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Scheduled to Death With Good Things
Text: Joshua 4:6; 24:15; Psalm 78:4-7; Matthew 18:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 12, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
There has been a long debate about when life begins. There are those who say
that life begins at the moment of conception. I think John Calvin argued that the
soul was invested in the fetus at 40 days. (On most things he was smarter than
that.) Others say that life begins at actual birth. It is an ancient debate and it
continues into our contemporary situation. But, I tend to agree with the person
who said life begins when the last kid is out of the house and the dog dies... (Your
laughter is all too revealing.)
Raising children is a very, very great task and responsibility. It takes the very best
that we have of our time and our energy and our resources, and it is not easy, and
it’s not getting any easier. I think that it becomes more difficult. As I have the
luxury of being in the position of a grandparent, I can now from safe distance
watch my own children raise their children, and I honestly believe that they are
much better parents than I was. I don’t even think I knew that I was supposed to
be a parent. After all, I was in the Lord’s work, you know. But, I have the privilege
of watching my children in those marvelous years when they have adolescents,
and I have a couple who are dealing with two-year-olds. So that whole spectrum
is rather interesting to me to observe. I think that it is much more difficult than
when I grew up and when I was raising my children, not only because there are
more perils and pitfalls available, but also because there are more wonderful
options and opportunities available, and I recognize the possibility of being
scheduled to death with good things.
I knew that I would probably be preaching in September on opening Sunday, and
it was already in June when Time magazine came out with a cover that caught my
eye and gave me today’s sermon. I knew in June this is what I would deal with.
The June 12 issue has a cover with a Little Leaguer on it, in his helmet, swinging a
bat, his tongue out, Michael Jordan style, and the cover says Sports crazed kids:
Year ‘round play, summer clinics, pushy parents - is this too much of a good
thing? Well, it’s a typical media type of presentation; not everybody is like the
people who are described here and there are some pretty extreme cases in terms
of the time invested and the money invested and the obsessional level with which
it is pursued. But, nonetheless, I knew from my own observation that there are
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many wonderful things that are available to children and young people today and
I sense that it is not so easy to know how to set the priorities and determine the
agendas in order that there might be balance and in order that that which is done
would be life-enhancing and not, on the other hand, life-defeating.
In the article there is one paragraph that I thought I would share with you. After
recounting all of this tremendous outlay of money and time and energy and
commitment, the writers say,
So, what are parents to do? We do what Americans have always done. This
is, after all, a country that systematizes. We create seminars on how to
make friends, teach classes in grieving, and make pet-walking a
profession. In that light, Greg Heintzman’s praise of unstructured play
seems almost un-American. Any activity, no matter how innocent or trivial
or spontaneous, can become specialized in America. So, if our children are
to have sports, we will make leagues and teams, write schedules and rule
books, publish box scores and rankings, hire coaches and refs, buy
uniforms and equipment to the limit of our means. We will kiss our
weekends goodbye and maybe more than our weekends.
That is a voice from the broader culture and, as I said when I saw it last June, I
thought there is a word there for the people of God, because we have not only the
ongoing responsibility to do what we can to protect our children and ourselves
from the perils and pitfalls that are open, but also from the multitude, the
plethora of good things hereby we can be scheduled to death, and find that we are
being determined by all of those things that play upon us rather than determining
our own lives, the course of our lives, the way we spend our days, our time, and
our resources. And so, this morning I simply want to engage in some
consciousness-raising with you. I don’t have any special wisdom. I just think that
together we need to be very self-aware and self-conscious about that to which we
give our lives, and how we structure, to the extent that it is possible, the lives of
our children and our youth. And I want to say, first of all, that we should be
intentional about it. We should be self-aware and self-conscious; we ought to
have thought about it in order that we are doing that which we intend to do, that
which we really want to do, that which is reflective of the things that we believe
most deeply and value most highly. We should be conscious; we ought to live
consciously.
There’s a story told of Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas, that he saw a man
gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, and gathering sticks on the Sabbath day
could get one stoned. But Jesus, in typical fashion, said to him, "If you
understand what you’re doing, blessed are you. But, if you don’t understand what
you’re doing, you are cursed," for Jesus knew that the law of the Sabbath was not
simply an external legalism to be observed, but it should come out of the inward
motivation of the heart. If you know what you’re doing, even though you are
breaking the law, if there is an intentionality about it for a proper purpose, then
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you’re blessed. But, if you’re just willy-nilly without even thinking about the
Sabbath or knowing what the Sabbath is all about, you’re cursed, and to live
without intention, without self-knowledge and awareness is to be cursed.
So, that’s simply the first thing that I want to say this morning, on a day of new
beginnings, to have us for a moment ask ourselves, "What are our priorities, and
do our activities reflect our values and the things that we really want to be about for ourselves and for our children and our grandchildren?"
Raising that question, I want to put in a word for the programming in of those
things that point to the spiritual dimension, the shaping of the life, the mind and
the heart of ourselves, of our children, and our grandchildren, because in our day,
with our freedoms, with our affluence, and with that plethora of opportunities
that are out there, it is very easy to let slide the things that require a certain
discipline and commitment and I think especially in a place like Christ
Community where no one hounds you to do anything, where we have majored in
an attitude of grace. One of the nicest compliments that we receive here, and it
comes again and again, is the compliment, "Most of my life I went to church
because it was Sunday and I felt that I ought to go, and now I look forward to
Sunday in order that I may go to church." That’s beautiful. That’s I want it to be.
That’s the way it should be.
I met a friend this week whom I hadn’t seen for a while; he’d been traveling,
stopping at a child’s home in another part of the country and the son-in-law said
to him, "Do you want to go to church with us Sunday?" And he said, "What is it?
How is it?" The son-in-law said, "I don’t think you’d like it. I can hardly stand it,
but I go for little Johnny."
I don’t want you here for Johnny’s sake. If you can’t be here because this place is
reflective of who you are and what you believe and what you feel, then you ought
not to be here for the sake of your child, because your child will pick it up in a
minute. Your child will know.
I always think of a friend of some years ago. I remember how angry she was as
she spouted out the fact that she went to church every Sunday, every morning
and every evening, and she had a bad back, to boot, and she had to sit on a
straight chair back of the choir, but she said, "I went every Sunday, every service,
to set an example for my children and as soon as they grew up and got out of the
house, I don’t think any of them has ever been to an evening service, and they
hardly make morning." She was so angry, not really because they weren’t going,
but because she had put in all that effort going when she didn’t want to go, so
finally when they got out of the house, they simply did what she always wanted to
do because they knew what she really wanted to do! Of course.
This place is not a place to come for the sake of your children unless it reflects
your heart and your passion. Then, your children will find this to be a fine place
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that will be positive, that will give them good experiences. So, a place like Christ
Community, a place of grace, where you’re not hounded, where you’re welcomed
whenever you show up and never questioned when you don’t, is a place where
you really need to be mature enough and responsible enough to make those
decisions and to make them in such fashion that there will be the spiritual
formation of your children as well as your own lives.
I think it’s so important that we are authentic and consistent in the exercise of
our spiritual discipline. I want to tell you a little story. I was a Professor of
Preaching at one time, a very short time, and the textbooks say never to make any
personal references, but then I don’t do anything else I was taught in the
seminary, either, so I’ll tell you a little of my own story.
Growing up as a kid, my home was so devout and so serious about it all that, for
me, I absolutely was saved by going to the public school. Christian education
advocates say that it shapes a Christian, biblical world and life view, and if you
send your child to the public school, they won’t get that. Well, in my case, I
needed enough fresh air to breathe and a little light because I was so shaped in
my home and in my church that it was in the public school that I had any kind of
exposure to anything else. For me, it was saving. But, as a kid, all I wanted to do
was play ball. Now, my parents were so devout and so consistent in my spiritual
nurture. There wasn’t anything of church life I didn’t ever attend. They did make
one little sortie into the cultural field when they tried to give me music lessons,
piano lessons. I sat there and I doodled, and I would go week after week and I
made no progress and finally, thank God, the teacher was a Christian, who called
my mother and said, "In good conscience, I can’t take your money anymore."
My mother said, "Dicky, you’re going to be sorry," and I said, "I really believe
you," and I am, but I just didn’t want ... I wanted to play ball.
In the ninth grade, the superintendent of the schools, a very rather austere man
who intimidated the daylights out of us, pulled me out of class. Now what? Well,
it so happened the week before it was the opening day of baseball practice, but it
was also the tryouts for the spring play which he directed for the junior high,
every spring. Big deal. And I didn’t show up. I went to baseball practice. He
pulled me aside because, as a matter of fact, he was trying to say to me, "You need
to be broadened, Boy. I’m going to talk to you about values." He asked me who
were the heroes of the Kalamazoo Maroon Giants a year or two or three ago. Well,
I did know some of them. But, he was saying to me, "You’re not cultivating a
broad enough spectrum." It was an honest attempt. It was good. But, I still went
out for baseball.
There was one time in the ninth grade when I just made the starting five. Now,
this was a small school and you have to be really poor not to make the team, but I
just made it because I wasn’t a very good athlete. The coach was my salvation. He
was a fallen Catholic, shanty Irish, had a good sense of humor; he liked me very
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much and I liked him very much. He knew I was a good student, he had me in
math, but he would always tease me about my piety and that was so healthy for
me. On Tuesdays I had to go to Catechism. Now, when you’re hanging on by your
fingernails to stay on the first team and you have to miss one practice a week,
that’s tough. We’d take a shower on Monday night and he’d say, "Well, Charlie
(everybody called me Charlie), say a ‘Hail Mary’ for me tomorrow night and I
hope you start Friday."
Well, we could handle that. Then one noon hour at the table I told my mother and
father that next week I couldn’t go to Catechism because we had one game on a
Tuesday night all season and I, of course, had to go to the game. Guess what? I
went to Catechism. It wasn’t a big argument. It wasn’t even an argument!
I tell you that a lot of years later, and I can tell you that I think my parents were
wrong. I think they should have let me play that game. But, I never rebelled and I
honor them to this day because they were simply being consistent. They were
totally authentic, and they never asked of me what they had not first modeled out
for me, and I can say I think they should have let me play ball, but in their good
judgment, I went to Catechism.
I have been very conscious of the fact that I have not been able to replicate with
my children the way I was raised. I didn’t even try. I mean, it wouldn’t have
worked anyway, but I didn’t even try because I knew that what they did was the
reflection of the authenticity of their heart and their passion, and if I would try to
replicate that, my heart wouldn’t be in it. I would be a slave to a particular mode
that wasn’t really mine, even though it had been that to which I was raised. I had
to make my own way with my own children, stammering and stumbling along,
but trying to be at least honest and authentic. And it seems to me that is key, the
spiritual disciplines, and they are disciplines, take discipline, and while in this
place that is left to your own mature judgment to pick and to choose, to engage or
not engage, I want to encourage you to be self-aware, self-conscious, deliberate,
authentic, and then committed to it.
There are fifty-four involved in our Worship Center program for young children
and, again, I use this as an illustration. It is very unusual. I want to say in all my
years of ministry, I have never known a committed group of people who come
back here year after year after year in a beautifully conceived educational
nurturing experience. But, they can only do it if the children are there. And if it is
to be a genuine educational experience, then there has to be consistency, a
regularity. The curriculum is set out in order to shape and to form the child, but
it’s conceived as a whole, and I think, I have to say to you we’ll have probably the
record attendance down there today and then it will drop off.
Now, in my courses, my adult courses, I usually have about 50 the first time, and
25 the second time, but that’s because I’m the kind of teacher I am and deal with
the kind of esoteric stuff I do. But, that’s not an excuse for down there. They are
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teaching and leading the children week after week after week in a well-conceived
program. It does take the kind of discipline that it takes to make the Striker
soccer team. When I saw the Time article I thought I want to call my people to
consciousness about being self-aware, self-conscious, intentional, authentic, and
then committed.
Israel is still a people of God because they continued to tell their story. There’s no
magic in it. They were on the threshold of entering the Promised Land and
Joshua, their leader said to a leader from every tribe, "Take a stone out of the
river bed and make a stack of stones on the other side as a sign so that when your
children say, ‘What do these stones mean?’ you have a story to tell them."
I love Psalm 78. The second verse can be translated, "I will tell you a story with a
meaning." That’s precisely what is happening in the lower level today. A story
with a meaning. Why? So that they may come to set their hope in God. It’s
beautiful. And, of course, we have the image of Jesus who says, "Bring them to
me because the kingdom of God is made up of the likes of them." And as Bob said
to all of you, you are a child of God. So, let me simply invite you today to do as
Joshua did. They got into the Promised Land and they had been pretty slipshod
about everything, but this was the time for covenant renewal and he said to them,
"You choose. But, as for me and my house, we’re going to get into this thing." I
invite you to do the same.
© Grand Valley State University
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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.)
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Interfaith worship
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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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Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII
Scripture Text
Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Scheduled to Death With Good Things,
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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 12, 1999 entitled "Scheduled to Death With Good Things,", on the occasion of Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14.
Community of Faith
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Intentional
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The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx:
A 150th Retrospective
Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-17; Acts 2:43-47; Matthew 25:31-40
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Labor Day Weekend, September 6, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Labor Day does not appear on the liturgical calendar, and there are some purists,
some high liturgical churches where civil holidays are not noted, and I suppose if
I had to choose if there was a conflict between a liturgical festival day and a civil
holidays, obviously, I would take the text for the day in the church, but civil
holidays also point to some significant human concerns which are not without
deep biblical concern, as well. And so, on occasion it is, I think, appropriate to
have a sermon on the theme of Memorial Day or the Declaration of Independence
or, in this case, the Labor Day weekend. As I said, there are purists who wouldn’t
do that, not even that highest, holiest of all festival days, Mother’s Day, but then,
not to observe that is to take one’s life in one’s hands. But, today I want to
address the theme of Labor Day, a day set aside to honor labor, a day in which it
might be appropriate for us to think about the whole economic aspect of life and
its impact upon our spiritual existence.
The year 1998 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Communist
Manifesto by Karl Marx, assisted by Friedrich Engels, and I promise you more
than I can deliver in the title of the sermon when I say, " 150th Anniversary
Retrospective." I don’t really know very much about Karl Marx. I don’t really
know very much about economic history, but I do think that it is appropriate to
take a moment this morning in our worship to reflect on our spiritual lives in
relationship to that which is so dominant in our society and in our lives, as well the power of the economic dimension.
