradition has changed, I would have
to say probably as much as anything it is that understanding that what John the
© Grand Valley State University
�Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Baptist was about and what Jesus was about was social, political, economic
reality that was marked by injustice and brutality, and that growing up, for me
the Gospel was something that had to do with the soul, that had to do with the
spirituality of life, that had largely to do with my individual relationship with
God. It had to do with the way of salvation, it had to do with a way of life here and
a faith commitment which would lead to heaven over there. And then I wake up
to discover that what John and Jesus were about was about the concrete, earthly
reality of politics and economics, about empire and about slavery, about human
suffering. That amazes me and that means that I can no longer not mix religion
and politics, because my religion has political and economic implications so
deeply entwined because it arose out of that matrix.
We live in the generation that knows more about the first century than any
generation before us, since the first century itself. Through textural studies,
through archeological discoveries, through cross-cultural understanding of
peasant societies in the time when Rome ruled the world, we have an
understanding of that social, political, economic context in which John brought
his message as an apocalyptic prophet, in which Jesus pointed to the kingdom of
God. And we understand today that what is going on in Russia today was going
on in Galilee two thousand years ago.
For twelve hundred years in the Galilee, little villages dotted the hilltops and the
valleys of the Galilee, and people lived in extended communities, little villages,
able to subsist, able to live. Subsistence, not surplus. They made it. They just
made it. But, they made it. Twelve hundred years in the Galilee, generation after
generation, cultivating a little grass, raising some livestock, they made it. And
then came the day of empire, the Roman legions, followed by the Roman tax
collectors and the Roman entrepreneurs. Then subsistence was not enough; there
had to be surplus, when conscripted labor was necessary for the building of the
public works in the new cities that were being built and where taxation got real
serious, such that many were put into debt, needing to borrow which would
jeopardize their future, making them even more a debtor until finally their land
was foreclosed on them and they became landless and homeless and hopeless. It
was happening all over the Galilee, and Perea and the environs of Jerusalem.
They were an occupied state by an imperial power that ruled rather well, but rule
as all empires rule - for their own aggrandizement and, therefore, the people
grinding under that system knew increasingly the pain and the brutality of the
human situation.
They also became ripe for a messenger, a prophet. They also became ripe for a
John the Baptist who, in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets of Amos and Micah
and Isaiah and Jeremiah, cried out for justice, for mercy, for the righteousness of
the covenant of the people of God. There was a ready audience for that kind of
call and John the Baptist was a fiery prophet who was steeped in his old
covenant, who was angry, full of vengeance.
© Grand Valley State University
�Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Who can blame him? He was probably one of those vengeful children of a
vengeful God, but who can blame him? Who can see the injustice, the tragedies,
the hurt and the pain of the human situation? Who can contemplate it for very
long without feeling something inside that rises up and says, "It is wrong and it
must be righted." John, reflective of so much of the thinking of his day, felt that
because he knew God, the God of Israel, the God of justice, the God of
righteousness - because he knew this God, he knew this God could not
countenance this thing; he could not let this thing go on. He knew that, somehow
or other, the God of Israel would have to make some dramatic move, some direct
intervention to right the wrongs and to establish the righteous and to put down
the oppressor.
There were others who had different voices. There was the Qumran community,
the Essenes who went out into the wilderness, fasted and prayed and waited for
God to do something. They left society. There were the Zealots, the guerillas who
were trying, through guerilla activity, to undercut the Roman authority. But
John, a prophet in the mold of the old prophets, brought his protest publicly. He
preached his message at the banks of the Jordan; he called people to be baptized
for the cleansing of their sin in a ritual act and to go back into Judea and the
environs of Jerusalem and to wait for God to act. John was in that Messianic
mode and it has continued to crop up now and then through the centuries and we
got a little taste of it even at the turn of the millennium, that mode that says God
is going to act, God is going to do something. Obviously, the God of justice will
intervene.
The problem with messianism, the problem with that apocalyptic anticipation of
the intervention of God, is that it can always be proven wrong, and for two
thousand years it's been proven wrong. Every date that was set, every growing
expectation to the present has been disappointed. And so, one wonders about the
world; one wonders what does one do? Does one simply reconcile oneself to its
brutality? Does one simply accept the fact that that's the way the human situation
is and ever will be?
I was thinking about Karl Marx and Lenin. They had an idea and that idea spread
like wildfire around the globe, once they got it started. They had to start it with
violence and they had to keep it going with violence. But, it was an idea of
another kind of world. It was an idea of a classless society in which there would
be no need, in which everyone according to his ability would offer and everyone
would receive, according to his need. It was Utopian and Utopian comes from
utopus, no place. This has never existed; it's no place. This idea has no rootage,
no home. It’s never landed; it has never become concrete. But the idea that Marx
and Lenin had did catch fire. It did involve millions of people in that movement
which was strong enough for us to get pretty worried about it. It was strong
enough for us to engage in a Cold War over those decades. Thank God we had
more muscle, more dollars, more technology, we were able to out-spend them
and finally spend them into bankruptcy and we proved that that political,
© Grand Valley State University
�Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
economic system doesn't work and the free market economy triumphs. But, what
fascinates me is that there was an idea, an idea that took hold. We say we can't do
anything. I feel that way. And yet, there was an idea and a vision and, By Golly, it
swept the earth. So then, I wonder. Of course it was flawed, of course it was
violent, of course it became oppressive, of course it was as brutal as that which it
replaced. I'm not arguing, making no apology for it. I'm only saying look what
happened when an idea captivated the masses. I wonder if anybody has an idea.
You know, the Gospel that we proclaim was a Gospel that came out of John the
Baptist and Jesus Christ and it was a word to those who were oppressed, to those
who were out of sync, to those who were out of luck, to those who didn't have a
prayer. That's where the Gospel was born. Now we wear the Roman toga; now we
call the shots. What would happen if we had an idea? What would happen if
someone had an idea as to how to change the landscape of the world and it could
be implemented, because you need power to implement, but without violence?
What if somebody here got an idea about how things could be other than they are
so there wouldn't be so much brutality, so there wouldn't be so much hurt, so
many people would not fall through the cracks, so our structures and our
systems, political and economic and social, didn't exclude so many and didn't
leave so many driven to all kinds of self-destructive behavior?
I don't know, but I wonder about it because I am convinced that what John was
about and what Jesus was about was about the concrete reality of everyday life.
The kingdom of heaven was to come on earth; it was to be the kingdom of God; it
was to be the way human society was organized if God were calling the shots.
John was waiting for God to come, but God doesn't come, God doesn't intervene,
God isn't going to intervene. It's no use waiting for God; God is waiting for us.
I think we give up. I think we just think that's the way it is and we better keep our
powder dry and we'd better stay strong, and if anybody comes around with a
cockeyed idea that would too radically alter the whole situation, there's always
the CIA.
I don't know, friends, but I think a lot about it. I know in the meantime there is
Micah 6:8, "What does the Lord require but that you do justly, love mercy, walk
humbly with your God." And I know here and there, we can do a good thing, and I
think all of us here would and we do, but you know, it's the Big Picture, it's the
way everything is organized and structured. It's systemic. We could all sell all and
give all and we wouldn't alter, ultimately, anything. It's the Big Picture. It's the
idea. We'll have to see next week if Jesus had an idea. We'll continue. In the
meantime, let it disturb you a bit.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Lent III
Series
The Human Face of God
Scripture Text
Matthew 3:2
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20000326
Date
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2000-03-26
Title
A name given to the resource
Seeking Justice in a Brutal World
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 26, 2000 entitled "Seeking Justice in a Brutal World", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Lent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 3:2.
Awareness
Justice
Sermon on the Mount
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e8fe37a112257c26aace32ba40fc3346.pdf
d7b3417b7cd2257d01e14bb1764cc202
PDF Text
Text
Religion: Has It a Future?
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Scripture: Romans 7:14-25; Mark 8:11-21
Dr. Duncan Littlefair
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 28, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
(Mr. Rhem)
It is for me a very great pleasure and privilege to introduce to the congregation of
Christ Community and our friends visiting with us today the Rev. Dr. Duncan
Littlefair. My friendship with Dr. Littlefair goes back over a couple of years
through one of those wonderful providences when a friend of his became a friend
of mine, and we found ourselves on Tuesdays enjoying table fellowship and
absolutely wonderful conversation. We meet on Tuesdays religiously. During the
past couple of years in which we have been through some difficult waters, it has
been a source of great encouragement to me to come to know Dr. Littlefair. His
strength and his vision have steeled my purpose. As I said to the 8:30
congregation, when I reflected at the lunch table about the things we were dealing
with, Dr. Littlefair told me that they had handled that 100 years ago at Fountain
Street Church in Grand Rapids and, when I came with some brave new insight, I
found out that he had published it in a primer on religion 50 years ago. I don’t
know why some of us are so Johnny-come-lately, slow to learn, if not slow to
speak. As we gathered around that lunch table, it was obvious to me that there
was fire in the belly, there was a sermon brewing, ready to be delivered, and so I
broached the subject, asking Dr. Littlefair if he would be our guest at Christ
Community. He has been in our worship and warmly affirmed us, but he goes a
step further in giving us the gift this morning of his presence in this pulpit. I want
to say to you very sincerely that I am deeply moved and greatly appreciative of his
presence here this morning. Welcome, Dr. Duncan Littlefair.