When I was reading the recent issue of Tikkun, the magazine edited by Rabbi
Michael Lerner, I found the piece on spirituality which is in your literature, and
what I want to try to communicate to you this morning is the place of our
economic endeavor in the totality of our lives. As Lerner writes, "We live at the
end of a century in which the competitive economic market has demonstrated its
powerful ability to shape a dominate consciousness of the planet." Economic
concerns being a dominate determinative of our minds and our hearts, shaping
our lives and our motivations, it’s rather interesting that this message should
have been planned for this Lord’s Day which is at the end of one of those great
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volatile weeks on Wall Street. The ups and the downs, and the downs had it, and I
suppose that there are those of you sitting here, along with me, who at least in the
paper count are considerably less wealthy today than we were last Sunday. But it
has our attention, doesn’t it? There was an article on the front page of one of the
newspapers this morning in which a commentator was saying that we hear voices
assuring us that all is well, the economy is essentially solid, the stock market is
still a safe place to be, hang in there, ride it out. And then rather disconcertingly,
he quoted similar statements from October of 1929 prior to the Great Fall.
Well, if it all happens, will you jump out of a skyscraper window? My question to
you this morning really is, "Where will you be if you get where you’re going?"
How will you be if you achieve your dreams? What if you accomplish that which
you are killing yourself to accomplish - how will it be with you? Will there be
contentment, peace, serenity? Will you be a fulfilled and whole human being if
you should be granted your fondest dreams, the things that you are giving your
life to? I think that’s a legitimate question for a Labor Day weekend, and I believe
that Karl Marx, 150 years ago, had a prophetic insight and amazing insight into
the power of capital to determine the shape of global existence.
In an anniversary edition of the Communist Manifesto that has an introduction
by an English scholar, Eric Hobsbawm, the dust cover has an interesting
paragraph. It says that Hobsbawm writes that the world described by Marx and
Engels in 1848, in passages of dark, laconic eloquence, is recognizably the world
in which we live 150 years later. The author identifies the insights which
underpin the Manifesto’s startling contemporary relevance, the recognition of
capitalism as a world system capable of marshaling production on a global scale,
its devastating impact on all aspects of human existence - work, the family, and
the distribution of wealth, and the understanding that, far from being a stable,
immutable system, it is, on the contrary, susceptible to enormous convulsions
and crises and contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Historical development did not prove Marx correct. That is, what he thought
would happen with the rise of capitalism did not happen according to his script.
But, he saw with an amazing vision and insight the tremendous impact of the
economic dimension of our human existence individually and in terms of human
community. And what he saw, the dangers he saw, and the problems that he saw
have been experienced and we are not out of the woods in terms of the
consequences yet.
Someone who was here on the 4th of July weekend and heard my sermon, "A
Declaration of Interdependence," in which I suggested that the Holy Spirit was
creating this global community, knocking down barriers and boundaries, all of
which are artificial, creating therefore a world community, wrote me a very
perceptive letter in which he said, "Dreamers dream and all of that is fine, but in
the meantime, how about the people who get hurt? In building a global
community, what about the disruption to local communities? And having that
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universal dream, what about the particularity of human communities, their
identity, their character, their nature, their uniqueness?" He wrote a very, very
good letter, and then he shared with me just what I needed, another book.
It was written by Kirkpatrick Sale, whose book Rebels Against the Future tells the
story of the Luddites. Do you know who they were? In the onset of the Industrial
Revolution in England, the Luddites were small craftsmen, cottage industry
people, textile people. And, of course, with the discovery of steam and power and
the building of factories, these individual craftsmen were being put out of work.
They were able to work traditionally at their own pace and in their own
environment according to the rhythms of their own life and nature, and now,
there stood a factory! And that factory was taking their jobs and also hiring them
- they became the laborers who no longer could set their agenda according to
their own rhythm, the rhythm of their life and that which led to human wellbeing, but the cadences of the piston and steel determined the nature of their
work and their labor. So, what did they do? They took their guns and pistols and
pickaxes and they attacked the factories. In 1811, 1812 there were a number of
textile plants that were destroyed, and it was a violent revolt against what was the
inevitable movement, it seems, of historical development.
Well, Karl Marx saw what they were doing, but he recognized that there was this
personal self-interest involved in their attacking the factory, because they were
losing their jobs. But Marx saw a bigger picture: he saw the power of capital, as
Lerner says, to determine the production globally. He saw the power of capital to
continue to pile up wealth and the tremendous determinant that it would be of
human destiny and human society. Marx didn’t fight the rise of capitalism. He
figured it would have the seeds of its own death within it and eventually, having
produced a large laboring class, the laboring class would revolt, overthrow the
owners, and there would be this classless society. Now, it didn’t work that way; it
hasn’t worked that way. His vision was Utopian, in that sense, the classless
society where the development of each was the condition of the development of
all, where everyone worked according to his or her ability and received according
to his or her need. A kind of Utopian vision. Utopia is an interesting word from
the Greek language. Utopia means "no place." There is no place like this. No
place. Maybe we would say no possibility.
But, where did Karl Marx get his vision? Where did he get such a fantastic idea?
Well, he was from a Jewish family that converted for convenience reasons to
Christianity, but he was nurtured in the Old Testament prophets. His uncle was a
rabbi. It’s a Messianic vision. It’s a vision shaped by the Hebrew prophets, and
the Hebrew prophets were those who spoke in the name of the God Who was
concerned for human well-being, for human community, Who was concerned for
the spiritual well-being of people, knowing the temptation of people to get caught
up in de-humanizing activity and the de-humanizing chase in which they would
lose their own soul.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Scholars don’t think that probably Israel ever fully lived out that Levitical year of
Jubilee, Sabbath Year and then the year of Jubilee, but it was a part of the
Hebrew tradition and there are enough references in the Hebrew scriptures to
know that it was operative, to what extent, we’re not sure. But, isn’t that an
interesting idea? Here in the Bible we have this suggestion that every seventh
year the land should lie fallow. Now, it’s an agricultural society and you have to
make the translation, but how about a sabbatical every seven years? Do you want
not only to not harvest the field, but also shut the doors of the factory, let the
machines cool off and the laborers take a year off? You intelligent, academic
people still keep that custom alive and I’ve practiced it a time or two, also. It’s
kind of nice, under the guise of doing heavy work, heavy thinking.
Now, listen to me. Listen to me. What was operative in the Sabbath principle? No
matter how the practical execution of it, what was operative? Sabbath principle
was the principle by which, according to the understanding of the Hebrew, God
was saying, "For your sake, for my sake, cease and desist. Unplug. Every seventh
day, stop." The Sabbath day could be kept with legalistic rigidity.
I grew up in a setting, a home, an environment of Calvinistic grace that was all
law. I, as a child, experienced ugly Sundays. Couldn’t do anything, and it wasn’t
very much fun for a kid growing up. I think there are others like me, so that the
Sabbath principle gets bad press because it was legalistically applied and sort of
seemed to be a way to drain all the pleasure out of a day.
Donald Gray Barnhouse, a great preacher of an earlier generation out of a
Scottish Presbyterian home which was the only thing worse than a Dutch
Calvinist home, said that when he was a kid in church and they sang "Day of All
the Week the Best, emblem of eternal rest," he thought, "Good grief, if heaven is
like Sunday, I don’t want to go there." But, the principle is absolutely beautiful,
totally humane, and divine. It cuts the nerve of that compulsiveness that gets
hold of us to produce and to consume and to acquire and to aggrandize. It says,
"Stop! Just stop." I don’t want to emphasize it too much because Nancy may get
the idea and say, "Physician, heal thyself." Because you don’t have to be a laborer
in a factory to be a workaholic. That was the principle, and the year of Jubilee, of
course, where it all goes back the way it was sets limits on the degree to which
there can be this present widening gap between wealth and poverty. And the
recognition that all of us, the shrewdest business man, the most skilled worker,
the most industrious person, is finally a steward of God Who alone owns the
resources.
So, when you laugh at Karl Marx, you might as well also take your scissors and
cut Leviticus 25 out of your Bible. And you’re going to have a problem, too, with
the immediate aftermath of Pentecost when people were living their lives under
the impact of the Spirit of God when they lived in a commune kind of situation,
from which, of course, we get the word communist. Now, thank God for Acts 5,
the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They were going to do like Barnabas, sell their
© Grand Valley State University
�Biblical Vision and Karl Marx
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
farm and bring all the proceeds to the deacons, but they were also practical and
they kept a little back. They told the deacons, who asked, "Did you sell that farm
for $10,000?" "Yes, we did." Well, they had sold it for $12,500. And Bingo, there
were two dead Christians, right on the spot.
Well, we know communal living for the good of all didn’t work, so we can be done
with it. We don’t have to worry about it anymore. It may be in the Bible, but the
Bible gives us clear indication that it doesn’t work. But, of course, I suppose that
community of early Jesus people got some of their impression from Jesus who
said, in the one description of the judgment scene in the whole Bible, that the
difference between the sheep and the goats has nothing to do with grace or
justification by faith or any of that stuff, it has to do with practical things like
feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the ones in prison, the
unconscious goodness and care of compassion.
So, on this Labor Day Sunday there’s enough in the scripture to warn us about
the possibility of getting all caught up in chasing dreams and building kingdoms,
of getting our priorities all mixed up, thinking that it is of primary importance to
secure ourselves into perpetuity, to recognize the possibility that we can be so
caught up in the schemes in which we are engaged, that we lose our soul and we
have no peace. My Labor Day message to you is that Karl Marx got a lot of things
wrong, but he did see the threat to our soul of the economic dimension of our
lives, and he got a lot of it from the Bible. So, for God’s sake, for your sake, take a
moment and ask yourself where you’ll be when you get where you’re going and,
if you do really get where you’re going, is it really where you want to be?
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b6f5a6e4a5992ecb2501dd28d9f1f877.mp3
5ca0fefc2a3ccf83d458211831394d6d
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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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
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>
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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>
Language
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English
Type
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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
Labor Day Sunday, Pentecost XIV
Scripture Text
Liviticus 25:1-17, Acts 2:43-47,Matthew 25:31-40
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980906
Date
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1998-09-06
Title
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The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx: A 150th Retrospective
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 6, 1998 entitled "The Biblical Vision and Karl Marx: A 150th Retrospective", on the occasion of Labor Day Sunday, Pentecost XIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Liviticus 25:1-17, Acts 2:43-47,Matthew 25:31-40.
Consciousness
Justice
Prophetic Voice
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1ee725ca2a820f86005d9d46472f1d69.pdf
910433f86ab6296a3ad236841961041a
PDF Text
Text
Is It Enough To Be Human?
From the series: Can I Honestly Believe?
Text: Luke 15:20; Psalm 103:14; Genesis 2:17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 16, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I’m going to say something radical for a change. I’m going to say this morning
that you are very beautiful people, that humankind is amazing, marvelous, and
wonderful, and I think that in the church we’ve given people a bum rap.
If you’ve grown up in the church as I have, and spent your whole life in the
church, you won’t have a terribly high impression of your human nature. Oh, the
church has not only had bad news to tell about the obstreperousness of the
human person; it has had good news, too. Good news about the fact that, in spite
of how bad you are, there is hope for you if you heed the word of the preacher and
bring your offering envelope every week and support the institution loyally and
follow the code of conduct that the community communicates to you. Now, you
understand that this is all of grace, but there’s a lot of effort involved in it.
I believe that in the church we have been concerned for you. We wanted to keep
you safe. Knowing the beast that rages in your breast, we’ve tried to hedge you in
and keep you going down that straight and narrow path. For your own good, you
understand. But, also, it’s been good for the institution, of course, since we
mediate grace, kind of hold the spigot, and might have some influence upon
whether or not you ultimately, at the end of this vale of tears, find heaven’s gate
open for you.
Well, perhaps you say that’s a bit of a caricature, and it is, of course. But, there’s a
lot of truth in it, too. In the church, human nature has been brushed with a stroke
of somber hues. We have not celebrated the human person. We have tended, on
the other hand, to put the human person down, to be very clear about the
potential for evil, to point to the load of guilt, and to indicate the end thereof,
which is destruction.
This morning I want to say that, being human, you are amazing, wonderful, and
miraculous. That, being human, you represent the movement of that whole
cosmic drama that has been unfolding for fifteen billion years. That it was the
intention of the Source of all being, that ultimate Mystery of all things, that this
© Grand Valley State University
�Enough To Be Human?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
whole drama should emerge eventually in someone like you that was thoroughly
rooted in the earth, but also conscious and aware, knowing a measure of freedom
and responsibility. As the statement on the inside of the cover of your liturgy by
David Tooland, a Catholic scholar, states, you are the soul of the universe. You
are the voice of the universe. You are the black box of the universe. In you this
cosmic drama has come to awareness, to consciousness. Although you are and
remain thoroughly rooted in the earth, your physicality being very much with
you, nonetheless, that physicality, that body, is the bearer of spirit, and spirit
doesn’t exist apart from its grounding in the physicality of the person, and with
that human being there has come this amazing, miraculous creature that is you. I
dare to proclaim that, even in church.
Now, saying that, I don’t want you to hear this as a whitewash of the human
creature. One of the dangers of making statements like that is that someone is
going to go out of here and say, "Well, today he denied original sin," or "He
doesn’t think that human beings are sinful." Let me read you a little statement
that I have read you before but which I think is eloquent in its recognition of the
potential for disaster that lives in the soul and heart of all of us. These are the
words of a great preacher of a former generation, Carlyle Marney. He said,
Man is the most dangerous and savage of the beasts. His bite is poisonous,
his hand a club, his foot is a weapon. Knives, clubs, spears are the
projectiles to bear his hostility. Nothing in nature is so well equipped for
hating or hurting. Confuse him and he may lash out at everything. Crowd
him and he kills, robs, destroys, for his crime rate increases in proportion
to his crowding. Deprive him and he retaliates. Impoverish him and he
burns villas in the night. Enslave him and he revolts, pamper him and he
may poison you, hire him and he may hate both you and the work, love
him too possessively and he is never weaned, deny him too early and he
never learns to love. Put him in cities and all his animal nature comes out
with perversions of every good thing. For greed, acquisitiveness, violence
were so long his tools for jungle survival, that it is only by the hardest
effort that these can be laid aside as weapons of his continued survival.
Well, that’s not a very pretty picture of the human person, and who of us would
deny that it’s true? We see it every day, played out in our society and, to the
extent that we are self-aware, we see the seeds of it all within our own hearts and
our own souls. So, don’t hear me whitewashing the human being as though there
is nothing negative to say. But, what I do want to say is that, in light of our
understanding of human nature, in the light of our understanding of the human
person coming at this point in that cosmic drama, in the light of our
understanding of our animal nature being the ground of our spiritual nature and
symbiotic living in tight union with it forever, in the light of all that, we can come
to some new appreciation and understanding of our human condition. Part of the
problem, I think, in the Church’s understanding in dealing with human nature is
that biblical paradigm that begins with an understanding of the human being
© Grand Valley State University
�Enough To Be Human?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
created perfect, given the gift of freedom, then in proud revolt falling from that
perfection into a state of alienation from God, and therefore having to be
redeemed by the grace of God. That’s the biblical paradigm. We find it in the
stories of Genesis. We find it in the theology of Paul, articulated explicitly. The
creation of the person in perfection, the fall of the person through revolt, the
redemption of the person by grace.
Let me suggest to you, in the light of our understanding of human nature and
human history, of social development, let me suggest to you that we try to find
another paradigm. Three years ago I suggested that the word emergence has a
better image for who we are, from whence we have come, and whither we are
going. Emergence rather than fall and redemption. Emergence as being a part of
the whole evolutionary development of the totality of reality. If we were to take
the 15 or so billion years of the cosmic reality and condense it down into one year,
then the human being would have appeared in the last minute or two of that year.
We are relative newcomers to the scene of history and cosmology and, in the
statement that I printed also for you today to which I referred last week from U.S.
News & World Report, the suggestion is that if we are the youth movement of the
human story, then with the infinite resources in the star factories of the universe,
who knows what further development there will be? Who would say that we are
the acme of God’s creative act? Who would say that we are the pinnacle; that we
are that to which all creation was pointing? Who knows but what there are stages
and dimensions of which we have not yet dreamed, and who knows whether or
not we, the human family, have not been the instrumentality through which the
universe has turned the corner? Because it has: we are really something!
With the human person, the universe has become conscious. With the human
being, the universe has a voice, the universe has become aware of itself, is able to
celebrate itself, is able to reflect on itself and on the other and on the Source and
resting place of all. To be human is to be an amazing, marvelous, miraculous
creation. But the idea of emergence indicates to us that we bear the marks of our
past, and how did we come to where we are, if not by the exercise of instincts for
survival? How did we get to this point, if not through the utilization of that
instinctual nature that enabled us to continue to move in the continuum of the
creative process? And if it is true that spirit is grounded in flesh, then that flesh
still bears all the marks of that long evolutionary climb.
We didn’t get here by being innocent children. We didn’t get here by the careful
exercise of human reason. We got here clawing our way. We are jungle bunnies.
And although we have moved to a point where we become conscious of that, and
where we become conscious of another way to be, crowd us a little bit and we very
easily slip back into that survival mode, that instinctual response.
The miracle of the human being is that we can talk about that. We can look at our
behavior. We know when we are denying our best insights. We know when we are
acting against love and compassion and justice and care. We know when it is
© Grand Valley State University
�Enough To Be Human?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
selfishness, when it is fear, when it is jealousy that is driving us. We have that
awful capacity to be able to jump out of our skin and take a look at ourselves.
That’s the amazing thing about being human.
If I suggest that that biblical picture of perfection and fall and redemption can
better be replaced by an idea of continual emergence, that doesn’t mean that
there are not profound insights in the scripture about the human condition. We
can understand the Genesis writer not wanting to blame God for all of the hell on
earth, and so the explanation is that God created us good, we revolted, we are
responsible for all of the evil. But, in the midst of portraying that picture, there
were some very, very deep insights. The writer did understand our rootedness in
the stuff of creation, being made, formed by God out of the dust of the ground,
the mud. David Tooland says out of stardust. The recognition remains, however,
of our oneness with creation. The Hebrew poet, understanding that, was able to
give us a sense of the compassion of God for us in our condition. God knows our
frame, he writes. God remembers that we are dust. Like a compassionate parent,
God has mercy on us. I think what the poet was saying is that it’s all right to be
human. God knows you’re human. Whatever the creative process has produced in
us, it is a process that has integrity and authenticity and we are part of the whole,
and that’s all right. God knows our frame. God remembers that we are dust.
Oh, we beat ourselves up. We’re so hard on ourselves because there is that
struggle between that ideal toward which we aspire and the actual performance
which we put out. We get down on ourselves because we fail again and again and
again. We despair, we get discouraged. The Psalmist says, "Look, God knows who
you are, and God intends you to be who you are, and God embraces you as you
are." I believe that Jesus, standing in that tradition, was trying to say something
like that in the beautiful story of that son who went into the far country who
declared his independence, who went through the separation process, who came
upon bad times, came to himself, became aware and then, still with a bit of
manipulation, thought, "You know what? I think I could talk the old man into bed
and breakfast." He came back with his rehearsed speech, only to be overwhelmed
with a father weeping, kissing him, embracing him, smothering his wellrehearsed story. It seems to me that Jesus was saying that all the Creator God is
waiting for is the creature to become aware and finally to be home in the embrace
of God. At home in the wonder of the universe, at home with the tensions of being
human.
Oh, good grief, it’s not easy to be human. We are so fragile, so vulnerable. Jim
Essebaggers goes to the doctor and the doctor says, "Cancer." A candle burns for
Beth Cresse, who in a moment has her life wiped out, leaving husband, children
and parents and a community mourning this marvelous person. The flowers at
the table celebrate the sprite of a life, an angel of six years old who dies! So
fragile. So vulnerable. So perilous. And yet, and yet in those very experiences, in
those very moments in the darkness of the valley, in the light of our fragile
© Grand Valley State University
�Enough To Be Human?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
existence, in the pain and the loss of it all, there comes forth from this human
person love and care and beauty that defies the darkness! How can it be?
I want to tell you, you are really something, human crowd! You have your life
rooted in the dust, even if it’s stardust, and you have all of the animality of your
physical nature that’s alive and well. You carry with you all of those instinctual
patterns that can be triggered in a moment, creating hell on earth, and you can
sing and you can laugh, and you can dance, and you can love and embrace.
God, what it is to be human! What a wonder and what a marvel you are! And how
good it is to be here together for just a few moments, to become aware of it again
and to feel the embrace of grace once again, and to sense that inspiring spirit that
lures us with love and beckons us with grace, and embraces us in the wonder and
the worry of being human.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4b20cef3aa7cbd922f5dbeae166217aa.mp3
af947abdc3976622a4f18c4251912130
Dublin Core
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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
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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
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KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XI
Series
Can I Honestly Believe?
Scripture Text
Luke 15:20, Psalm 103:14, Genesis 2,17
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19980816
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-08-16
Title
A name given to the resource
Is It Enough To Be Human?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 16, 1998 entitled "Is It Enough To Be Human?", as part of the series "Can I Honestly Believe?", on the occasion of Pentecost XI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 15:20, Psalm 103:14, Genesis 2,17.
Consciousness
Emergence of Human
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/177e19e1846fc846db94e3ffc0d055b5.pdf
eb6c0cf7f58d3a459ba769b2079091cf
PDF Text
Text
A Declaration of Inter-dependence
Text: Psalm 33:16-17; Romans 12:21; Matthew 5:44
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Independence Day Weekend, July 5, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We celebrate 222 years of existence as a nation, born as an experiment in human
freedom, a nation in which the government was of, for and by the people. The
ideal of our founders was a magnificent vision worthy to be celebrated in public
festivals and to be reflected on in Divine worship because, while the early framers
of our founding documents were not evangelical Christians as is loudly claimed in
some quarters today, their vision was grounded in the biblical vision of
humankind created by God, not only the ground of all reality but the source and
enlivening presence of all life, including human life - a Creator Who is the
guarantor of human dignity and freedom.
Our founding vision was a radical experiment, to be understood in the
background of the European origin of the nation, a background of Divine Right of
kings and nobility and human domination. The American experiment was an
attempt to limit government and vastly restrict its arena of operation. The early
documents resonate with lofty idealism and there is too little appreciation of the
greatness of that founding vision.
It was flawed from the beginning; it had its limitation of the radical nature of the
freedom it was espousing and has been in a process of development over the 222
years of our national existence. But we have been blessed to have entered into the
fruit of that vision, for which we give God thanks.
The Declaration of Independence, the claim of national sovereignty, was a bold
and daring act in the 18th century. As the 21st century dawns, an equally bold
and daring act is imperative; it is the declaration of inter-dependence with all
nations and peoples of the earth. Such a claim is not wild-eyed fantasy of a
hopelessly idealistic and impractical dreamer. Rather, it is a practical and
necessary response to the real situation of our world on the threshold of the Third
Millennium.
The most telling image of our situation as humankind on planet earth is the
astronaut’s picture of the earth taken from outer space - the earth, a beautiful
globe of blue and green hanging in the frozen darkness of space - obviously an
© Grand Valley State University
�Declaration of Inter-dependence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
inter-related, inter-connected whole. The picture gives vivid witness to the
commentary of the astronaut who says there are no real barriers or divisions; the
earth is one; a planetary unity.
What the picture of the earth as a whole points to is being realized in actual
human experience. The amazing accomplishments of technology have put the
world’s people into instant communication. Travel exposes us to the whole rich
diversity of the human community. What happens in one part of the world
impacts every part. We cannot wash our hands of the ongoing tensions in the
Middle East, not turn our backs on the anguish of the Balkan states.
The ecological concern for the well-being of the environment can only be
addressed from a global perspective and nuclear non-proliferation is essential for
the whole global family.
Speaking of the drive toward one world totally intertwined is not fantasizing
about what might be, but simply being responsible before what is; and the best
place to see it is in the actuality of a global economy. Multinational corporations
and international banking are a reality. The move to one currency in the
European community is only a symbol of the interlocked economics of the world.
We bail out Mexico, cajole and press Indonesia and support the Japanese yen not because we are an altruistic nation wanting to help those in distress, but
because we are invested literally around the globe and need a healthy global
economy to keep our own GNP in good shape.
As the Third Millennium approaches and the 21st century breaks upon us, it is
time for a declaration of inter-dependence.
It would be foolhardy to think that we, the USA, the world’s only present
superpower could insulate and isolate ourselves from the rest of the earth in the
ongoing development of the cosmic drama and the human story. These are not
far out ideas.
The Fourth of July in Flint was marked by picketers with American flags. We are
witnessing a serious social situation in our own state that is impacting not only
Michigan, but the nation. What is the underlying reality? It is not a simple
matter. One can fume at General Motors - giving the store away in the past. One
can fume at the UAW - bringing on what they claim they are trying to avoid. But,
General Motors cannot go on as is. And autoworkers in Flint are human beings
being disrupted and dislocated.
I mention this not to take sides or examine all the issues involved - and it is very
complex; rather, to show that this kind of crisis close to home has to do with
globalization.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Some philosophers and theologians suggest that we must dismantle the global
networks of industry and economics, return to small regional communities of
production and consumption, nurturing local customs and ethnic diversity. They
rail against globalization as the loss of particular cultural identities and want to
stop the whole process toward one world.
I understand, but I don’t think that will happen. There is a tide, broad and
powerful, that is sweeping us toward one world, totally inter-related. It seems to
me what we must do is not throw up barriers against ongoing development, but
rather, seek ways to make the future humane, just and peaceful. We need a vision
of inter-dependence and then the will to make it happen.
What is needed is a transformation of consciousness. We simply must begin to
think differently. We need a prophet to annunciate the new and emerging reality
- the global reality of which we are a part. Rather than the reactionary rhetoric of
the religious Right that is attempting to re-invent yesterday, we need someone to
help us find a new orientation in a new cultural situation. Rather than a fearful,
defensive posture that is marked by a militant mind and hostile spirit, we need to
cultivate a global consciousness that thinks of how to make the future more
humane, more just, marked by planetary peace.
We are not without resources for such a vision. In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels published the Communist Manifesto. It was focused on economics, but it
was really a revolutionary social document. On the 150th anniversary of its
publication, a number of works are being published. In an article in The New
York Times, the present debate was set forth, but what seemed to be commonly
agreed on was that Marx did see the relentless power of capital to produce wealth
and he did see what we are currently experiencing globally. He failed to see how
Capitalism could pull the proletariat into the game and thus avoid what he
thought would be inevitable revolution.
Again, here my point is not to argue Marx pro or con, but to suggest that we need
such a powerful prophetic visionary in our day.
Where did Marx get his vision?
Communism has been called a biblical heresy. The founding story of Israel is the
freedom of a people from domination and ruthless exploitation, and the story is
shaped by the Hebrew prophets who envisioned a peaceable kingdom where the
lion and the lamb would lie down together. The vision, the passion for justice and
human well-being that found expression in a Karl Marx was in that biblical
tradition.
We have the biblical story as resource. Psalm 33 celebrates the sovereignty of
God who fills the earth with steadfast love. The image of God as Ruler out there in heaven - controlling the affairs of the nations is not in line with the experience
of cosmic movement and historical development, but I believe the Psalmist had
© Grand Valley State University
�Declaration of Inter-dependence
Richard A. Rhem
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true insight into the human situation - we did not create this world; we are not
sovereign, nor can we secure ourselves by human means. The King - the symbol
of human sovereignty - is not secured by horses and armies. Military might won’t
do it. Economic power won’t do it. No human reality is impregnable.
God is at the heart of things.
Love is at the heart of things.
Grace - modeled out in God, as we see it revealed in Jesus Christ, is the only way
to peace on earth.
Paul, responding to the encounter with the grace of God in Jesus Christ, appealed
to followers of Jesus in Rome - on the basis of the mercies of God, to present
themselves a sacrifice to God - living, holy, acceptable. This, Paul said, is only
logical - it makes sense.
Grace at the core of things, as he had so eloquently written as chapter 11 ends,
calls for a transformation of life, a new way of being, not conformed to the
structures and forms of this world, but transformed by the renewing of the mind.
A shift in consciousness - that is radical, thinking differently!