(Dr. Littlefair)
You cannot be human without being religious. You may doubt that in the course
of my presentation to you this morning, but I want it to be in your mind. You
cannot be human without being religious.
Now, there are very many levels of humanity, and there are equally many levels of
religion. You can have a profound religion. You can have a trivial religion. You
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
can have an intellectual understanding religion. You can have an ignorant
religion. You can have a religion that is equal to the best of knowledge, or you can
have a religion that is full of superstition, but religious you must be if you’re going
to be human. Or, I like it better the other way, to be human means to be religious.
There has never, ever been a people anywhere in the history of this globe (and
that history goes back a long, long way now; we’ve extended it enormously),
never any people without a religion. Isn’t it, then, more than just a little absurd
that any one religion should claim that it is the only way? If you stop to think
about it, can you imagine anything more absurd than for one religious people to
proclaim that its way of reverencing and worshiping this Creative Source that
makes us is the only way? And Christians have done that all these centuries.
They’re still doing it! Criticizing this church because it moves out to the
possibility - that’s all you’re doing - move out to the possibility that there are
other ways. I cannot contain myself when I hear such stupidity and prejudice as
to assume that there is no other way but your own.
And as a result, Muslim faith grew out of Christianity and Judaism, you know. Of
course you know. And, Islam faith claims that it’s the only valid way and scorns
the Christian, or the Christian scorns the Muslim and the Buddhist. And I’ve been
prophesying for some ten years and I think that it will come to be that any crisis
that occurs in this world will be a crisis between these two faiths proclaiming
themselves to be absolute and the only way. And they are meeting. As Colette
made mention in her prayer, they are meeting across the world and they are
fighting each other. They will engage in mortal conflict. The tenth and eleventh
centuries all over again, and this is the twentieth, moving into the twenty-first. I
know of no institution in the world that is as riddled and ridden by superstition
as religion.
Now, I want to make the definition of religion. I have said that it was a universal
product, that there was never a person or a people without it, never a people, and
that’s historically true, archeologically, anthropologically true, but I’m going to
define religion for you and follow my definition in the course of my discussion
because it doesn’t run counter to what I’ve said, it’s a definition and a description
of it. Religion is to care. That’s all. To care.
Care about what? I think anything. Anything. We start off with our children. We
encourage their caring on their level, whatever it is. Care for money? Fine. Then it
will be your religion. It is the religion of many people. Stupid. Trivial,
insubstantial, insufficient. But, it can be a religion. But, if we start out with
religion as caring, see, then you come to a place like this, this beautiful place, and
you join yourself together with other people like you, beautiful congregation in
this building. I’ve been here, I’ve seen you and felt you. You come to a place like
this, you see, to deepen your caring. To illumine your caring. Enlighten it. Make it
more profound. Make it more impressive and make a greater impact with it on
yourself, and let the chips fall where they may, because you have a society of
persons who care, you’ll have a caring society.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Now, I want to mention that I think we are in a cultural crisis in the world. A
cultural crisis is not something that occurs in a lifetime, not a few years or
months, you know. It’s a long, long thing. Our cultural crisis has been brewing for
350 years, maybe 400, we don’t argue about 50 or 100 years in this sort of thing.
It started with the beginning of the scientific approach to knowledge. Not until
the 1500s, Galileo the middle of the 16th century, 1500s, the beginning of the
scientific approach to the world, not to go on here say, not to go on folklore, not
to go on imagination, not to go on superstition, not to go on campfire ideas, but
to begin to probe the nature of the world to see what it’s like, what it’s truly like.
Not until the middle of the 16th century.
It wasn’t until the middle of it the 17th century, which Whitehead calls the century
of genius, that we even discovered the circulation of the blood. And that was the
same century that Newton discovered the nature of gravity. And since then we’ve
been growing so wonderfully in our ideas and appreciations so that now, after
350 years, it’s beginning to take account. It hasn’t taken hold yet. People feel it,
but intellectually it’s not clear. And even our leaders are not talking about it
enough because it’s a frightening thing and they don’t want to offend people.
They don’t want to frighten them, but they are frightened. The people of the
western hemisphere are frightened, and rightly so, because we’re discovering that
we live in a world that can brush us aside like any of the thousands of species that
have been brushed aside, failed and lost out in the past, that can happen to us,
too. We’re not that long established, you know.
I like to point out that the human life has been here maybe a million years and
the dinosaurs were here 100 million years. Now, if you understand the nature of
scientific progression of knowledge and facts, then that has to be significant to
you. And the cultural crisis is that we have to come to the conclusion that things
are in our hands. Oh, I know that I violate most of the ritual that goes on around,
even in this enlightened church, and some of the ritual that goes on in my church,
but we have to come to the conclusion that we are on our own in this world! I
don’t know how any intelligent person could avoid coming to that conclusion, I
just do not understand it. There is to be no divine intervention! There is no
miraculous intercession. Hasn’t been. Is not now, and never will be.
I like the little story in the New Testament, which is a very important book to me,
of Jesus in the midst of a circus, a parade. The man stood up in a tree so that he
could participate in it, and Jesus said, "Come on down. Come on down,
Zaccheaus, and get out of that tree. We’ve got things to do." We’ve got things to
do. Did you hear Colette’s prayer? I have difficulty hearing behind there, but I
heard it. We have to save our environment. We have to save the air. We have to
save the water and make it open and accessible for quality and human living. We
have to save our woods. We have to deal with our hatreds, with our tribal loyalties
and devotions. We have to deal with our selfishness. We have to deal with our
ignorance. We have to deal with our hatred, which leads people to fight against
each other, killing neighbors year after year. No matter what we do, we cannot
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
stop it. This is a cultural crisis and religion is so far showing its awareness of it by
its frantic, absolutely frantic retreat into what I call "warehouse religion,"
emotional binges without the slightest degree of interest in pursuing knowledge,
understanding, and wisdom. Just emotional expression.
Now I want to say, after having indicated that the cultural crisis is hinged on
knowledge, that this kind of knowledge has really nothing to do with religion. I
have a principle that I introduced to the men at lunch and I jokingly call it "The
Littlefair Principle." I thought I might as well, nobody else has said it.
To the degree that any religion depends upon the repudiation of
knowledge and truth and facts, it is to that degree of dependence
spiritually ignorant, illiterate, and unworthy.
Now, the alternative:
To the degree that any religion is founded upon and dependent upon
knowledge of the world, it is to that degree, spiritually invalid.
I have not excluded religion, now, because religion is to care. But, if your caring
involves you repudiating the best and most established knowledge, it’s obviously
unworthy, too trivial for any people to adhere to. But, if you make a religion out
of the facts, you’re missing the whole point of a religion, which is to care.
Now, we do not allow the religionists to tell us what the facts are. That would be
ridiculous. They’re not trained to do it, obviously, are they? You want to know
about the earth, what it’s made of? You want to know its structure, you go to the
geologist, don’t you? They know. They have learned. They’ve applied the scientific
method. They have irrefutable facts, not some dream that arose around a
campfire about what the nature of the earth was. No way.
You want to know about the human body? You go to a biologist. And let me tell
you that I’ve heard from the biologists that if you don’t know the biology of the
last 20 years, you’re ignorant, biologically speaking, so great has been the
advance and growth and knowledge of the body. But, you don’t ask a religionist
about the nature of the body.
You want to know about the structure of things like this? And the rocks and some
trees? You don’t go to the geologist, you go to the physicist and the chemist. He’ll
tell you.
You want to know about the history of life on this planet? You go to the
anthropologist. They’re the ones who have been doing the studying on this thing,
and they know. They’re not guessing, they’re not hoping. They have facts, and
those facts are important for anybody trying to live the modern world so that you
can make your caring an intelligent thing.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
One other point: We’re on the stage of the democratization of religion. I’ve been
wondering about this for some time and it suddenly occurred to me that what I’ve
been after all these years in my ministry is the democratization of religion. Isn’t it
amazing that we make God a monarch? Have you thought about that? We make
God a monarch. We don’t believe in monarchies! Goodness sakes, we abolished
them long, long ago! Even Japan. Certainly the monarchy in England, Britain, the
one outstanding one is just decorative, it’s not the essence of the British Republic.
We don’t talk about monarchs, but we make God to be sitting on a throne. We
have people supplicating Him, fawning over Him, flattering Him. Most of our
prayers are forms of flattery equivalent to a courtier and an emperor. God is not
Louis XIV. Surely that ought to be clear to us. Degradation. Can you see Jesus on
a throne? Can you really see that? You grew up thinking about it, having it given
to you, and maybe you’re hearing it as adults, too - can you see Jesus on a throne?
The man who put his arms, figuratively, around a prostitute and made her his
best friend - that’s an emperor?
My God and I walk through the fields together,
we laugh and talk as good friends should and do.
Our voices ring with laughter.
My God and I walk through the fields together.
You have your choice. Jesus talked about God as a father, and I assume the best
of fathers is like a friend that you laugh and talk with and walk through the fields
together.
Now, I want very briefly to go to describe something more about religion as
caring. I want to define Spirit for you, and I’ll be back next week, I trust, to talk
some more about it. But, I want to define the Spirit. It just doesn’t get defined. I
do a lot of philosophical reading and it just doesn’t get defined, and I’d like you to
take it home and think with it, about it, and put it together with my notion that
religion is to care. Spirit is to feel while you are aware. Now, listen to this - it’s
not a "thing," almost anyone surely knows with their fourth-grade mind that it’s
not a "thing." It’s not something that resides in the body and comes out. We’ve
thought that for centuries. It’s too late for that kind of thinking. We’ve got things
to do. The Spirit is a part of the body and so much it is a product of the body, and
is never found apart from the body. No Spirit apart from the body. And I gave it
the simple definition and I defy you to exhaust it. You or the geologist or biologist
or anthropologist or any physicist or chemist - it’s a feeling awareness. Doesn’t
sound like very much, but it’s the essence of being human.
We’re not very aware, you know. I challenge you to go back over your drive here
this morning to come to church - what do you remember of it? What were you
aware of when you were driving? Oh, if something happens, you’d see it, if a red
light came on or some child crossed the street, or somebody was driving - you’d
see that and react to that, I know. Squirrels do that. But, what do you feel? What
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
are you aware of? Most of us live in a sleep, really almost 100% sleep. You can
carry on business jobs just by being animal responsive. But, to be feelingly aware.
Do you see this beautiful hanging? Maybe you notice that it’s red or black or
white, but are you aware of it? Are you aware of that beautiful brick wall that you
have? It’s so fascinating to me. I’ve spent my ministry in a church with the most
magnificent stained glass windows in America. I find this wall just a total
fascination. I come in and I sit there and I look at it and I think about it. What are
you aware of? Are you aware of the grass? I’ve been aware this whole season long
of leaves. I can’t believe the wonder of a leaf. And then of the trees - they stagger
me! I cannot comprehend them. And I sit and look and I walk and look and I feel.
The grass - yes. Leaf? - yes. Tree? - yes. Anything. How about a person? Are you
aware of the person that you’re living with? Or is it like your awareness of driving
to church? Women are particularly alert to this. Do you see the face? Do you see
the concern? Do you see the agony? Do you see the depression?
"You have eyes," said Jesus, "and you don’t see." Mr. Rhem read that this
morning. It’s the most profound spiritual observation. "You have ears, but you
don’t hear. You have hearts and you don’t understand. Woe is the person." To
feel, to be aware of anything - anything!
This is God’s world. I hear Him pass in the rustling grass,
I see Him everywhere.
My listening ears all nature sings.
Feeling awareness. And then you treasure it. It’s no use bothering people about
Sunday religion, but, of course, true, it’s wonderful to have it, that kind of Sunday
following a custom, routine - it’s not enough! If you’re going to treasure your
spirit, you have to treasure it every day! Or you lose it. Very few people ever
arrive at the spiritual level, you know that. Jesus knew it. Every spiritual person
has known it. You have to treasure it. You have to pay attention to it as if it were
important, as important as the money you used to care for. Or the success, or the
arrogance, or the pride, or the power. You have to treasure it, because where your
treasure is, there your heart will be, and where your heart is, there your treasure
will be, and if you have a treasuring of the spirit, you have something that nothing
can take away - neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor
height nor depth nor any other creature. Nothing! You treasure it, and you’re
grateful for it.
You’ve got to be grateful, because you didn’t make it. If you want to get down to
the heart of religion, here’s another one of those fundamental things - you didn’t
make it! The thing that you treasure. You didn’t make the leaf, you didn’t make
the flower, you didn’t make the tree, you didn’t make yourself, you didn’t make
your mind, you didn’t make your body. It’s a gift. We call it the gift of God, don’t
we? So, you have to be grateful. No spiritual person swaggers with the qualities of
the Spirit. No. No swaggering with the Spirit. It’s just the utmost of gratitude.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
And then you celebrate it. You celebrate it by - you come to church and you light
candles and you listen to that beautiful, beautiful music, and you have a birthday
party or you give a gift or you bake a cake and you gather your friends around and
you hold hands, and you say, isn’t it wonderful, the gifts that are ours? That’s a
celebration, and there’s no religion without it. You have to have the Spirit there to
make the celebration significant and real. Now, that’s a description of religion as
best as I can do for you.
What’s the language of religion? Just a word or two now and that’s all. What’s
the language of religion? I said of religion, not about religion, because the
investigation of religion or of anything falls into the realm of scientific categories.
You explore religion like you explore the structure of a city or of an institution or
of a piece of metal. Thus, we use technical language when you want to discuss the
nature of religion. But, what’s the language of religion? I keep trying and I’m a
preacher and I should know how to do it and I feel so helpless at it, and I want to
tell somebody what it means to be in rapture by that blossom that I saw out my
window. How do I do it? How do I tell somebody how much I love them? I don’t
know how to do it; you stagger and you stumble. We don’t do very well at it. Well,
the language of religion is story, it’s poetry. Poetry is the nature of religious
language, because you’re explaining. You see something and you just let go. I
keep thinking of David dancing before the ark of the Lord - just totally feeling. He
expressed it in dance, like you do here so frequently.
I have an enduring memory of being out there last spring sometime and you had
all those children dancing down the aisles. And there was one child who caught
my imagination so that I didn’t want to lose myself in the panorama of it.
Interestingly enough, on the way home, the wife of the person I was driving with
said, "I know who you meant. I saw that, too." What was it? I don’t know. I
couldn’t describe it. But, that girl - she exemplified it to me, with all those
children she exemplified the Spirit, the miracle and wonder of being human. We
use myth and story, legend and song and dance and art. These are the language of
religion. Mr. Bryson plays that organ and has that choir sing so beautifully they’re singing of the Spirit, if you have ears to hear. How better could you
describe Paul’s dilemma, which is yours and mine - "I want to do good and I can’t
because the evil’s all around me. I want to do good and the evil takes over. I know
that in my heart reigns the law of God, but there is another law, the law of my
members entangling me in sin." How would you describe this?
Well, it’s never been better done than it was in our religious heritage. In the
beginning the world was wonderful, beautiful, and everything was there. And
then God made man and it was all right then, too, except that man ate of the fruit
of the tree of knowledge. The fruit of the tree of knowledge. And then he became
like one of us - gods, says the Bible. Knowing good and evil. And if you know good
and evil, you’ll never, ever be totally free! Because the evil is always there; it’s part
of being human. And that’s our biblical story.
© Grand Valley State University
�Religion: Has It a Future?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
You want to describe the miracle of life, the wonder of being human, the wonder
of a child which is where we see it most and should not confine ourselves there,
do you want to describe the miracle of the birth of a child - how would you do it?
Well, we’ve had a description, a poetic, beautiful description that has been a
cardinal part of my heart for all these years that I’ve been thinking about dreams.
There was a man and a woman, simple man and woman, carpenter and his wife they had to go to a distant city and she was with child. But, they had to go and it
was a difficult, long journey, and it came on wintertime and they were up in the
mountains and the time for her came, and they didn’t know what to do and there
was no place to go. There was a little village up in the mountain and every place
was filled because everyone else was going as they were going to this thing that
had been called by the emperor, and they had no place, no place in the inn or
anywhere. And the innkeeper gave them a place where the cattle were. Not much,
was it? Oh, no, but it was something. It was a gracious act and it was some
comfort and protection, and they were there with the animals, you see, and she
gave birth to her child and it was just a miracle. And there were three kings who
had been out on the road for a long time, looking for the glory of God. And they
had been told that they could find it, and there was a star that they had to follow.