Paul, of course, was reflecting Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with
concrete, practical counsel on how to live. Paul said do not meet evil with evil, but
overcome evil with good and, obviously, he was trying to counsel a way of being
that emulated the way of Jesus who said "No!" to the old code of justice - an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Rather, "If anyone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give
her your cloak, as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the
second mile."
Again, radically, Jesus declares, Love your enemies.
In short, be God-like, the God who causes rain to fall on the righteous and the
unrighteous alike and causes the sun to rise on the good and the evil. That section
ends with "Be perfect as God is perfect," and the connotation of the word
translated perfect is "mature." In effect, we need to grow up.
Hans Küng brings this radical counsel of Jesus into the concrete circumstances of
our day. In his work, Judaism, he addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Recognizing the delicacy of any non-Jew dealing with the issue, he nonetheless
points to the frequency with which the Likud party, particularly, uses the word
retaliation. One must be sensitive to the Israeli position, given the suffering and
loss that people has suffered over the centuries. Yet, he wonders if the word of the
Jew Jesus is not a better way to the future and peace - not retaliation, but the
voluntary renunciation of power and rights.
© Grand Valley State University
�Declaration of Inter-dependence
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
For many years I did not preach on the Sermon on the Mount. I was not content
to interpret it as a code of personal ethics irrelevant to the world of real politics.
Yet, it seemed so incredible, so impossible in the real world of international
relations. But, the longer I think about these things, the more I am convinced that
Jesus’ way is the only way there can ever be peace on earth, the realization of the
Creator’s intention for Shalom - the peaceable kingdom.
If Jesus’ way won’t work, there is no other way.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3b3317e031eb6f4d29193b5f043218bf.mp3
9df576e251d76b5603a5470fc2302ff1
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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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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost V
Series
Independence Day Weekend
Scripture Text
Psalm 33:16-17, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:44
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19980705
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1998-07-05
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A Declaration of Inter-dependence
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 5, 1998 entitled "A Declaration of Inter-dependence", as part of the series "Independence Day Weekend", on the occasion of Pentecost V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 33:16-17, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:44.
Consciousness
Global Community
Inclusive
Justice
Peace
-
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cbd1f85381ae05377cc8a54241bc8a69
PDF Text
Text
What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
From the series: Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Scripture: Romans 8:19; Luke 20:38
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 20, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
What lies beyond death’s veil? That is a tough question and there is no easy
answer because the experience beyond death is beyond the limit of human
experience.
Ah, you say, but there is one who returned to demonstrate that there is life
beyond life - Jesus, the resurrected Christ.
And I must respond that that is the witness of the Christian faith, the conviction,
the experience that was the catalyst to launch what has become the Christian
religion. But, it is an affirmation of faith beyond the kind of verification that
settles the matter. And in this series of messages I am simply setting forth what
Christian faith proclaims. I am attempting to engage the core questions of human
existence in light of a contemporary knowledge of the universe, the human being
and society and the historical development of which we are aware.
Religion is a universal phenomenon. In the last century when anthropologists
gained access to all peoples of the earth, from the most highly developed societies
to the most remote and primitive tribes, this was the discovery. The human being
is a religious animal. And why should religion be a universal human
phenomenon? Is it not because when that stage of the unfolding development of
the universe was reached in which consciousness, self-consciousness, awareness
first manifested itself, the human creature who could now get out of his skin and
reflect back on himself came to recognize the fact that he was mortal? Members
of his clan died. He would die. The human creature, that is, came to the
consciousness of his own death.
When I married Nancy I inherited a Siamese cat that I never really accepted,
three kids whom I love and a standard poodle named Topaz. I loved Topaz, too,
but he developed kidney problems and euthanasia was called for. Then there was
Midnight, a black standard poodle whom we loved even though he was
emotionally retarded. He, too, died and was given proper burial in a sand dune.
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Now there is Hershey, a chocolate brown poodle who is growing older but still
acts like an incorrigible puppy.
Topaz, Midnight and Hershey were (are) lovable, affectionate, manifest
intelligence - all of that – but do not possess consciousness, self awareness.
Consequently, they possess the life instinct, survival instinct, but not awareness
of the transitory nature of their canine existence. Hershey never focuses his big
brown eyes on me and says, "Pastor, someday I will die and I wonder why."
I go into this at length to help you see that it is our consciousness, our selfawareness that raises the questions at the core of our being:
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
What is the meaning/purpose of my life?
Is this all there is? What happens at my death?
Nothingness? Existence in another dimension?
It is the attempt to address and answer such core questions that gives rise to
religion. It is the common focus and purpose of all religions, not just
Christianity.
We tend to forget this. Religion becomes an end in itself: its doctrine something
to believe, its cultic forms providing ritual/worship, its moral teaching the way to
live in light of its understanding of reality, God, human existence.
Religion, then, continues to provide answers to the core questions, but at a step
removed from where we live and wrestle with the questions. Religious doctrine
tends to move from an existential answer full of passion to an intellectual
discussion filled with arguments and rational discourse.
And then I hear the physician’s diagnosis: "You are terminally ill; you have at
most six months." Or the love of my life dies, or some other instance that creates
shock, trauma, and blackness. Now, I am not satisfied with rational discourse or
ancient dogma. Now I really need to know and I plunge into anxious struggle
with the reality facing me.
It is out of such angst, struggle, and fear that religion arises. It gets regularized,
formalized, sterile. But then I face the darkness and the religious quest becomes
intense. Now I seek some light, some meaning and understanding. Now religion
comes alive in my experience; now it becomes very real.
It is at the level of existential intensity that I raise the question, "What lies
beyond death’s veil?" My purpose is not to give you an easy answer; there aren’t
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
any. Nor is it simply to affirm Easter faith in the resurrection. I’ve done that here
for thirty Easters. Rather, I want you to come to understand the question in order
to find your way into a place of faith that is your own. If we don’t really
understand the questions that drive the religious quest, we may have all the
classic orthodox answers but we may be devoid of a deeply personal faith that
really brings us inner peace and confidence.
So, to the question: "What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?" As I stated above, there are
two basic options: Nothing, or Something More.
The option, "Something More", was the nearly universal conviction of all
peoples and religion until the 19th century. Even Buddhism and Hinduism, that
speak of Nirvana as "Nothingness," view that not as negation of Being. But it is
not my intention to attempt to describe such subtleties. Rather, I want to point
out that the crisis of belief in some kind of ongoing existence after death is a
relatively modern phenomenon and our own 20th century has been shaped by
what can be called modern atheism, which can be traced back to the German
philosopher/theologian Ludwig Feuerbach.
Feuerbach viewed religion as the result of human projection. God does not exist.
God is a human invention created to meet human needs, fears and suffering, and
then projected into another realm called heaven. For Feuerbach, religion is
projection. Building uncritically on that assumption, we have the development of
modern atheism.
Karl Marx, following Feuerbach, claimed religion was the opium of the people,
drugging the human race so it endured injustice and suffering in the hope of a
better existence beyond in heaven. Marx thus turned from heaven and afterlife to
the transformation of earth and this life, calling for the end of human exploitation
by the powerful who oppressed the masses.
Sigmund Freud took Feuerbach’s projection idea and claimed religion was
illusion. No objective reality corresponded to human religions constructions - no
God, no heaven, nothing beyond the veil.
The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, brought this train of thinking to
its ultimate logical conclusion, to Nihilism: nothingness - no God, no meaning, no
right or wrong. Nietzsche was not happy about such a state of affairs. This is the
philosopher who cried out in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “God is dead; we have
killed him,” and who, on the threshold of the 20th century, declared, "Nothing is
true, all is permitted." His insight drove him mad. He spent the last twelve years
of his life in an institution for the insane.
In his work, The Hidden Face of God, Richard Elliott Friedman in a chapter
dealing with Nietzsche entitled, "The ‘Death’ of God," writes,
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Nietzsche’s breakdown, and the elements that it reflected, really does fit as
symbolically expressing a culture’s breakdown, or at least its arrival at a
critical turning point. And at the summit of that culture was its God.
This state of things had been in the making for centuries in that culture.
The invention of the printing press made it possible for everyone - not just
the priests and the wealthy - to have a Bible, and thus an opportunity to
have informed doubts. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, new knowledge of the
age of the earth, the triumph of science in general, all provided potent
grounds for doubts. The development of the state as a challenge to the
Church for worldly authority also impinged on the authority of the Church
and ultimately God.... Open challenges to the claims of religion by
respectable intellectuals of all backgrounds became possible (Hobbes,
Spinoza, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, etc., etc.) Hegel could write
of the death of God. Marx could call religion opium of the masses. Even
with the Church, modern biblical criticism became acceptable and, in the
formulations of Julius Wellhausen, the father of modern biblical
scholarship, it became famous; it was the culmination of a process leading
to a new feeling about the Bible, religion, and God. Philosophical, political,
scientific, technological, and social forces all were challenging traditional
religion and religious establishments in essential ways. (p. 195F)
The spiritual crisis of culture in the West that Nietzsche brought to expression as
the 19th century ended came to full bloom in the shaking of the foundations in our
century. And if religion’s origins lie in the struggle to answer life’s core questions
and the core questions about death and what if anything lies beyond its veil, then,
given the crisis of Christian faith in this century, it is no wonder the traditional
hope provided by the Christian tradition should be clouded with doubt and loss.
As is so often true, the Church in its various forms and institutional structures,
fought a rear guard action, affirming faith in life after life but failing to do so
while taking the modern critiques seriously. Dogmatic declaration of faith’s
content without wrestling with the enlightenment created by new knowledge and
a revolutionary understanding of reality is a futile endeavor. Rather, the faith that
can still connect with human experience must be shaped in light of a new
conception of the universe, of the human being, and the inter-action of God with
the world. Such an approach is taken by Hans Küng in his lectures entitled
Eternal Life? He writes,
The turning point to the modern age, the deepest inversion in the time
after the birth of Christ, the dual Copernican turning point - from earth to
the sun and at the same time from God to the human being - has to be
taken seriously.
That is to say, we are raising the question of eternal life at a time when a
completely new scientific world vision has come to prevail and the blue
outer wall of the heavenly halls as the scene of eternal life has begun
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
literally to dissolve into the air; when the postulate of the Enlightenment
has penetrated everywhere and there is no longer any eternal truth that
can evade the critical judgment of reason by an appeal merely to the
authority of Bible, tradition or Church, while belief in eternity can no
longer be imposed by authority or taken for granted as part of an ideology;
when ideological criticism has laid bare the sociological misuse of belief in
eternity, so that the latter can never again be made to serve as an empty
promise of a hereafter or as a means of stabilizing unjust, inhuman
conditions; when the political-cultural predominance of Christianity has
ceased, with the result that the denial of an eternal life no longer involves
mortal danger and the all-embracing secularization process has produced
a shift of consciousness from the hereafter to the here and now, from life
after death to life before death, from yearning for heaven to fidelity to
earth. (p. 6)
This is the context of our age; it is in this context that we must raise the tough
question: What lies beyond death’s veil?
Is there nothing?
Is there something more?
Can the "something more" be affirmed with intellectual integrity as well as
the passion of faith?
Let us acknowledge that such a conviction was, as indicated above, universally
held until the 19th century and the spiritual crisis brought on by the modern
scientific understanding of the world. But, let us acknowledge as well that much
Christian teaching and preaching did point to the afterlife as consolation and
compensation for the suffering and injustice of this life. We must recognize
further that such a view did too often lead to passivity toward the wrongs of this
world and to the failure fully to live and celebrate this world and our present
human experience.
We recognize also that confidence that there was "something more" beyond
death’s veil is clearly a central proclamation of Christian faith. It was held by the
Pharisaic party of the Jewish people during Jesus’ time and he shared that belief.
We see this in his discussion with the Sadducees in Luke 20. They denied the idea
of resurrection and put to Jesus the question about the woman with multiple
husbands. In the resurrection life, whose wife would she be?
Jesus claimed the question was nonsensical since what lies beyond is not simply
the projection of our present human experience. He then went on to affirm his
belief in resurrection reality with an interesting reference to the Hebrew
Scriptures - At the burning bush, Moses spoke of God as the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Jesus’ point is that Moses spoke of God as the
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
God of those ancient Patriarchs in the present tense - as he spoke. Thus, Jesus
argues,
Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are
alive.
I find that an interesting insight, an interesting use of scripture.
Paul was a Pharisee and so he believed in resurrection but, even more vividly, he
had been encountered by the risen Lord in a vision. Thus, in his letter to the
Romans he speaks not only of the resurrection of Jesus by God’s spirit or breath,
but of a future transformation of the whole creation.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the
children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own
will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of
the glory of the children of God.
He speaks of Creation as groaning in labor pains until now - waiting, as it were, to
burst forth into the fulfillment of God’s intention.
Now, let me be clear; I do not think either Jesus or Paul had some divinely
revealed understanding of our present scientific understanding of the universe.
However, it is possible to make some sense of the hope, the claim they made in
light of what we understand about the nature of humankind and the cosmos.
Paul saw continuity between the universe and human destiny. To be sure, his was
the old model of Fall and Redemption. In Paul’s view of things, it was human
disobedience that cast the cosmos into bondage. Moral fault led to the disruption
and decay of the physical universe.
I have suggested that biblical model no longer gives an adequate reflection of the
reality of the universe or of ourselves. Instead, I suggested last week a Creation
model with the idea of Emergence taking the place of Fall/Redemption. But, it is
interesting that Paul did see the intimate connection of cosmic destiny and
human destiny. Paul expected the full consummation of the physical universe at
the point of the redemption of humanity and he expected it all quite soon. But, of
course, in that Paul and Jesus and the whole apocalyptic movement, Jewish and
Christian were mistaken.
However, in the model I scratched out in your liturgy last week I set forth in an
ascending movement the cosmic reality that has been unfolding all these billions
of years -The inorganic level; The organic level; The level of human
consciousness; The level of Spirit: Energy coalescing in matter through duration
of time, expansion of space moves from the inorganic toward the Spirit.
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
There are not really four "realities - inorganic/organic/consciousness/spirit, but
one continuous reality that moves from one level to the next, not leaving the
earlier level but enfolding it in the next. Where is it going?
Jesus claimed the ancients were present to God. “... for to God all are alive.”
If God as Mystery is the creative Source of all that is, might God as Mystery as
well be the End point or Goal of all that is? Is this amazing cosmic drama, that
has come to the point of producing human creatures of Spirit who have a sense of
the good, the true, and the beautiful, simply arriving at a "dead end" in the death
of the creature so wonderfully endowed?