And they followed that star for many days, many weeks, and finally the star came
and stood over a stable. Stood over a stable. And they knew that that was the end
of their search. They went in and found the child, and they brought their gifts as
tribute to the miracle of God in human life. And there were some shepherds out
in the fields, not just the kings, but some shepherds, ignorant shepherds. And all
of a sudden, when they were keeping watch over their flocks, the air was filled
with angels singing, "Glory to God in the highest, for unto you is born this night
in the city of David a Saviour." And the shepherds went off, left their flock and
went up into the stable to pay tribute to the glory of God and the child.
You have ears but you don’t hear. If we were to listen, if we were to listen,
anytime, we’d hear the angels singing.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85c5c7ebd675c7c365e6dac356607ddf.mp3
6045c2bbb3d6bbc772595a6cf13df566
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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Event
Pentecost XIX
Series
Meeting God Again for the First Time
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Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1997-09-28
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Religion: Has It a Future?
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 28, 1997 entitled "Religion: Has It a Future?", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7: 1-7,, 11-15, Mark 13:1-2.
Awareness
Compassion
Nature of Religion
Story
Wonder
-
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ed6c5d0e1a7cf60432dce3f18f8f7d2d
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/26d4de16cf31e6bb1ee11ee50c2e5f36.pdf
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Text
Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
From the series: Spritiual Life – Religion Re-Imagined
Text: Psalm 130, Mark 1:29-39
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 28, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The Reading From the Present comes from Thomas Moore’s recent book, The
Soul’s Religion. It is actually a quote that he gives us from a poet, Wallace
Stevens. I liked it because I thought it had something to say about the breadth of
experience of the spiritual life about which we have been thinking together.
Wallace Stevens writes this in his Journal, 1902:
Last night I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral
where I go now and then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with
me is that the true religious force in the world is not the Church, but the
world itself. The mysterious callings of nature and our responses. What
incessant murmurs fill that ever laboring, tireless church. But, today in my
walk, I thought that, after all, there’s no conflict of format, but rather a
contrast. In the cathedral I felt one presence, on the highway I felt another.
Two different deities present themselves, and though I have only a cloudy
vision of either, yet I now feel the distinction between them. The priest in
me worships one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another
shrine. The priest worshiped mercy and love, the poet beauty and might.
In the shadows of the church, I could hear the prayers of men and women.
In the shadows of the trees, nothing mingled with divinity. As I sat
dreaming with the congregation, I felt how the glittering altar works on my
senses, stimulating and consoling them, and as I went tramping through
the fields and woods, I beheld every leaf and blade of grass revealing or
rather betokening the invisible.
Sometimes the things that we talk about here together stimulate other thoughts,
and we have been talking about religion and spirituality these weeks—how
religion is the structure through which our spiritual lives express themselves,
whether for good or for ill. Someone gave me a quote from the AA community. It
goes like this: “Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is
for people who have been there.” As is often true, AA has a lot of wisdom. But our
religious life does, in many ways, determine the nature or the degree to which our
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
spiritual life is really in tune and in touch with where we are and where we are
living.
This morning we consider “Praying With Eyes Wide Open.” Prayer is certainly
the center of our religious experience. Prayer is the heart and center of our
spiritual life. To pray is to be human, to be religious, to be spiritual. Without
prayer, there is a barrenness that certainly bespeaks a sickness of soul. Prayer
comes in many forms and takes many shapes, probably as many as there are
those of us who pray.
Following the cue of Thomas Moore, who did some autobiographical writing in
his book, I have shared with you some of my own autobiographical experience,
and when I think about prayer, I think of my own story. I have had such a
difficult time with prayer. I have been a terrible model of prayer. I have never
successfully had a devotional life, and I confess that before you, my people. That
is not the fault of my childhood, because my childhood was saturated in prayer.
Three meals a day began and concluded with prayer. The day did not end without
the offering of a prayer. In my youth, I was involved in all kinds of prayer groups.
If I had been young these days, I would have been one of those kids gathered
around the flagpole on the schoolyard. Because of my ambiguous feelings about
that whole thing, I realize that I must keep in check any criticism. If someone like
me could fall as far as I have from that, then there is hope for those gathering,
too.
In my college years there was more prayer and prayer groups. In seminary I
worked with a pastor who was marked by his prayer life and everyone knew it. If
you mentioned his name, everyone knew he was a man of prayer. Under his
tutelage, I developed my own devotional style in the morning. It centered around
a little loose-leaf notebook, page after page of names and causes and concerns,
and every morning, I mean every morning, I rose early and on my knees paged
through that book. I continued that practice when I came here in 1960 for a little
while. But eventually it faded.
I suppose it faded because I hated every minute of it. It was not me. For me, it
was not natural. It was not the air I breathed. I am not sure if it has something to
do with my being lazy, and it may. It may have something to do with my lack of
discipline. I confess that, too. Or it may be that even way back then there was an
intellectual problem that I had with prayer that I was unwilling to admit to, which
perhaps short-circuited any vital prayer experience. I’m not sure.
For a sermon on prayer in the midst of this congregation it would be smart of me
if I would let my colleague Peter preach. But on occasion over the years, I have
helped someone when I have spoken about prayer and my own difficulties. It
seemed to give them some hope, having a lousy prayer life themselves.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Still, I pray, for prayer is the heart and soul of religious experience. My life is a
dialogue. I am talking to myself all the time, and praying may be talking to
oneself in the presence of that greater reality into which our lives are woven. It
may be consciousness and awareness in the face of the web of meaning, the
tapestry of reality of which we are a part. Certainly I pray, as I think we must all
pray.
Perhaps it was why I responded positively to Thomas Moore’s book, for he has a
chapter entitled “The Instinct for Prayer” in which he speaks about an impulse to
pray. And I know that. Don’t you? To be human is to have an instinct to pray, to
bring to expression that which is in our depths. There are those situations in life
when we have the impulse to pray, when there is that spontaneous eruption from
within. And so, prayer really is the heart and center of religious experience, the
dialogue and conversation that goes on within us.
I speak about prayer with eyes wide open, because increasingly that is my
experience. As I said a couple of weeks ago about the transformations through
which I have gone in my spiritual journey, I have moved from a supernatural
theism to a religious naturalism, where God is not “out there” somewhere,
waiting upon my prayers in order to manipulate the human situation. God is not
beyond the reality of which we are a part, running things and waiting to be
influenced by the volleys of prayers from earth’s children. I don’t believe that. I
don’t think one can think intelligently about that and carry on the practice with
any vitality.
There are recent studies about the effectiveness of prayer for people with illness,
but I’m not too impressed with that, either. What do those kinds of studies finally
prove? If we need to prove that prayer works, are we really afraid that God
doesn’t exist and that there is nothing to it? I suppose there is some value in that
sort of study, but I would rather not go there. I would rather pray with eyes wide
open, recognizing that the whole of reality is of a piece, and that it is shot through
with God; that the whole of reality is a seamless robe pregnant with divinity; that
my life and your life is a part of a totality laced with creativity, and to the extent
that we come to an awareness and an appreciation of the reality of which we are a
part, our prayer will flow. I think Thomas Moore is right. There is an instinct for
prayer and we ought to go along with it without too much intellectual
machination, trying to figure it out. The Psalmist, for example, wrote a beautiful
ejaculatory expression: “Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my
cry. Hear my voice.” The Psalmist made a plea for forgiveness, resting in the
graciousness of God. “Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand, but
with you there is forgiveness.”
I have been there, haven’t you? When we have failed, when we come face to face
with our flaws, and then experience the grace of forgiveness through that
spontaneous eruption, we say, “O Lord, out of the depths I cry to thee.”
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Or perhaps in its original form prayer was that kind of ejaculatory expression in
the face of our helplessness. For in the face of the mystery of life we often feel
helpless, knowing there is more of our existence beyond our control than that
little piece over which we have control. And so, perhaps out of fear, or out of
wonder, or in the face of great joy, we pray. We cry to the Lord. Out of our depths
there erupts the expression of those deep emotions that are so much a part of
who we are. Prayer can be that kind of spontaneous expression.
And then there is the prayer of awareness. I think of that passage of Mark’s
Gospel where Jesus has the whole village at the doorstep of Peter’s mother-inlaw’s home. Jesus had healed her and now the word is out that he is there, and so
they bring everybody to the doorstep. Through the evening he reaches out, giving
of himself in his healing ministry. The next morning, Mark tells us, a long while
before dawn he arose and found a solitary place and he prayed. I suppose that is
how one lives with intentionality. I suppose that is how one keeps from getting
swept away with inordinate success or bitter disappointment, by having that
encounter, that moment of awareness, that attention in the presence of God. If I
had been Jesus and had a successful evening such as that, I would have gotten up
before breakfast and put posters on every telephone pole about the time of the
next healing service. But Jesus prayed. And when they came after him and said,
“Hey, we have something good going, Lord,” he said, “Let’s get out of here.” He
had found his center in the presence of God.
There is that prayer of awareness and attention, that self-consciousness in the
presence of the other that enables us to keep our balance. And there is the love
and care expressed in prayer. We express our love and care by saying to one
another, “I’ll pray for you.” I don’t know how many of us actually do it, but we all
tend to say it, and when someone we love, or when we ourselves come into crisis,
again it is simply natural and instinctive to pray.
About three or four weeks ago, one of my closest friends, a colleague in ministry
for over forty years and a person known to this congregation, Bud Ridder,
experienced a stroke. When I got the news, it impacted me greatly because I
realized how meaningful that relationship is to me. I said to him, “I came to see
again how much I love you.” Although he came out of the stroke rather well, the
doctors discovered an aneurysm and announced the necessity of serious surgery.
Last Tuesday at lunch at Duba’s, because Bud is a member of the table, we
discussed his forthcoming surgery. We raised our glass to him with eyes wide
open and expressed our love and care and how we would carry him in our hearts
and in our minds. We actually talked at the table about prayer. “We will pray for
you,” we said, meaning we care for you, we love you, we yearn for all of the
recuperative, health-giving, life-giving powers within you to be released in the
presence of our love and care.
When I called Friday afternoon, knowing that he had gone into surgery at seven
o’clock in the morning, he wasn’t back into recovery. Nor at five. Nor at nine. The
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
one word I did get was critical, and I couldn’t get through to the family because of
some phone problem, but I left a message on a voice machine. Saturday morning
I got the call. He’d been in surgery twice and the surgeon had been with him for
sixteen hours. Bud was hanging on by his fingernails.
I had a wedding to do south of Grand Rapids, so I intended to do the wedding
and on my way back stop at the hospital. But there was another call. The signs
were going down. I went directly to the hospital to be there with the family. And I
saw him. If you’ve ever seen one who has come through that kind of trauma, you
know.
I had to do my wedding, but when I came back to the hospital the bed was
removed. I found he was in surgery again, a third time.
And so, I sat with his wife, Lenora. I just sat with her. Her pastor came and I sat
through that and we had prayer with eyes closed and hands held. I remained
because I was determined to stay until the surgeon came back, and when he came
back, the news was somewhat good. They thought they had things stabilized. But,
he said, “The trauma the body has experienced is extreme. He is critically ill.”
And he left.
There I was with Lenora. How do you leave? I left with eyes wide open. I told her
I would be preaching today about prayer and the only way I knew to pray for Bud
and for her was face to face and to say, “I hold you in my heart,” because I believe
that with all of the marvelous technology and the tremendous dedication of
medical people, there is a process underway. I stand by that process and wait and
hope, believing that my presence and my love and my care are the only prayer
that can make a difference.
I don’t say these things because I know them. I only share with you my
experience, and I know that I have never had a successful devotional life in
decades. But I pray all the time, with eyes wide open, feeling myself part of the
web of life and meaning and community that is you. For me, that is enough.
Moore, Thomas. The Soul’s Religion. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2002.
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost X
Series
Spiritual Life - Religion Re-imagined
Scripture Text
Psalm 130, Mark 1:29-39, Thomas Moore, The Souls Religion
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20020728
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2002-07-28
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Prayer With Eyes Wide Open
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 28, 2002 entitled "Prayer With Eyes Wide Open", as part of the series "Spiritual Life - Religion Re-imagined", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 130, Mark 1:29-39, Thomas Moore, The Souls Religion.
Awareness
Prayer
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ef491e75f01ba4ce45bbeba2f9573143.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
Prayer
On a Tour Group Sunday
Richard A. Rhem
September 19, 1993
Prepared text of prayer
Let us be in the spirit of prayer,
aware that we have been gifted with life
not of our creation,
that we live at the far end
of a creative process spanning billions of years,
an extension of time beyond our capacity to comprehend,
evolving in a cosmic expanse of space
beyond our ability to imagine.
We have seen rugged mountain peaks
thrust heaven-ward by volcanic explosion,
issuing in a fiery river
that, after aeons of time,
became rivers of ice crushing all in their path.
All of this wonder would be beyond belief
except our eyes have seen the narrative
written in rock and ice and lake and rivers
and undulating oceans
stretching beyond where the eye can see.
In the familiar words of the song
brought to such beautiful expression by Louis Armstrong –
What a wonderful world!
And yet, when we have stood in awe,
amazed at our earthly home,
wondered at its wonders,
we have only begun to scratch the surface
of the miracle, wonder, glory and joy of life.
For we have not even begun to contemplate the beauty of the human –
the likes of us who have emerged in this creative process
billions of years in the making.
Here we are, conscious, aware –
reflecting on it all...
We have become the awareness of the cosmos,
© Grand Valley State University
�Tour Group Prayer
Richard A. Rhem
the voice of that awareness,
creating poems that paint pictures with words,
writing music that lifts our spirits in worship
and sets our feet to dancing,
celebrating the wonder of it all.
And still we have only begun
to touch the depths of our human experience,
for we have not yet spoken of human relationship,
the human kaleidoscope
of faces, of languages, of body form and skin tone –
all this diversity but the manifestation of the oneness
that unites us in our common humanity.
We have experienced the beautiful reality of that oneness
in the diversity of those who have cared for us so well –
cleaning rooms, waiting tables,
creating the ambience of grace and pleasure of comfort.
The external differences fade
before the sparkle in the eye, the smile,
the appreciation of being well served and serving well.
And still there is more –
for we have experienced again the joy of communion –
knowing afresh the wonderful process
of the knitting of human bonds forming a new family
where there is appreciation, mutual care, affection, laughter
and a new circle of love.
These days have been too full, fully to take in.
We will relive them and their beauty,
and wonder will continue to wash over us.
How blessed we are!
How grateful!
And now we enter these final days –
still much to see, to do.
And yet home begins to beckon –
those we love, waiting for us,
and the routines of the ordinary days
that fill our lives with order and meaning.
For home and deep human relationships that await us there,
we are thankful as well.
Surely goodness and mercy have followed us
all these days and we dwell consciously
© Grand Valley State University
Page 2
�Tour Group Prayer
Richard A. Rhem
in Your presence, Holy Mystery,
from whom all emerges and to whom all returns,
a mystery for us come to expression
in the Word become human –
Jesus, who taught us to pray.
© Grand Valley State University
Page 3
�
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
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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
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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
Group Tour in Greece
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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RA-1-19930919
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-09-19
Type
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Text
Title
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Prayer during Group Tour in Nauplia, Greece
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Prayer created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 19, 1993 entitled "Prayer during Group Tour in Nauplia, Greece", on the occasion of Group Tour in Greece. Tags: Prayer, Wonder, Emergence, Awareness, Community.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Awareness
Community
Emergence
Prayer
Wonder
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6696cb990308efd8cb6c04211602160.mp3
34f6ca74cdce81ee97caac77027df6e1
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f670a6e8fe9a3fa222dcffc6eb4cde82
PDF Text
Text
Prayer Changes People
Pentecost V
Text: Jeremiah 29:11-14; Psalm 131:1-2; Matthew 6:8-9
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 9, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Some months ago I received a letter from one of our members, a good friend with
whom I was going to have lunch, and as a prelude to the lunch, he gave me a
series of questions that he thought would be good for discussion. He indicated
that he had heard, from me and others who had come this way, the ultra-liberal
view of things and he wondered about the old, traditional answers to some of the
old, traditional questions, such as Creation and Adam and Eve and the Virgin
Birth and Resurrection, Salvation through Christ alone. Then he had a whole
paragraph on prayer in which he indicated that he had a Christian surgeon friend
who said that in all of his many, many years and many, many procedures he had
never known any effect of prayer in the changing of the result. He gave a whole
paragraph to prayer and so, while I didn't think I wanted to get back to Adam and
Eve or even the Virgin Birth, I thought probably those old questions about prayer
continue to come, to rise within us in the variety of our human experience.
What does prayer mean? Does prayer change anything? Does it affect reality?
Prayer, now, not in its whole spectrum. There is prayer as praise. Prayer as
adoration, prayer as confession, prayer as thanksgiving. That's all given. But,
prayer as intercession, prayer as petition, prayer that asks God, as it were, to do
something. That kind of prayer has always been the source of deep questions
within our Christian experience, and so I thought this morning it might be well
for us to spend a little time and reflect on prayer because certainly prayer is the
very heart and center of the religious life or spiritual life. To be religious or to be
spiritual is to pray, and yet, as our understanding of our faith and our experience
moves and changes, how do we understand this exercise of prayer, this
communion with God, this conversation with God? And does prayer affect or
change reality?