Hans Küng believes otherwise. After his analysis of the critique of modern
atheism and his wrestling with the biblical tradition, it is his conviction that we
die, not into Nothingness, but into God.
I appreciate his modest claim as he faces the question, "What lies beyond death’s
veil?" Putting it in terms of present human existence, he claims, "Not less, but
more."
That I believe is a reasonable claim in full light of present knowledge, but it is a
faith claim.
Thus, my answer to the question is not “Nothing” but “Something more” and I
affirm Küng’s confidence, "not less, but more."
Let me conclude with two comments.
First, the Church has erred in stressing the afterlife at the expense of this life,
heaven at the expense of earth, the future at the expense of the present. The time
to live fully and celebrate this amazing human experience is now. And it is now
that we are invited to live in the Spirit. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they
might know you, the only true God ..." Eternal life is not a future condition, but a
present reality. If one is living now with the consciousness of God present in one’s
experience, then death is but a transition point, not a radical rupture.
Secondly, understand that while we need always to be thinking our faith and
setting our faith in an honest intellectual light, the "answer" to these tough
questions lies not in our ability to reason ourselves to intellectual certainty. Faith
lays hold of a reality beyond reason’s grasp. Finally, one must trust one’s heart. I
see that so clearly when I walk through the experience of grief with people. There
is a comfort of the Spirit, a blessed assurance that is more than any reasonable
argument can provide. There are intimations of eternity that only the heart
knows as it lives in the spirit in loving awareness, not in contrast to what is
reasonable, but beyond reason’s limits.
References:
© Grand Valley State University
�What Lies Beyond Death’s Veil?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
Richard Elliott Friedman. The Hidden Face of God. HarperCollins Publishers,
1995.
Hans Küng. Eternal Life?: Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and
Theological Problem. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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
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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>
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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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
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost IX
Series
Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Scripture Text
Romans 8:19, Luke 20:38
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Richard Elliott Friedman, The Hidden Face of God, 1995
Hans K
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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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KII-01_RA-0-19970720
Date
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1997-07-20
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What Lies Beyond Death's Veil?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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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/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
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 20, 1997 entitled "What Lies Beyond Death's Veil?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 8:19, Luke 20:38.
Consciousness
Emergence
Nature of Religion
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bdbf8feb65f2ac2c464cfcf0c388e7c1.pdf
0fae8d580784c10584e0ad8b8e8d7e84
PDF Text
Text
Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Pentecost
Text: Genesis 1:2; John 3:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 18, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The consternation in the heart and mind of a Nicodemus brought him to Jesus,
confused as to exactly what was going on in the life and ministry of this one, this
respected teacher of Israel. And so, he came to him, saying, "Rabbi, we know that
you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you
do apart from the presence of God." Jesus responds with the claim that one must
be born again, from above. Nicodemus' confusion only deepens. He says, "How
can this be?" And I suppose that all religion arises out of those deep existential
questions, from whence have we come? Whither are we going? And what is the
meaning of it all, the purpose, the intention? What is our life? With Nicodemus, I
think, from time to time we all say, "What does this mean? How can this be?"
We keep ourselves busy for much of our lives, frantically pursuing our
penultimate goals, but there are those moments that dawn upon us, maybe when
we take a candle as a young person, maybe as a parent holding an infant at a
baptismal font, maybe some moment with the bread in our hand; or at a moment
of great fear, tragedy or loss, or deep joy and delight. Sometime or another, we
ask, "How can this be? Whence have we come? Whither are we going? What does
it mean?" Because we are human, and after a cosmic drama of 15 billion years,
the likes of us have emerged on planet earth, able to wonder about it all,
becoming when, how, who knows but, at some moment, conscious, selfconscious, aware, aware of the other, finding voice, having language, able to
express deep thoughts. And before the mystery of life, its wonders causing us
awe, its terrors causing us dread, we ask, "What does it mean? Where are we
going? And what is this human existence into which we've entered?"
That is the source and the origin of the wide diversity of religions, belief and
religious practice throughout the ages and around the world. That was no less the
case with the Hebrew poets and prophets. Interestingly, the clear statement of
God's creation in Genesis did not arise until that people had a national identity
for centuries. The creation account in Genesis arose out of the situation of exile,
when that people in their alienation and estrangement had lost their confidence
in their Yahweh God, believing as did most ancient peoples, that God was the God
of the winners, or that the winner's God was God. Then, in the midst of that
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
rather despairing exilic community, there arose a voice, a poet, who stirred them
to the depths, reminding them that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was
none other than the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and he wrote that
marvelous poem, "In the beginning, God ..." There was an earlier account,
somewhat less sophisticated, that focused on the human person, the creation of
humankind.
In those stories we see a people orienting themselves and their lives around the
sharp focus of a God Who spoke and called all things into being. Obviously, the
conception of the natural world, the universe, the cosmology reflected in those
Genesis accounts was representative of the understanding of the age in which the
poet wrote. It was a three-storied universe, the heavens above, the waters
beneath the earth, and God was the Great Mechanic, the Great Architect, the
Great Designer, the Great Clockmaker, as it were. God was a being, a Superbeing.
God was like us, personal, only bigger, more so. God was the Supreme Being
Who, from beyond, out of the depths of eternity, decided to call into being that
which was not, and did it like a designer, like a contractor, like one who
constructs a model. There was a kind of naiveté about that account, as we look at
it 25 or more centuries on. The world is not the world that was conceived of by
the biblical writer. But, ancient people were not naive. Ancient people had all of
the questions that we have. Those creation accounts are an attempt to give
account of the reality of the universe and of the human experience. And there is a
profundity there. The Spirit of God - in the Hebrew language, spirit, breath, wind
are all translated by the same word, Ruach - brooded over the chaos. Over that
soupy chaos, the poet tells us, the breath or the wind of God brooded or hovered,
and out of the chaotic stew, through the brooding of the breath of God, came the
cosmic miracle of which the ancient writer knew only a little.
In the other account in the second chapter, you see the beautiful simplicity of this
Creator God coming down to the earth that was created and scooping up a
handful of mud, fashioning a body and breathing in life so that the man became a
living soul. Such an insight saw the human person connected absolutely with the
elements of the earth, but having something more, that spirit dimension that
created the possibility of consciousness and awareness and attentiveness. Rooted
to the earth but beckoned upward by the Spirit, the human person comes from
the hand of the Creator God.
The Psalmist sang about it, sang about it with delight and with joy. "Every living
thing, the whole vast created order, all of it emerged at the behest of the Creator's
Word Whose breath, whose Wind, whose Spirit enlivens it all. You remove your
Spirit and we die. You bestow Your Spirit, and we live." The Psalmist sang about
the God Who is life, the life of the world, the life of all that is.
The Hebrew tradition out of which we have come is a tradition that is centered in
that breath of God, Spirit of God, wind of God. Poets and prophets with vivid
imagination envisioned a whole new world endowed with Spirit, looking for the
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
day when one would come, filled with the Spirit. The story goes on to the point at
which one was conceived by the Holy Spirit, according to the Gospel, Jesus by
name, in whose life and ministry there developed that movement from which we
stem, a Christian Church, celebrating the birth of that movement on the day of
Pentecost, according to Luke. For Luke would have us see that that which
happened in the wake of Jesus was nothing more than the continuation of that
activity of the breath of God, the breath and the wind of God that swept upon that
early gathering of disciples, empowering them, enlivening them, firing them to go
out and to tell the story, the Good News of what God had done in Jesus Christ.
So, on Pentecost we recognize that we are preeminently a people of wind, the
people of breath, the people of Spirit, that it is Spirit that marks us as humans,
that causes us to wonder, to raise those deep questions and to seek after God.
Nicodemus came to Jesus in his confusion and Jesus confused him even more.
"You must be born again," or "You must be born from above," or "from beyond."
That new birth, if we were to understand it today, would have to be translated
from the understanding of Jesus, because Jesus didn't know our cosmology.
Jesus saw a distinction between the flesh and the Spirit, and we certainly
understand what he meant. All of us know and of some of us it is true that we are
dead while we live. And certainly that was the reality to which Jesus was pointing,
the possibility of living a human existence without being human, being a human
automaton without spirit, without consciousness, without awareness, without
attentiveness, without that spirit dimension, that depth dimension. But we would
have to say today, in the light of what we know about this amazing cosmic drama
into which we have been caught up, that there is no such thing as flesh and spirit,
for there is only one cosmic river of energy.
Fifteen billion years ago there was an explosion, the Big Bang, as the physicists
speak of it today; 15 billion years ago, Jesus, would you believe it? They tell us it's
not like an explosion of TNT, but rather, the explosion of a musical chord,
perhaps the most famous chord in all the world, Beethoven's Fifth. You know
how it begins. It's "Boom, boom, boom, boom." That's it, you see, the Big Bang. It
is a chord that begins to reverberate outward, outward, outward, and as it goes, it
does not fill space, it creates space; it does not take time, it creates time, so time
and space are expanding in resonant circles outward, outward, outward, for 15
billion years. Here we are at this late point of development in a cosmic drama,
and we understand that we have been created with spirit that has become aware
of it all. Fifteen billion years until there emerged the likes of us, who could ask
"from whence did we come," and "whither are we going," and "what is the
meaning of it all?"
We have discovered that we are not flesh and spirit, but we are enspirited flesh,
for we know that energy and mass are interchangeable, and that our mass is but
dammed up energy, coalesced for a time and then released in another form. We
find ourselves little whirlpools of meaning in that cosmic river that has been
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
flowing for 15 billion years, and if we cannot discover the meaning of it, we have
become those who can give meaning to it and create meaning for it. We create
meaning in our lives in community with one another, trusting in that process that
has been emerging, baffled by the mystery of its beginning, and being without a
clue as to the manifestation of its culmination, but in the meantime, trusting God
Who is spirit, Who enspirits, enlivens, fires the imagination and creates between
us and among us human community.
As you know, this past week Nancy and I spent a few days in New Jersey and we
were privileged to hear the English scholar, Karen Armstrong, who spoke twice
last Tuesday, in the morning on "The History of God." In 1993 she published her
rather significant work, The History of God: 4000 years of the human
understanding and conception of God. Then in the afternoon she spoke of "The
Future of God," and she addressed, I thought, very profoundly the present state
of the human family. We don't get a very good feel for that in Western Michigan,
but the institutional Church is certainly in trouble, and the manifestation of the
great religious traditions around the world that were once thought to be passé are
experiencing a resurgence. There is confusion on every hand. Karen Armstrong is
currently researching a book on Fundamentalism, which she sees as the
desperate human attempt to resuscitate the God of the Bible, the God of that
cosmology of the Genesis writer, that God "out there," that Clockmaker, Designer,
King and Ruler. That conception was reflective of the understanding of the day
but cannot carry the freight in our day. She said in all of the monotheisms, Islam,
Judaism, Christianity, even in some of the Eastern religions, there is currently a
fundamentalism which is a kind of a fanatical attempt to resuscitate an old
conception of God, bringing that which is dead and to bring "Him" crashing back
into history, the God that has long since been dead.
Well, are we then in a period of atheism? Much of the world is, notwithstanding
the resurgence of that fundamentalism manifest around the globe. In the long
haul, where we are going is into the darkness of atheism. But then she said a most
interesting thing, and I believe she's right. You don't have to worry about
atheism, not even if you're making your Confirmation today, because atheism is
not a rejection of God. It is simply a rejection of an inadequate conception of God.
Years ago, J.B. Phillips, who paraphrased the New Testament, wrote a book
whose title says it all: Your God Is Too Small. We are living in a period of time
when the conception of God that has come with us out of the past is not adequate
anymore to connect with our human experience. That conception makes no sense
of this 15-billion-year river of energy that is flowing, God knows where. But, in
the meantime, in the darkness it's as the poet Keats claimed: You don't just sit
down and write a poem. You wait in the darkness. You wait in the darkness until
the poem writes itself. And so, now, we don't know so much, and there are big
questions afoot. But if we trust, if we have faith to believe, then we will not idolize
those formulations and conceptions that have come to us. We will recognize
where they are inadequate, where they can no longer connect with our
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
experience, no longer give orientation for our human life. We will wait, wait in
the darkness, trusting, not knowing what will be, but knowing what can no longer
be.
And I want to say to you young people, those who tell you so clearly all about
God, don't know, because we don't know; we trust that Mystery, and we have
seen the reality of the Mystery revealed in the face of Jesus and we have
experienced the breath of God in community. Thus we know all will be well. Let
God be God and let us with confident trust move into the future unafraid, for you
see, Pentecost keeps happening. Pentecost is simply the presence of the Spirit.
In the words of the poet,
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights of the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings
Pentecost. Breath. Spirit. God. Wonder. Wonder!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/85ed5a1f0f1ac0262770bd0b2686d8af.mp3
a9ab35106c27c01007166902efee6b55
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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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.
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
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KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost
Series
A Cosmic Symphony
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:2, John 3:6
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19970518
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-05-18
Title
A name given to the resource
Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 18, 1997 entitled "Spirit, Spirit: A Cosmic Drama", as part of the series "A Cosmic Symphony", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 1:2, John 3:6.
Community
Consciousness
Cosmic Evolution
Spirit of God
Trust
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9fdb9833f36189fe96eb39dc8ec59522.pdf
94d3025b83b946b010d82d3b02d5ee05
PDF Text
Text
Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 30, 1989
Transcription of the spoken lecture
I am giving you the first of three introductory looks at the proposed fall seminar
with Ira Progoff. I wanted to begin now because I want to give you a bit of my
rather slight understanding of Progoff and also to let you know why I was
interested in Progoff in the beginning and why I believe that to bring the Journal
Workshop to this community is the kind of thing that I would like Christ
Community Church to do as a service to the broader community. I am going to
try to stick somewhat to my area and not get into an area which is not at all my
own, namely, the whole field of psychology and specifically depth psychology,
because I know very little about it. But I see in the work of Progoff, in the
knowledge I’ve had of it and of the persons with whom I’ve spoken, the kind of
resource that would be valuable for persons, for many kinds of persons, a broad
spectrum of persons, and therefore I have been rather excited about the
possibility of getting him here.
Getting him here is no small feat, and I guess he does only 4 or 5 Journal
Workshops a year across the country. But, wonder of wonders, the man himself
has agreed to come here this fall. I think to have the presence of someone like Ira
Progoff in itself is significant and very meaningful.
I have divided up what I want to say to you tonight into a few sections. The first
thing I want to say is just a word about who I am, because some of you are from
Christ Community, and some of you are from parts beyond. I want to say that I
understand myself and I understand Christ Community as a kind of purveyor of
this experience. Probably after tonight these kinds of things won't need to be said,
but I want to say them at the outset. I want you to know that I am, first of all, a
Christian person. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and I have found God through
Christ and the grace of God experienced in Jesus Christ. I'm just a simple
believer.
Beyond that, my vocation, my profession, is that of a theologian and a pastor. I
didn't know whether to put pastor first or theologian first, but I learned a little
about my self-understanding because I put theologian first. And that means that I
am a Christian who, in his vocational and professional life, is constantly trying to
understand Christian faith and tradition and Christian existence in the larger
context of the human experience. I'm always trying to do that. I am a pastor; I
© Grand Valley State University
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
have pastoral responsibilities for this community of faith, but I think this
community of faith, as we have postured ourselves, is concerned about the larger
community, the total community beyond our bounds. And so, that's who I am.
You have to know that I am a bridge person, or a boundary person. I always live
"on the edge." I live on the edge of the Church. I almost can't stand to live in the
Church. It's restricting; I get disappointed with it; I get frustrated with it. What
little hair I have left I could tear out at the behavior of the Church, which, I think,
in its institutional form has become rather rigid, has become very defensive, and
has lost the sense of movement with which, of course, it began in the aftermath of
Jesus Christ. It has become an institution with a lot of vested interest and a lot of
structure and harness and all that kind of “stuff” to preserve. I think most of its
posture is characterized by defensiveness and conserving and preserving, rather
than stretching and probing and pushing. So I always live with uneasy
relationship with the Church. I am a boundary person or a bridge person, and, as
I understand myself, I feel it my calling to try to understand the whole spectrum
of human knowledge in the light of the Gospel, and the larger Christian tradition,
but then to attempt to translate that Gospel in the light of that context. So, it's
always a two-way back and forth with me.
I believe that in the scriptures I have a history of Israel and the event of Jesus
Christ which is a given for me. But then the other pole is the present horizon, the
world in which we live. It seems to me that the task of the theologian is to
constantly be living between those two poles: trying to understand that which is
given in the revelation in Israel and in Jesus; and to understand as much as
possible the larger cultural context with its various human disciplines; and then
seeking from that understanding of the larger culture to have questions
addressed to the Gospel, which I believe bring new insights out of the Gospel; but
also bringing the Gospel to bear on our culture so that culture is not absolute but
is always under judgment of the Gospel. So, one must live in that kind of tension.
I think the systematic theologian has the largest task of any thinker, frankly. We
live in a world of great specialization. More and more people know more and
more about less and less. And we know that the academic world is characterized
by a lack of communication, a breakdown of communication and deep
specialization where there is no longer the ability to communicate across
disciplines. But the theologian is the one who claims to speak of God and, if God
is the source and the ground of truth, then to speak of God is to speak of that
whole spectrum, and therefore to be responsible to provide that umbrella that
can bring some kind of unity and coherence to the respective human disciplines.
Now, that's how I understand what I'm about and I love it and am fascinated by
it, and I think that it is important to me as a rooted and committed Christian to
be in that kind of dialogue and conversation with the broader spectrum of human
learning. And then, let me say a word about this particular community of faith.
One of the models by which we have shaped ourselves over the past couple of
© Grand Valley State University
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
decades – one which I enunciated back in 1971, which had come to me in my own
studies and kind of existential quest – was that this community should always
seek to combine intellectual integrity with evangelical passion. The uniting of
head and heart. Intellectual integrity, searching honestly for truth, wherever that
may lead, in the confidence that the source of truth is in God and that God's
revelation in Jesus Christ is an expression of that ultimate truth, and that
therefore any genuine quest for truth cannot be something that will lead away
from but, rather, to God, to the extent that it is an authentic quest. But also with
evangelical passion, for we are not finally on a head trip, but we are engaged in
seeking to bring good news to persons. And we are about human transformation
here. We are about the transformation of the human person, which is more than
communicating a system of doctrines or structure of belief. That is a means;
that's all part of the mix. But, what we really are concerned to do is to see a
human person transformed, moving toward wholeness.
The best model that I can give you for that which we have had some experience
with here, is the AA model, where various steps are set forth which are simply a
borrowing of the Gospel without the names attached, but which lead to the
transformation of persons. And I believe that what we see in the movement of AA
is really what should be happening and happens all too little in the Christian
Church. Through that genuine encounter, that community of support, that total
acceptance and openness, which allows genuine confession and self-exposure in a
healing environment, there does occur the transformation and the healing of the
person. And the healing of the person is to say about the individual what we hope
for the larger picture, and that is the humanization of society. Now, that may
sound very humanistic. But, I happen to think that God is about a very
humanistic thing. I think that God is about gracing persons in order to release
their full potential and to recreate them into the image of Jesus Christ who, I
believe, is the human person par excellence, and that the Kingdom of God is the
rule of God or the reign of God and, where the reign of God is recognized, there
will be a very human society. So, I could speak about the Kingdom of God, but
just to keep it kind of down to earth, let me say once again, the transformation of
the person and the humanization of society - that, I think, is what we must be
about.
And of course, our resources are dynamic; our power, our vision comes out of our
understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and we do believe, as Scott
Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, that this is a graced universe, and that
there is a grace operative in the world at large which is a healing and positive
movement of God toward this world and toward persons.
So, that's kind of in a nutshell the way we operate here. That's what this
community of faith, this particular congregation, is all about. To the extent that
people have come and the church has prospered, to that extent, anybody that has
come in has kind of bought that vision, and I suppose that I'm guilty of shaping it
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in large measure, but that always happens when you get to stand up front once a
week, front and center.
So, we are a Christian congregation, and yet we see, I believe, a broader world out
there. We are not content to live a kind of parochial life of a Christian
congregation, within a Christian tradition, but would seek to understand
ourselves and to relate in a positive way to the broader cultural spectrum, and to
the world of spirit in whatever form that manifests itself.
I happen to believe that we are on the threshold of a new inter-dialogue among
the religions, and I think it is inevitable. The earth has shrunk to the size of a
grapefruit, and we really are members of a global community. It is no longer such
that we have a largely Protestant religion in America, and that you go East to find
Buddhism, and you go to the Middle East to find Islam or whatever. It's all over.
The crosscurrents of religious expression are everywhere, whether you go to Ann
Arbor or Chicago or New York, Los Angeles, you can find it all. Not only can you
find it all, but also you can find all kinds of offbeat brands more and more. The
religious resurgence in our day is one of the remarkable phenomena of this last
quarter of the 20th century. It seems to be incumbent upon us to be in dialogue
with that larger religious scene.
I brought along this little study of Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker. Martin
Buber is very deeply knowledgeable of Christian faith, thinks very highly of Jesus,
does not understand Jesus as I understand him, but nonetheless really sees a
kind of movement of Messianism as he, as a Jew, understands it coming to
expression in Jesus. But he says, speaking to Christians,
It behooves both you and us to hold inviably fast to our own true faith, that
is, to our own deepest relationship to truth. It behooves both of us to show
a religious respect for the true faith of the other. That is not what is called
tolerance. Our task is not to tolerate each other's waywardness, but to
acknowledge the real relationship in which both stand to the truth.
Whenever we both, Christian and Jew, care more for God Himself than for
images of God, we are united in the feeling that our Father's house is
differently constructed than our human models take it to be.
Now that is a much broader understanding than has been true of Orthodox
Christianity, which would see other religions as expressions of error. It is the
understanding of my mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, who says that, since the split of
the Jewish and the Christian religions, God has had two peoples, and Berkhof
bases that on his own biblical understanding of the irrevocable covenant that God
has entered into with the Jewish people. That question is debated among
Christian theologians and there is difference of opinion on it.
The point is I think we need to be deeply rooted. Let me say, personally (I don't
want to take you in on this), I need to be deeply rooted in my tradition. I need to
be deeply rooted, deeply committed, and I must bring to the discussion my
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deepest and best understanding of Christian faith, and not try to just jot that
down and remove the sharp contours of that in order to make it fit, but only as I
do that as genuinely as I can can I engage in genuine dialogue with someone like
a Martin Buber who will be genuinely Jewish.
Harvey Cox is a theologian who has written a number of books, one of which is
Many Mansions. He's been involved in much of this dialogue among the religions
and it's his feeling that what we need in this inter-religious dialogue is not so
much seeking to find the lowest common denominator, as bringing into the
discussion the sharpest focus of each understanding, so that there can be genuine
meeting and encounter.
Well, let me say that that kind of dialogue I affirm. I'm not afraid of it. I don't
think that our faith is so fragile that we will be tainted. I don't think that. I used to
think that I had to protect my people. I used to think that one of my tasks as a
pastor was to protect my people from error. Now I find that my people are well
able to handle themselves in such areas, and that more often I don't generally
really have to protect them. More often, I have to push them. I don't know if it's
true in most congregations, but it's true in this congregation that I'm always
pushing. I'm always trying to push people into risking and into scary places,
because I believe that is faith-building. I don't think that you need to be
sheltered. And, as a matter of fact, I wonder how long in the world in which we
live anybody can be sheltered anymore. I think it could be less and less possible.
All right. That's a little bit about the posture with which we approach this thing.
Let me say a word about what I see in the horizon of our world. You maybe
didn't ask for all of this, but give me an inch and I'll take an hour. I think we're in
a very interesting period in the world's history. I think that the period in which
we find ourselves is toward the end of a period of tremendous revolution and
transformation in human understanding. And I think that we have moved out of
the settled past of maybe eighteen centuries of unquestioned tradition. And we
are at the end of a couple of centuries of thrashing about, experimentation, of
overthrowing old forms and shaking foundations, but we are not yet at a time in
which new contours are clearly set.
Just, for example, the social-political context. If you would read Hans Küng's
Does God Exist?, you would find him tracing the roots of modern atheism. He
would take you back to the Socialist Revolution in Russia, for example. But,
behind that, you would go to the philosophical writings of the German
philosopher, a Protestant pastor's son, Ludwig Feuerbach, who was the first to
speak of religion as a human product, that religion arises out of the human
person, and that God is the projection of our needs. We have these needs; we
create God; we project God onto the screen of reality; we bow down and worship.
The God we worship is the God we need. We created God. Religion is a human
business.
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It was on the heels of Feuerbach that you have Karl Marx in the social-economic
realm. You have Sigmund Freud in the psychoanalytical field, and you have
finally Nietzsche with his nihilism, where he came to the conviction that nothing
is nothing and that there is ultimately nothingness, the abyss. I do think that
nihilism is really the logical conclusion of atheism. If God is not, then finally
nothing is. And you can turn everything upside down and there's no reason
for saying that good is evil or evil is good. You have no norms. It's over.
But, if you see that development, you will also see that those people were dealing
with very real issues in history and society which were manifesting themselves,
and the reaction of the Church was, again, one of fear and defensiveness and
refusal to engage in genuine dialogue with the realities of history that were right
there.
The Marxist theory was constructed on the background of a class society in
Europe and the church leadership was very insensitive and not at all in genuine
dialogue. If you take the actual political-social revolution, the Russian Revolution
particularly, you see that it took on this atheistic form because the Church and
the State were joined together; throne and altar were one. To throw over the
government, to throw over the political and economic system was also to throw
over the Church, because the two were joined where the Church ought never to be
joined. Then the whole social revolution that took place took an atheistic bent,
not because the economic theory demanded it, but because the social situation
meant that those two were wedded and when one went, the other went. And if
you come down to our present day and you see how that revolution has kind of
spent itself, it has not brought in Utopia. In fact, Gorbachev would tell us that the
whole thing is a failure and we can well pray that Gorbachev is successful in what
he is about because he has by economic necessity been forced to see that it is
either change and transform that old giant, or it's not viable.
I think that you put all those things together and it is not just business as usual,
but there are some very long-term movements and forces and tides within history
which have created a kind of openness and possibility today, which just haven't
been here in a long time. I think that this is a rather interesting time and it has
peril and it has opportunity. And it's not just some result of an immediate
situation, but I think the gathering of long-term things that have been going on
for a couple of hundred years. The Enlightenment on the European continent, the
Age of Reason which was the continuation of the Renaissance (the Reformation
period was kind of an interruption of that flow), but the whole coming to the
devotion of the human person, of the human mind, of reason, and of throwing off
of authorities of all sorts: Church, Bible, whatever. The authoritarian day is past.
We haven't learned that much in the Church yet. But Authoritarianism is over. In
the world at large I really believe Authoritarianism is over. So that is the socialpolitical context.
Take the scientific world. If you read Steven Hawking, this brilliant English
Quantum physicist, in A Brief History of Time and Space, you find that we live
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on what is the threshold of that discovery of what they call the Theory of
Everything, the theory for which Einstein was questing – that little formula that
would reveal the ultimate core of reality and develop it. In the Christian Science
Monitor of some time ago there was a series, Making the Quantum Leap: A FivePart Series, a fantastic series written in newspaper format, Christian Science
newspaper format, so it's still a little hefty. But even I can almost understand
some of it and it is amazing. I, in my next incarnation, hope to be either a
conductor of a symphony or a physicist. I've always been fascinated by the close
tie between physics and theology. Now, I regret to say that generally the
breakthroughs in physics have been registered in theology rather than the other
way. I'd like to get that reversed some day, but that probably won't ever happen.
But Newton was a Christian thinker, a physicist. And he did his best to maintain
his Christian faith alongside his understanding of the physical universe. But his
system, his understanding of the cosmos actually left no room for God. No, Sir
Isaac never gave up on God, and I'm sure that God never gave up on Sir Isaac.
But, as a matter of fact, the ordered universe of Newtonian physics had no room
for God; it had no room for prayer; it had no room for miracle or any of that.
Now, the amazing thing is that Newtonian physics has been blown sky high.