Those questions are certainly not new and I recognize and I want to say in the
beginning that to give a sermon on the subject of prayer requires of one to be very
careful and very sensitive. There are devotional habits that we have all developed
over the years and it is never my intention to talk anyone out of that which is
© Grand Valley State University
�Prayer Changes People
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
satisfying and that which works for them in their spiritual pilgrimage and in their
Christian life. My correspondent was taking a step back and looking at prayer
somewhat objectively, wondering about it from a step removed from real
existential engagement, and a sermon necessarily has to do that, too, and all of us
can do that on occasion. But, to preach a sermon on prayer is a very risky thing
because, in a congregation gathered like this, the whole spectrum of human
experience is present, and while there are plenty of you who can take that step
back and think with me about it this morning, there are no doubt others of you
here in an existential point in your life where you are praying for your life, and I
have often found that while many times with many people a conversation about
prayer is possible, for others, it creates a great defensiveness and we become very
protective and can be easily wounded as one discusses this kind of thing. In the
crucible, we tend to react emotionally, not rationally, and in a setting like this this
morning I am aware that there may be those of you who are deeply engaged in
some existential moment where the wrestling and prayer is where you are, and I
hope that you can, nonetheless, for just a few moments, think about this
wonderful gift, this wonderful reality that we call prayer.
I had set down this topic some weeks ago and was intending fully to treat it as
one has to treat it, from a step removed, looking at it as a phenomenon of the
spiritual life, and two weeks ago, my sister Lois underwent surgery. The diagnosis
was melanoma cancer in all the vital organs and in the brain, and the doctor gave
the diagnosis to her in the presence of her family and she is now home under
Hospice care, for he said it could be a week or it could be a month, those things
are not predictable. And last week a niece of mine – who happens to be the oldest
grandchild of my parents, who when she was a little tyke I took care of one whole
summer because her mother, my sister, couldn't pick her up, being pregnant once
again, another one with whom I am very closely bonded – had a stroke, followed
by seizures which have continued through the week, as late as this past Friday.
And so, I found myself praying, and a preacher is always thinking about the next
sermon, and so for the last two weeks I have been very much aware of what I
intuitively sense, of what I emotionally feel, and of what I intellectually
understand. I've been preaching this sermon for two weeks in quite another
fashion than I intended to when I put down the subject and committed myself to
preach on prayer today, and it's been really a good exercise for me because I have
been so existentially engaged in the practice of prayer while also reflecting on the
praying and on my own engagement in this exercise, and what I have come to see
is that my understanding of prayer is really part and parcel of my
understanding of God. And my understanding of God, it is no secret to you who
have been with me for a while, the image of God has been transformed over the
last few years from the classic theism with which I was nurtured and educated
and which for most of my ministry I preached, transformed from that classic
theism to an understanding of God as part of the reality of our life. The old classic
theistic conception of God is that of the supernatural being outside of our reality
who dips into our reality now and again to effect this or that, that idea of God as
© Grand Valley State University
�Prayer Changes People
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Almighty, the sovereign of history, the ruler of the world, the one who shifts the
gears of the universe, the one who determines all that happens, that one, in a
word, who is in control -that's the God with which most of us have grown up. But,
also I think that image of God or the understanding of God has become more
difficult for us. As we have come to more and more of an understanding of our
world, of our human existence, of reality as such, I think that that old image of
God as Almighty, in control, has really created our problems with prayer, because
I do believe in all honesty that prayer has been a question and oftentimes an
anguishing problem for devout persons.
For example, I pray for my child and she is healed. You pray for your child and
she dies. Or, droughts and floods and hurricanes and all of those natural disasters
that we call in the insurance lingo the "acts of God," a God who is all-powerful
and is in control, but does not rule out cancer in a child, or in our own lifetimes
that most chilling realization that God's chosen people, the Jews, could be
murdered en masse, six million, as occurred in the Holocaust. What does one do
with God in control in face of human tragedy and suffering?
Well, of course, I know the traditional answers - "God makes no mistakes," we
say, feeling we have to say something in the face of tragedy, saying something like
that which can really only wound the one who has experienced great loss. Or, "It
is the inscrutable will of God and it will be made clear one day." Well, you can't
argue with that and it has worked for many people, but in all honesty, it doesn't
work for me anymore and I suspect there are many of you who say the same. If
God can heal, why is it only one here and there? If God can send the rain or spare
it, if God can send the wind or hold it back, then why should life be laced with
such ongoing suffering and tragedy, if God is really in control? That is, if God
really controls, pulls the levers, the strings, and determines all that happens?
In the face of my own existential concern for those I dearly love, I had an
opportunity to test the different image of God, not a God in control, but a God a
part of the very reality of which we are all a part. If you want an attempt to label
it, it is a conception that can be referred to as pan-entheism. Pan is the Greek
word for "all," and the preposition en is "in," and theos, of course, is the Greek
word for God. Pan-entheism tries to say God in everything and everything in God.
God more than everything, but nothing apart from God, nothing exists apart from
the presence of God. All of reality shot through with God. God present to all and
all embraced in God, so that God is not one who needs to be called into the
process. God is not one being, be God supernatural and super-human, human
writ large. God is not just another being, a spiritual factor that here and there
reflects the course of nature and interrupts the process, but rather, God as the
enlivening center of all that is, the creative Spirit that moves it all. God present to
all, in all and all in God so that prayer becomes coming to be at one with that
mystery that is one with us.
© Grand Valley State University
�Prayer Changes People
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
How, then, does one pray? Did I, do I pray for God to heal my sister's cancer? No,
I don't. What, then, do I pray for? I pray for awareness. I pray for an awareness of
the presence of the life-giving, loving God in all things that binds us all together. I
pray for a sense of the enlivening, life-enhancing, loving, sacred and holy One,
bringing me and those I love into sync with that which is God, the deepest and
most profound Mystery of all reality. Because when I can come to recognize my
part as a part of the whole, when I come to sense that I am laced into this whole
amazing and wonderful miracle we call life and reality, when I come to the
awareness that God is in me and with me and in and with those I love, then, in
that awareness, there comes a certain peace, aware of the totality of things, of
life's beauty and its terror, of a flower in a crannied wall and a child with cancer,
and knowing that all of it is a part of this reality into which our lives are woven, a
reality that is shot through with the holy, a reality to which God is present at all
times, in all things, a presence whose awareness can give peace. And so, then I
can go to be with my sister, I can go to be with my niece, I can be present to them
in solidarity with them in this crisis of their physical being, but present to
embody a love and a care and a concern which is the expression of that mystery of
love that is God.
In our Christian tradition, the word became flesh. In a human face we saw God
and not that God was in one human face, period, but that God has become
human, God has come into expression in the human. God is expressed in you and
in me. We are God-persons to one another, and the presence of God to one
another, and the embodiment of compassion and love and the deep bonding of
human relationship, and that's beautiful, and that's powerful. No matter what the
existential circumstance, to be able to break through to that sense of the presence
of a God who is the mystery of life and love - that's powerful.
There are a lot of studies being done, currently one underway at Harvard, a huge
study on the connection of prayer and healing, and the evidence has come in that
there is a therapeutic effect in worship, devotion, a life of prayer. But, I don't
want to put it on that basis. I don't want to sell you on prayer; I don't want to sell
you on worship, because it's good for you. Whatever happens that is good is a byproduct of the wonder of the experience of God, of being at one with the whole
scheme of things which is the scheme of things whose font is God, God that
inexhaustible, infinite source and ground of all that is, to be aware that I am
embraced, that I am a part of and bound to those I love with a kind of community
that is deeper than words can describe. To come to that is to come to amazement,
to come to peace, and to know that all, all will be well. Of course, it will, because
all together we are in the embrace of that mysterious love coming to expression in
a process that is full of beauty and full of terror, but which embraced and
experienced in the humanity of the other, in the bonds of love, in the mystery of
compassion, enables one to say, "All is well. All is well."
Prayer changes people, and I said "Prayer Changes People" because when I wrote
that down some weeks ago, it was over against "Prayer Changes Things." But, this
© Grand Valley State University
�Prayer Changes People
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
is the irony -when once I break through to that sense of being secured and that
loving mystery I call God, and I am changed. Reality just may change, as well.
I looked at my sister on Thursday and two weeks ago she was so terribly sick.
Through competent medical care and the loving ministry of the Hospice people
getting her taken care of, the morphine patch to relax and to cut the pain, to look
at her and see her smile, to know her peace, I could say to her, "You know, you
just might be peaceful enough to reverse that whole cancerous process." And it
could happen. I don't know how it happens. I don't know what happens when we
pray, when we pray in our words and our body language and our presence in the
yearning depths of our hearts, I don't know what happens. Who knows what that
positive yearning affects since we are all interlaced into a continuous reality,
since we are all part of that web of being, who knows what my love and concern
and compassion may affect beyond me?