And Quantum Physics, the understanding of the structure of reality, whether in
its cosmological expanse or in the understanding of the tiniest little molecule and
atom, neuron and electron, speaks of eruption, of the eruption of the new, the
possibility of randomness. It's an open ball game. Einstein hated it. Einstein
hated it! He fought the Quantum Physicist Neils Bohr. Einstein said, "God doesn't
play dice with the universe." He didn't want any randomness. But, nonetheless,
that's where we are today, and it's impressive when you do see a person on the
moon or when a satellite brings a picture from around the world, or your
computer chip does everything you ever wanted done.
The world of religion, the resurgence of fundamentalism in various forms. I read
a statement by Charles Colson the other day. In his new book, Kingdoms in
Conflict, he says, "Not since the Crusades have religious passions and prejudices
posed such a worldwide threat." That's the world we live in today. I think he's
right. Not since the Crusades. If not through a religious zealot or confused idealist
whose finger is on the nuclear trigger, then certainly by destroying the tolerance
and trust essential for maintaining peace and concord among people.
Martin Marty, in a discussion of the aggressiveness and the orneriness of religion
in the world in its manifestation, raised the question, "Is it not possible to be both
civil and committed?" Is it not possible to be both civil and committed? Now, you
see, that is kind of a trick, to be both civil and committed. But too often
commitment has resulted in fanaticism and has wrought all kinds of havoc in the
history of the world. And too often civility has been the result of lack of any real
commitment or passion. To hold those two together is so important.
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Well, that's the world we live in and it is a wonderful fascinating world in which
to be alive. I think that it is a world that has openings for those of us who are
concerned about spiritual reality and human transformation like never before.
Now, let me get more specific with Progoff. Why? What has all this to do with Ira
Progoff? Well, I don't know a great deal about Ira Progoff. But I have heard him
on tape, I've read some of his works and I was first put on to him by a couple of
very respected friends in ministry some years ago, and I know that he has had
wide acceptance in the Catholic church, more so than in the Protestant Church.
But a couple of my friends in the Reformed Church have been part of some of his
activity and have spoken very highly of him.
Ira Progoff is of Jewish origin. He is perhaps best characterized as a JudeoChristian-Buddho spiritual sage. He has milked all of these traditions for
insights, which he has put together with his understanding of depth psychology.
Now, I really am not going to say very much about depth psychology because,
well, I'm going to say everything I know, but that's not very much. I know that
Progoff – having been a student of Carl Jung, Jung having been a student of
Freud but breaking away from Freud – is one who created in his understanding
room again for God, but not a God "out there," which incidentally isn't even in
vogue in the best theology today, but a God in the depths of the unconscious
where there is a kind of meeting of all kinds of consciousness down in some deep
reservoir in the depth of reality.
A depth psychologist believes that the consciousness of the person is the tip of the
iceberg. And I think that that has been rather well documented in terms of the
tremendous structure of the unconscious. And I think images do evolve out of an
unconscious depth. But I don't know much about that. Anyway, that is Progoff's
orientation. He is a spiritual person. He's a deeply spiritual person. He's a
mystical person, in the line of the mystics, I would say. If you want to label him in
terms of Protestant or Jewish theology, he's probably closest to Paul Tillich, a
Christian theologian now dead, and to Martin Buber, whose famous I and Thou
book has made such a great impact in our century.
How Progoff speaks of religion – as I utilize Progoff's understanding of religion –
it is a functional understanding of religion. He is dealing with the function that
religion performs in human life and human society. It is more a question of
functionality than it is a question of truth. Progoff would not want to referee
between the truth claims of Eastern religions or Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
But, he would see in them all a kind of commonality of function, and I believe
that it is perfectly legitimate to look at it that way. Now, that's not all I'm
concerned about, because finally I think that the truth question will obtrude
itself. It certainly will for me. And I am always struggling with the truth question
in Christian faith, in religious expression. But, nonetheless, there can be a very
positive and helpful understanding of the place of religion in the function it
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performs in the person and in society as a whole. And when Progoff speaks about
religion and the religions, he is speaking functionally.
He would see its function as enabling persons to position themselves in
relationship to the transpersonal reality in order that they may experience
guidance and structuring for their outer life. Religion ought to help me to
position myself over against reality that is beyond myself in order that in my
everyday life and living I may have guidance, orientation, to be at home with
myself and at home with the world. Now, if religion does that for a person, it has
done a great, great deal. Progoff would see the various religions as particular
forms and structures, all of which are performing that kind of common function:
to enable me to live as a human being, with other human beings, to enable me to
live as a person over against transpersonal reality.
Sometimes when he speaks, I think of the AA program where you have a Higher
Power. I have encountered, from time to time, a few Christian people who have
been uneasy with that, as though to speak of the Higher Power is to deny either
the uniqueness of Jesus Christ or the God we see in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't
bother me at all. I had an old gentleman in here one day coming off the AA
program and, so help me, a man in his 60s who had absolutely no conception of
God. I had a yellow pad like this and I had a pen, you know, and I'm generally
nervous and I was making signs and I was trying to kind of speak about God and
him down here and I put a big cross between as kind of a bridge and I made this
silly diagram and we talked together and he said, "Somebody said, well, the
Higher Power: just visualize a telephone pole." Well, I made this little thing and
we talked some more and when it was all over I was quite moved as he said to me,
rather moved himself, "May I take that with me?" And I thought to myself, what
hunger. You can call that God or you can put whatever face you want to on it and
I don't think Progoff will argue with you. He will say, "Is it helping you to live
well?"
Now, I do think it is valid for us to take whatever resources we have to help
people to live well. So, Progoff is kind of a mystic who believes that there is a huge
cosmic process that has been about, which is evolving. He reminds me somewhat
of the French Catholic thinker, Teilhard de Chardin, whose works, of course, the
Vatican banned, but then the best things that come from Catholics get banned for
a while. But, de Chardin is an original thinker who sees kind of the Omega point
off there and he sees this whole cosmic process evolving toward that point. And
Progoff believes that it is in the likes of us, in our individual spirits, that Spirit
comes to expression, and that Reality enters the world – it emerges, as it were,
out of the depths – through the individual spirit of a person. His concern is that
we enable persons to become, to be the bearers of Spirit and the expression of
Spirit, and that, as Spirit is able to flow through our spirit and come to some
kind of tangible form, Reality actually enlarges itself and the whole process
continues to go on.
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He sees a crisis in the present time because he believes that traditional patterns,
beliefs, doctrines and rituals have lost their grip on people, or people have lost
their grip on traditional symbols and forms. Symbols and forms, be they doctrinal
formulation, sacramental acts, or whatever, can function to put us in touch with
the transpersonal as long as we believe in them. When we don’t believe in them,
they can't do it for us anymore. Now, when you stand in Western Michigan with
all of our churches and with a large Christian community and in a rather
conservative part of the world, it may sound a bit apocalyptic to speak about
secular culture and about people uprooted, cut off from their roots. But, we have
to keep reminding ourselves that this is not all there is, and when he speaks
perhaps with more of a world purview and he speaks out of the context of New
York City and Los Angeles, he probably feels that and senses that more than we
do. Nonetheless, we have to recognize that the world as a whole is not becoming
– now speaking as a Christian and an advocate of the Christian Gospel – the
world as a whole is not becoming more, but is becoming less Christian. We are
becoming a minority. And it is a fact that those traditional patterns and beliefs
and rituals have for large portions of the world population lost their power. But,
the need still remains for that which will put the individual and the larger society
in touch with the transperson, or with God, if you will. And so, the need in our
day is to find the way in which that can happen.
Now, being a depth psychologist, Progoff believes that we will find that truth by
going into the depth dimension, and that God (I'll say God), is perceived, the
knowledge of God is accessible, not through rational formulation, but through
intuitive perception, that it comes not by rational instruction which has been the
hallmark of Reformed tradition, but that it comes through apprehension,
through images, and symbols, that it erupts, that it is not mastered rationally
and discovered.
Now, you know, I have to say, just coming as I have through the season of
Epiphany, I have found myself wrestling with that question week after week.
When you really get some insight, when you really have a "high" experience,
when you really capture something, when there's been a breakthrough for you,
how do you express it? Isn't it, "Suddenly it dawned upon me?" Isn’t it often after
a churning and wrestling and in a moment of insight, and doesn't it often come to
us whole? As I was wrestling with this whole matter of how God reveals God's
self, I was so aware of the fact that it is one thing to say that the light's on; it's
another thing to say, "I see the light." So that we can talk all we want to in
theological and doctrinal terms about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, about
the light shining and all that, but when Progoff speaks about going into the depth
dimension, I have to say that there is something to the fact that God's unveiling of
God's self will happen within us. It must finally be a subjective apprehension, no
matter how much we may clamor for the fact that it is objective and real. You
know, we often equate objectivity with the real. Oh yes, it's certainly real. But
until I believe it, until it grasps me and I say, "Wow," it has not really come full
cycle.
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And so, Progoff’s point for a community such as ours – this is what he would
think:
In a crisis of a culture that has lost its moorings, whose symbols have
largely become empty symbols, he would say, first of all, the church should
give social support to the person, enabling that person to work on his or
her own inner life. If in our day our young people are being told, "Just say
no," Progoff says to the Church, "Just say yes." When there's someone,
some funny person in the congregation, a little odd, a little strange, doesn't
fit the stereotype, talks about the inner journey, why he says, "Just say
yes." Encourage them. Be a place that encourages people to get on with
that work on the inner life.
He says, secondly, let the Church be the social institution and the culture
where work on the inner life can take place. And I like the word he uses
here: "Let the church be a sanctuary where that can happen." You know,
we really ought to be about that, and we really ought to get on with it. I
think about that every Sunday when I see the large assemblage of people,
and then I realize how superficial is my little touch. When they leave for
the rest of the week, what's happening? Are we as a community creating a
sanctuary where people can do more than come in on Sunday morning and
at worst complete the Sunday obligation, at best get a little Sunday
morning high, and hopefully in it all, worship God?
Thirdly, he says, let the Church provide the means and the program
whereby this can be encouraged. And I guess that bringing a seminar like
this here would be a tangible, concrete means by which to expose and offer
to people ways in which to do that.
He remarks about the fact that youth, many of the younger generation, have
taken over Eastern religions lock, stock and barrel. You know, it's faddish, it's
trendy, and those waves happen. It does indicate, however, a real spiritual hunger
and a search and a quest. And he also says, "Look, our generation cannot really
successfully just go back lock, stock and barrel and pick this thing up. I mean, the
new and the different is fascinating, and we understand all that dynamic, but he
says it's not for them to go back and get ancient Buddhist meditation techniques,
but the challenge to us is to find the ways in which they can be put in touch with
God, with the transpersonal reality, in the garments of the 20th century. Find
the methodology. Find the modes, the means by which this can happen, which I
think is the same kind of thing which I said earlier tonight when I said I felt it was
incumbent upon me to translate the Gospel into today's idiom, because that
needs constant translation so that it always comes to expression in the
conceptuality and the language of the particular context in which it is being
proclaimed. Otherwise, it is simply the reiteration of formulas out of the past and
that's fundamentalism – just the literal reiteration of formulas out of the past is
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fundamentalism. You don't think about that. You just give obeisance to formulas,
slogans, models, and then you're not really in touch.
So, in his book The Dynamics of Hope, Progoff deals at quite some length with
the experience of Tolstoy who went through a period of tremendous anguish in
his life after being very successful. He was on top of the world socially, culturally,
a great literary success, and he came to a time of a sense of the meaninglessness
of it all. And he tells in some detail Tolstoy's experience and he speaks in The
Dynamics of Hope, of the Utopian person, and that is the person who has this
kind of prophetic sense, who is willing to anguish and struggle, but always in
hope, and out of the anguish and the struggle eventuates the new realm of
experience and insight, which is the prelude to another struggle and anguish,
which eventuates in a new breakthrough, because he sees our human experience
as being an ongoing pilgrimage and process and, for creativity to be released,
there is a need for this constant movement between the struggle and anxiety and
always, however, with the hope undergirding it and breaking through to a new
plateau and a new discovery. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs.
"I began to understand,” Tolstoy reports, “that in the answers given by
faith was to be found the deepest source of human wisdom. That I had no
reasonable right to reject them on the ground of reason, and that these
principle answers alone solve the problems of life. I understood them, but
that did not make it any easier for me.” The fact, in other words, that his
reason was now giving assent to an act of faith of some sort, did not bring
such an act of faith any closer. It did not even make it any more possible.
All that this new intellectual realization achieved, in fact, was to intensify
the internal pressure and to build up an even greater tension around the
vacuum of meaning which he felt in himself. How could he find a faith that
he would not merely be in favor of believing? But one that he would
actually be able to feel as a reality? It would be good if he could accept
some structured body of doctrine that had been worked out in generations
past by an established church. That would not be a fact for him. He would
not feel the reality of such a faith. And so, no matter how much he might
try to convince himself rationally that he ought to place his faith there, the
persistent question about the validity of life would not be silenced.
But, he goes on and he struggles and then he tells about the dream that Tolstoy
had and the peace and the resolution that he came to. I'm not going to do more
with that, but this is a very fine introduction to Progoff’s understanding of the
journey of the individual, and it is his conviction that it is necessary for an
individual to feel his life story and to be able to have a sense of continuity
through the various stages and that in the creative unfoldment of a life there
will be those periods of dark and light.
I was thinking about his understanding of the human experience in contrast to,
for example, someone within the Reformed Church. I shouldn't even say that
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because it's not Reformed, but there is this friend of mine who I know rather well
and who probably most of you would know, as well, Bob Schuller and the Hour of
Power. Bob Schuller with his possibility thinking, which was built on Norman
Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, has done a tremendous amount
for many, many people. He has recognized the importance of self-esteem and he
has brought a positive and hopeful accent, and many people who didn't believe
that they had it in them have found that, after all, they had it in them. My
problem with Schuller is that I feel that sometimes he almost becomes shrill and I
want to say to him sometimes that success isn't always the consequence of
faithfulness or responsibility or effort, and so I always felt that there was
something lacking. There was a depth dimension in the Gospel, if you will, that I
felt never came to expression with Bob Schuller's formulations. I thought to
myself, interestingly, how much closer Progoff is to an understanding of human
personality and the experience of darkness and light, of guilt and forgiveness, of
bondage and freedom. And then, really, not just a once for all thing, although we
believe in a great once for all transformation, but as the ongoing unfoldment of
life, this constant swinging between the poles.
I can understand that in terms of my understanding – my biblical orientation.