Jeremiah was a theist, I think. He wouldn't like my transformed image of God,
for the God of Israel was sovereign of history who set the boundaries and
determined the destiny of nations, but Jeremiah was simply imagining God in his
way. The important thing is not that image; the important thing is that Jeremiah
had a basic, fundamental trust in God. In the midst of the darkness of the Exile,
he trusted in God, he believed in God, he trusted in light, in love, and the
purposes that are endemic to the whole scheme of things. And so, he said, "I
know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans of good and not for evil to give
you a future and a hope."
I'll tell you what –I lived my life for several years on that text. You see, the biblical
images that are so beautiful and powerful are poetry. They are the poetry of the
soul -God's eye is on the sparrow, the very hairs of your head are numbered, your
name is engraven in the palm of God's hand. Images, images that point to
something profound and deep that you can trust, and if you can trust, you can
resign yourself in peace and life becomes a prayer and your presence to one who
is suffering is a prayer, and your presence to those who celebrate a child is a
prayer. Prayer which arises out of that fundamental trust - that changes people.
So, then, pray without ceasing.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost V
Scripture Text
Jeremiah 29:11-14, Psalm 131:1-2, Matthew 6:8-9
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20000709
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-07-09
Title
A name given to the resource
Prayer Changes People
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 9, 2000 entitled "Prayer Changes People", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 29:11-14, Psalm 131:1-2, Matthew 6:8-9.
Awareness
Divine Presence
Panentheism
Prayer
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3fd5e9c187ca04d03cd880dd3dea5bee.pdf
7e9eb7601c441e6c39767e4ebb7947a9
PDF Text
Text
Morning Prayer in June
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
June 22, 2003
Transcription of the written prayer
For these moments, let us quiet our minds,
letting go of concerns that burden us, regrets that cripple us,
fears that paralyze us, whatever is troubling us.
Let us image that which causes gratitude to rise in us
-the gift and grace of life; the sources of our joy;
those persons who make life rich.
Let us call to mind those images which have shaped us:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Since God is for us, who can be against us?
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation will be able
to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
All will be well, all will be well.
All manner of things will be well.
Oh, God.
Those words rise from our depths so naturally –
Oh, God...
It seems that, in moments like these
when we purposefully, intentionally turn to you,
when we turn to whomever or whatever you are, we do so almost with a sigh,
- Oh, God –
for we know we are now in the zone of Mystery.
There was something about Jesus when he prayed
© Grand Valley State University
�Morning Prayer in June
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
that caused the disciples to plead,
Lord, teach us to pray.
We plead, as well,
Oh, God, teach us to pray.
Once, perhaps, we came as suppliants to the Royal Throne of the universe
with requests we must admit on reflection were very self-centered,
reflecting a very small universe in which our hopes and fears loomed very large.
And still there are moments when we flee into your Presence,
totally occupied with our own concerns –
something that threatens us,
or some experience that crushes us,
or some potential happening that involves us
in a loss we fear would undo us.
Saturate our faith and devotion with worldliness,
that we may love the world –
with sensitivity, with awareness, with openness and candor,
with care borne of insight into the world's agony,
with hope borne of the realization of the world's wonder and potential.
Before the world's chaos, pain and anguish,
give us the wisdom to be silent before we speak;
to identify with and immerse ourselves before we offer remedies
too easy, too facile, too self-serving.
Give us insight and sensitivity
to discern that ominous thunder of the shaking of the foundations,
to recognize the recurrent corruptions of power that we see all around us.
Enable us to see beneath the skin of the world its heaving passion,
its loveliness and its horror;
a world that is a ridiculous mixture of good and evil,
of beautiful tenderness and unspeakable brutality.
A world where flowers bloom on manure heaps,
and deadly cancer grows on a beautiful, young body;
a world under the dominion of death,
natural, yet often so unexpected, so violent, so absurd!
Ah, dear God, this is the real world,
the only world we have
with its dreams of Eden and its portents of Armageddon.
O God, as you love the world, we would love it too.
Teach us how to live in it, how to speak to it, how to love it.
Let us sense the truth of Jesus' word:
That it is in losing our lives that we will find life,
In serving that we will be fulfilled.
© Grand Valley State University
�Morning Prayer in June
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Creator Spirit, brood over this community of faith,
this Christ Community.
Keep us steady; keep us strong, keep our spirits open, our hearts tender,
our whole being full of grace.
Sometimes we wonder, sometimes we waver,
sometimes we want to run, to be done with it all.
But, where would that leave us? Where would we run? To whom would we turn?
So, good and gracious God,
gather us in, hold us close, steel our purpose.
Give us joy in the journey and undying trust in your purpose for us.
And sometimes it is sheer joy, ecstasy, exhilaration
that bursts forth in a torrent of praise,
shutting out everything else for the moment.
But, more and more, we look not out there,
but somehow within, into our own depths,
sensing we are connected deep down, rooted in Being itself,
You being the inexhaustible Source and Ground of all that exists the good earth,
the starry heavens,
the ocean's tides
and ourselves, conscious, aware,
groping for some clue by which to know you, to rest in you,
no longer strangers, but at home in the universe, at one with all that is.
Oh, God.
In that address is a deep fundamental trust
in the face of so much in our world that is not well.
We wonder, we imagine an alternative world,
where human frustration, hopelessness and despair
that breed violence and destruction
are recognized
and their causes dealt with.
Spirit of God,
save us from the illusion that a new world order will be born
out of a wealth of resources and sheer military might.
Save us from the pitfall of believing we can simply overpower
and cover our vulnerability
without an honest facing of the world's festering soul.
Before your face, Eternal Spirit,
give us some balance, some perspective
as we wrestle with this complex and dangerous world.
© Grand Valley State University
�Morning Prayer in June
Richard A. Rhem
Oh God,
this is the real world, the only world we have.
We celebrate it; we anguish over it.
Holy Presence, we are present here that vision may be renewed,
hope restored,
and courage found to be agents of reconciliation,
bringing peace, justice and compassion,
walking in the steps of that Exemplar
of what He called the Kingdom of God.
Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
Page 4
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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
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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
Pentecost II
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RA-1-20030622
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Title
A name given to the resource
Morning Prayer
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
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Prayer created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 22, 2003 entitled "Morning Prayer", on the occasion of Pentecost II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Prayer, Community, Presence, Mystery, Faith, Awareness, Trust, Global Community.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-06-22
Awareness
Community
Faith
Global Community
Mystery
Prayer
Presence
Trust
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b6f20315306bc4d857b283610c14c4be.mp3
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PDF Text
Text
Living With Intentionality
Confirmation Sunday
Psalm 16:7-11; Luke 12:41-48
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide III, May 4, 2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On this day, or as I contemplate this day I always think about these young people
and some word to say to them and, hopefully, a word to them which is not
without significance to the whole congregation. I want to say how impressed I
always am on this day with our young people. They are wonderful kids. Well, they
should be, they are yours, of course.
Young people, I am going to speak to you and then the other folks can listen in.
What I really want to say to you is the consequence of what was happening some
weeks ago when I was thinking about what the theme and text would be and my
mind was filled with images of war and destruction and devastation, and the
suffering and even the sight of liberation, tearing down statues and thinking
about people who perhaps for the first time could open their mouth and speak
their mind without fear of death. I was thinking about how much of the world
consists of people who are living with suffering, tragedy. And then I am thinking
about you and I am thinking you are the lucky ones. You know that? You're the
lucky ones.
When I say that, I have to confess to you that I always use the word luck with a
bad conscience, as I have confessed here before, because my father wouldn't let
me use the word luck because you just weren't lucky. There was a divine
providence and God had one’s life pretty much written out, and so luck was not a
word around our dinner table, and I admit luck is really not a word for a sermon,
for a pulpit, for a church, for a Christian congregation. But then, I have never
been tied by what is proper. You are the lucky ones. We're all the lucky ones.
I was delighted to find in Psalm 16 that in verses 5 and 6 the Psalmist speaks
about God being his portion and he says, "You hold my lot and the boundary lines
have fallen to me in pleasant places." Do you know what that is about? That
reference goes back to when Israel entered the Promised Land and conquered the
land and the Canaanites were there. It was one of the early instances of ethnic
cleansing. When they got into the land, there were the twelve tribes and a couple
of them stayed on the east side of Jordan, but the rest came in and they had to
© Grand Valley State University
�Living With Intentionality
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
divide up the land, and how do you divide the land? Well, at one point Joshua got
disturbed with them because they weren't getting on with the work and so he
called them together and had a couple representatives from each tribe and do you
know what they did in order to determine who was going to go where?
They cast lots. Do you know what that means? They held a lottery. They rolled
dice, in other words. Now, to be sure, they prayed before they rolled the dice,
which I would highly recommend if you go to Las Vegas. This was a common
practice. To be sure, they believed that in the casting of the lots that God's will
was going to be executed. There is a verse in Proverbs, "Man throws the dice, but
God makes the spots turn up." Of course, that is the whole thing about life, isn't
it? Is it all prescribed? Is there a God up there who is playing chess with us, or are
we lucky? In any case, you are the lucky ones. I was awfully glad I could use that
biblical reference to the distribution of land through the casting of lots because
that was a practice in ancient society. What it kept somebody from doing, some
great skillful, powerful entrepreneur, was it kept someone from building an
empire because, from time to time, in these agrarian societies in ancient times,
they would gather the community together and they would cast lots so that you
got that portion this time, you got that portion next time. What it did was create a
kind of equality. It leveled everybody from time to time and gave everyone a fair
shake. So, this really was a practice, and to be sure, there was a conviction to that
in the biblical understanding of things, that this was the way in which the will of
God was determined.
Well, that is a conception of God's involvement in our lives which is a little
different than the one that I have but, nonetheless, that is what was happening.
In any case, when that was over, you could say, "I'm one of the lucky ones." And
when you say, "I'm one of the lucky ones," the thing that it does is it
acknowledges a certain randomness about life, and everything we know about the
universe today, our cosmologists, our scientists tell us that what has actually
evolved and emerged in our universe, in our global reality, in our human story
has an element of randomness about it. There could have been trajectories off in
a thousand or a million different ways and, however it happened, here we are
now and to say "You're the lucky ones," at least what it does is say everything that
I have is not a consequence of my specialness. Sometimes religious communities
think of themselves as special and then that can lead to an attitude of selfrighteousness, although it is always clothed in a real humility. But, you know, if
God is playing chess with people and if I am special, and God has really favored
me, how do I explain all of those whose lives are filled with tragedy? So, I like to
get off that and just say "Wow! Wow! I'm one of the lucky ones." Because which
one of you young people this morning chose to be born? Which one of you chose
your parents? Who of us chose where to be born, when to be born? When you
think about it, you must have to sit down and be amazed, and then when you
think about all we have, the blessings of our lives? That's why I keep saying until
everybody gets tired of hearing it, all is grace, because grace means gift. It means
© Grand Valley State University
�Living With Intentionality
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
it is simply bestowed on us. Here we are, and I want to say to all of us this
morning, we're the lucky ones.
I don't think anybody would argue with that, so then let me ask a second
question, or let me make a second point in the form of a question. Given you are a
lucky one, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?
That's why I read the parable about the man who was a big problem because he
prospered so much that he couldn't house all of his goods and his crops. It was
occasioned by the question somebody asked Jesus, somebody who was unhappy
about the way the inheritance was divided. Do you know how many families have
had rancor and bitterness and brokenness over inheritance? Jesus said, "Get a
life. Get a life! Why would you trouble yourself over how the split came down?"
And then he tells the story about this man who prospered so much that he had all
of these crops and he didn't know what to do with them all. He said, 'Ah, I know.
I'll tear down my barns and I'll build bigger barns." And so he built bigger barns
and he talked to himself, he planned by himself. Himself, he himself was the
center of all of his concern and he congratulated himself and said, "Ah, now I
have it made. Eat, drink and be merry. Relax a little, already." And in the story
Jesus says, "A fool. Tonight it's a coronary. It's over." And he implies that while
the man gained all of that, he lost his life, his soul, his being.
I use that story of Jesus to confront you who are the lucky ones with how you
respond to the unimaginable good fortune you have to be born when you were
born, where you were born, to whom you were born. What are you going to d o
about it? We could put that question to our whole nation and one of the things
that concerns me about the way that this nation is being led today is the fact that
we who are so wealthy and so powerful, who have just demonstrated to the whole
world, if there was any question about it, that there is really nothing we cannot do
or accomplish, and when I read the policy statements now in fact being followed,
it sounds to me like what we have to do is step it up, increase, according to the
blueprint, the military defense budget 15 to 20 billion dollars a year annually,
while the education budget gets cut and while the road system and the
infrastructure suffers, and old people like me about to retire don't have
prescription drug coverage. That really worries me. So, we are dominant and we
are preeminent and the thinking today is that what we have to do is work at
enhancing our preeminence. Well, it sounds like building bigger barns to me.
But, I don't like to think about that too much. It's really an exercise in futility and
despair, because I'm just an individual and what can I do?
But then I realize I am responsible and I have been blessed. I'm one of the lucky
ones. What can I do? And it's up to just a lot of us to do what we can do.
I want to hold before you one of my heroes. His name is Albert Schweitzer. I don't
know if you are familiar with him or not, but he died around 1960 at the age of
90, and this is out of his autobiography. He was a young man who grew up in a
© Grand Valley State University
�Living With Intentionality
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
parsonage in Germany. His father was a pastor. Albert Schweitzer, before he was
30, became one of the greatest world biblical scholars and theologians. He wrote
The Quest of the Historical Jesus, which is still a classic. He was an outstanding
scholar. And then he became an accomplished organist. He studied with Widor.
He became one of the world-renowned organists; he became one of the greatest
scholars of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This guy, before he was 30 now.
Now listen to this out of his autobiography:
Long ago in my student days I had thought about it. It struck me as
inconceivable that I should be allowed to lead such a happy life while I saw
so many people around me struggling with sorrow and suffering. Even at
school I had felt stirred whenever I caught a glimpse of the miserable
home surroundings of some of my classmates and compared them with
the ideal conditions in which we children of the parsonage at Giinsbach
had lived. At the university, enjoying the good fortune of studying and
even getting some results in scholarship and the arts, I could not help but
think continually of others who were denied the good fortune by their
material circumstances or their health.
One bright summer morning at Giinsbach during the Whitsentide
holidays, (it was 1896, he was 21 years old) as I awoke, the thought came
to me that I must not accept this good fortune as a matter of course, but
must give something in return. While outside the birds sang, I reflected on
this thought and before I had gotten up, I came to the conclusion that,
until I was 30,I could consider myself justified in devoting myself to
scholarship and the arts. But, after that, I would devote myself directly to
serving humanity. I had already tried many times to find the meaning that
lay hidden in the saying of Jesus, "Whoever would save his life shall lose it,
and whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it."
Now I had found the answer. I could now add outward to inward
happiness.
He was 21 when he came to that resolution. He did continue his organ work and
his theological research until he was 30, and then he started medical school, and
he continued his other work while he was studying medicine and eventually he
became a physician, and you know the story probably, he went to Africa. The rest
of his life was given to the Congo building a hospital at Lambarene and serving
the African people, for the rest of his life. His parents, his university professors,
his colleagues, his associates, his friends said,
"Stupid! Why would you waste your life that way? Look at your education,
look at your gjftedness, look at your mind, look at what you can do in the
world! Why would you go into the middle of Africa?"
But, he was undeterred and he did it. He has probably received every award and
honor that could be bestowed on a human being in consequence and his life
© Grand Valley State University
�Living With Intentionality
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
continues to be a beacon light. Of course, he didn't come on it accidentally. As I
said, his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, is still a classic.
He was convinced. He was fascinated, captivated, totally saturated with Jesus,
and he changed his world. Not globally, but impacted it in such a way that we are
still talking about it here, as we are still thinking about Jesus 2000 years later,
because we are going to come to this table and the bread will be broken and the
wine will be poured out, because we will remember that the cost of Jesus' way
was his violent death.
And I invite you, the lucky ones, to come and take that bread and that cup, not so
you can have your sins forgiven, and go to heaven, but so you can live the way of
Jesus here and now, because taking the bread and the cup is an act of solidarity.
It is the raising of a banner. It is the flying of a flag. That is what this is about this
morning. It is a rite of Christian identity. You get your own candle. You have to go
your own way now. Let me suggest Jesus, who will ask of you everything and in
consequence, give you life.
References:
Albert Schweitzer. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Henry Holt
and Company, Inc., 1933.
© 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
Confirmation Sunday, Eastertide III
Scripture Text
Psalm 16:7-11, Luke 12:41-48
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Albert Schweitzer. Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Henry Holt & Co., Inc., 1933.
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-0-20030504
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-05-04
Title
A name given to the resource
Living With Intentionality
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. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 4, 2003 entitled "Living With Intentionality", on the occasion of Confirmation Sunday, Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 16:7-11, Luke 12:41-48.
Awareness
Global Community
Intentionality