Walter Brueggemann in an excellent study of the Psalms speaks about how you
can categorize the Psalms as Psalms of Orientation where creation is good, God's
in his heaven, all's right with the world, everything's ducky; Psalms of
Disorientation, where nothing is right and everything's unraveling; and then
there are Psalms of New Orientation. Brueggemann's point is that life is not
often lived in only orientation or disorientation. Life is generally lived moving
from orientation, disorientation and new orientation, and out of the study of the
Psalms you have that same kind of expression. Our life is a dynamic movement,
and we do move through periods of openness, joy and light; we do move through
valleys and through arid periods and dry periods; and it seems to me that is more
true to human experience as I understand it than in some of the pop psychology
and what I think is kind of a vulgarized psychology taken over by some of the
religious stuff that is on the market.
Finally, in his book The Symbolic and the Real, Progoff has, toward the end of the
book, that which really spoke to me and what turned me on in the first place to
his thinking and his whole approach to things. Let me just read you a couple of
paragraphs here. His point, again – I said this earlier and I'm going to say this
once again – his point is that to be in touch with reality or to be in touch with God
is not the consequence of coming to the end of a well-constructed syllogism. It is
the intuition that comes with the apprehension of symbol and image; it is a
moment of illumination; it's revelation. So he says:
As the symbol unfolds, reality enters the world and becomes present. A
new atmosphere is established, and this is much more than a new climate
of thought. It is reality increasing its presence among humankind by
means of symbolic events that are enacted upon the depth dimension of
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the psyche. In another style of language, this type of event is often
described as a breakthrough of spirit, into human experience. It has,
indeed, all of the traditional attributes of spirit, for it possesses power and
meaning and the healing quality of inward peace. It expresses itself,
however, not in the fixed forms of dogma, but in the living fluidity of
symbolic acts. (p. 214)
And then he speaks about revelation in the Old Testament:
One context in which this new perspective is especially important is our
attitude toward the Bible. In the biblical tradition there has been the view
that when the Old Testament was finished and was certified in its standard
version, that was the end of God's appearance to man. After that, man was
not to expect a breakthrough of spirit in the world. At least not until the
coming of the Messiah. All that was required of people then was that they
keep the formulas and the stories so that they would keep alive the
remembrance of the great moments of contact with the Divine which had
taken place in history and were now restricted to the past. The traditional
understanding was that since the voice of God stopped speaking when the
Old Testament was closed, it would be best if people stopped listening for
the voice of God in the world and concentrated on fulfilling the
commandments.
When the experiences recorded in the New Testament transpired, this
view was reconsidered and was opened anew. Then it was felt that God
had indeed made a new entry into the world. Necessarily so, since He had
needed to make a new covenant between Himself and man. With the
ending of the experiences in the New Testament, however, the same
tendency to restrain the human spirit and enclose it in fixed molds
recurred. Again, it was believed that the spirit of God would no longer
enter the world in a prophetic breakthrough. It would not because it was
no longer felt to be necessary. The Truth had been given. After that it
would be sufficient if people would imitate Christ and concentrate on
entering the dimension of the sacred by repeating the festive formulas
accrued by ecclesiastical authorities. (pp. 222-223)
And then he says,
One of the very greatest and most basic difficulties of Western history is
expressed in this fact that we have drawn from our traditions of belief that
major openings of the Spirit are not possible any longer because they
stopped when the Bible was officially sealed. We need to become capable
of reopening the Bible as a living contact side by side with other styles of
experience and sources of the spirit in the modern psyche. The two
testaments which comprise the Bible are openings. They surely were not
intended to be closings in man’s relation to the infinite. (p. 224)
© Grand Valley State University
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Page15
I think he's right. I think a great problem with the Church is the fact that, in order
to manage the revelation given, it was historically necessary to close the canon. It
was a historical necessity. But then, to refuse to understand that the Spirit of God
continues to speak was to allow the Church to become rigid and to allow a
conception of orthodoxy. And I must say to you, this is my confession, one that I
close with, that to me the idea of orthodoxy is an arrogant presumption. That's
probably why I'm a heretic.
Now, I think from my perspective, my understanding of things, there's richness
here and that it is a great resource. I will be participating with my own labels,
with the God reflected in the face of Jesus. I will understand this in terms of my
own theological understanding. But I see the possibility of a very fruitful
instrument here which again I think holds great promise for the healing of
persons and, through the healing of persons, the humanization of society, which I
think is what we're all about.
Now, I think I've talked sufficiently long so that you should be sufficiently tired,
so you probably wouldn't even want to raise a question. But, if you would, I would
be happy to take it.
Frank: I agree you're a heretic. I think you're making heretics out of all of us, but
I think I'm beginning to enjoy it. When you sent that first letter about Ira Progoff
I immediately rose up in my traditional background and sent you a letter back
saying you probably were off base, and that we couldn't tolerate this new kind of
thinking. But, I guess it just exemplifies the fact that most of us are completely
uneducated. For forty years I have been studying anatomy and physiology and
biochemistry and medicine, pharmacology, thinking that all of medical science
depended on how much I — I suddenly realize how much an uneducated
nincompoop I am and I sure appreciate your bringing these things into the open
so that we could all learn from them and get carried along with your enthusiasm.
RAR: Well, thank you, Frank. I want to say that the questions, the concerns you
raised were very legitimate concerns. Frank. I was really comforted to find
explicitly Progoff recognizing the dangers of that kind of trendy movement, of the
sensitivity movements and groups, and those things of the 60s or 70s where
people were undressed and then left defenseless, and he definitely set himself
over against that kind of thing. And the legitimacy of his Journal Workshop has
been tested. He's kind of a quiet person; he shuns the idea of guru. Doesn't even
want to be called a sage. He's a very humble pilgrim who is sort of feeling his way
along. But, your concerns were very, very well taken, and I was almost positive
immediately that that's not where he was, but I was happy to find it confirmed,
that he also distanced himself from that kind of thing. So, I appreciate the
concerns you raised.
I read today the Seminary Times of last fall, a book by James Ashbrook, whom I
do not know. He's a seminary professor. He was at Colgate Rochester; he's moved
since then. Making Sense of God. And it is a book entitled Brain and Belief where
© Grand Valley State University
�Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Page16
for a couple decades he has done serious research on the brain, as a theologian,
trying to find the relationship of the function of the brain to spiritual perception.
It is an absolutely fascinating article. And there is a rather serious critique of it, as
well, in which, you know, it's such a pioneering kind of thing that the guy says, "I
don't know how to critique it." But it's just fascinating. In fact, I'm going to give it
to you to take home with you and you can tell me about it when I get back from
vacation. But you know there are such interesting things happening today and
there is an openness today. I think across the board: to structure of reality, to
what we mean when we say God, and I do think that it is an exciting time in
which to be alive. It's a perilous time, too, because people are also falling for all
kinds of... someone accused me of being New Age. Now, I've never read anything
New Age. I don't know what New Age is. But, I know this - that anytime that
there is a genuine breakthrough and movement, there are going to be all kinds of
counterfeits and all kinds of peripheral things going on and there will be faddy,
trendy things. That's true. But, nonetheless, that shouldn't scare us.
Ira Progoff. The Dynamics of Hope: Perspectives of Process in Anxiety and
Creativity, Imagery and Dreams. Dialogue House Library, 1985.
Ira Progoff. The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach To The
Fuller Experience of Personal Existence. Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1983.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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
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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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Sound
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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
Midweek Lecture
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983
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RA-3-19890130
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1989-01-30
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Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 30, 1989 entitled "Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff", on the occasion of Midweek Lecture, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Progoff, Transformation, Hope, Spiritual Journey, Symbol, Emergence, Insight, Spirit, Interfaith, Consciousness, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith, Global Community,Revelation, Nature of Religion, Psychology . Scripture references: Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Emergence
Global Community
Hope
Insight
Interfaith
Nature of Religion
Progoff
Psychology
Revelation
Spirit
Spiritual Journey
Symbol
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dc250f0727efd04faecddc9f4c4dbe6f.mp3
2d279fd1234638f9256a6c15a2a04505
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/81d999c2d97541ccfd57671c0a08786d.pdf
a682acdc1591b9b0cacd976c2e279609
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
�
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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
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Lent I
Series
Spirituality in the Modern World
Scripture Text
Genesis 1:2, Psalm 139:7, Mark 1:10
Location
The location of the interview
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.
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-0-20010218
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001-02-18
Title
A name given to the resource
The Experience of God
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 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
-
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PDF Text
Text
The Root of Good Religion
Text: Psalm 116:17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 19, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I suppose you can tell by the title of this message, “The Root of Good Religion,”
that there must also be bad religion in the world, and when I determined to speak
on the root of good religion and selected this wonderful Psalm 116, I wasn’t really
thinking about the bad religion, but in my more specific preparations, The Grand
Rapids Press came with the Religion Section in the Saturday Press, and the lead
story was about a free thinkers group, a big colored picture accompanying it. This
group, the Free Thinkers Association, has been meeting in Grand Rapids for
about three years, and I found it a very interesting story. The Free Thought
Association is affiliated with a group out of Madison, Wisconsin, from which all
kinds of liberal diatribe arises. They say they are a community of agnostics,
atheists, humanists, rationalists, and they discuss topics which interest them,
intellectual questions, burning social issues, and so on. They meet a couple of
times a month.
That which binds them together in community, ironically, is their mutual flight
from religion, and the thing that has marked them, has made them have
something so important in common that they would become a community is the
fact that they’ve all been wounded by religion in its institutional form, in its
establishment forms. There are a number of people cited in this article, devout
Catholic people in their background, a former Fundamentalist Baptist, a very
devout Christian Reformed young man, a lapsed Episcopalian, and a Methodist,
and so on. It’s a conglomeration and it pretty much covers the spectrum of
established religion and they have come together because, in one way or another,
all of them at some point in their life began to have questions for which their
particular tradition had no answers. They began to receive some of the teaching
of their respective traditions and it didn’t make sense to them and they
determined that they didn’t believe it. Then, contrary to most of us, they had the
audacity to verbalize their doubts and their questions and doing so, they found
themselves really shunned, excluded, cut out, isolated because they had become a
thorn in the flesh of their respective communities. They had become a threat, and
they were not appreciated at all, and so there was alienation between them and
their families and their faith communities.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Root of Good Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Well, that’s not so hard to figure out, and if you think about it for a moment, you
can understand it because religion which is as universal as humankind arose
very, very early in the dawning of human consciousness; for what is religion, after
all, but that intuitive sense that there is something more, something that grounds
our lives, that there is a source and a ground and a guide and goal of all that is.
We live in the face of mystery and that mystery must have appeared very, very
early in the human story. One becomes aware of one’s self, thereby one becomes
human. One becomes aware of the other, of the human relationship. One
experiences the miracle of birth and the mystery of death, and one simply,
naturally begins to ask those ultimate questions - why is there something rather
than nothing? From whence has it all come? Whither is it all tending? And what
is the meaning and the purpose of it all? Those questions are as fundamental as
human existence itself.
And then someone has an epiphany experience. Someone sees something.
Someone tells a story, a story of a revelation and around it grows the ritual and
the cult and the sacred stories and the tradition. Very early in primitive stages
there were tribal religions, that which was the tribe’s solution to the mystery, that
which gave a sense of coherency to life, a statement of its purpose and its
meaning, that to which one could cling for enlightenment, for security. And then,
someone had another idea or someone’s experience didn’t connect with that
explanation. That one becomes a threat to the tribal unity and sense of meaning,
because that religious story and practice was rooted frequently, most often, in
fear, not illegitimate fear, genuine fear, because life is perilous.
We are vulnerable. We do live in the face of mystery and most of the major issues
that impinge upon us are beyond our control and so one of the functions of
religion has been to create that sense of security and community, giving meaning
and purpose and cohesion to placate whatever gods may be, to put one in the
right, to curry the favor of the mystery, whatever the mystery may be. And then,
when one questions that solution, one becomes very threatening and the tribe or
the tight knit community will bind together and will exclude, will condemn, will
reject that one who has become a source of irritation, opening up those things
that had long been settled.
As I read the stories of some of these people, I could identify with that. But, when
I read their definitions of reality - “only that which can be perceived with the
natural senses or indirectly through the proper use of reason” - denying the
possibility of revelation or faith, I knew that was too narrow - simple
reductionism. I went to the computer and to their Website and read a recent
lecture on quantum physics which was fascinating, but didn’t have a lot to say
about the wonder of birth, of the mystery of death, or the existential reality of
getting through every day. I didn’t look up an earlier lecture on the voucher
question, but what I sensed about these people is they are serious and they have
inquiring minds and they want to know and understand, but they have been
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�The Root of Good Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
wounded deeply by the whole enterprise of religion and so they have fled religion,
becoming skeptics, rationalists.
Of course, reading that in the wake of a Huston Smith visit where he was so
eloquent about the necessity of getting beyond that adversarial relationship of
those two great enterprises, science and religion, I thought to myself, “How sad
that these people, having been so wounded, have now such a thinned gruel, a 2%
milk kind of thing, almost water, a diet that cannot really satisfy the deepest
instincts, nor do justice to those most profound intuitions of the human spirit.” I
should invite them here, I think, because they could pursue their questions with
no quarter asked, but we could share with them something more, for there is
good religion.
Good religion is rooted in the experience of grace and it issues in gratitude. I
don’t know just what the Psalmist’s experience was, but he was in some kind of
crisis and he says to the Lord, “You saved my soul from death, my eyes from
tears, my feet from falling. I will take the cup of salvations.” In the Hebrew, the
word is plural - the cup of salvations. I will take hold of the whole of life, as it
were, the whole of life in which I have experienced the salving, the mending of my
life in the midst of it all. I will take the cup of salvation and name the name of the
Lord. I will embrace life, which certainly is not just one bowl of cherries, not one
rainbow after another, life in all of its complexity.
The Psalmist spoke of a deep crisis in his life and certainly, if we are honest with
it, it is like the Apostle Paul in the eighth chapter of Romans who speaks of
famine and nakedness and peril and sword, an ancient listing, but we could list
our own, the vulnerabilities, the perils that jeopardize our existence every
moment - all of that to which we are vulnerable. The diseases that stalk our steps
and the sudden crisis that can wipe us out - all of that is part of life. If we were to
deny any of that, then we would simply have our heads stuck in the sand. That’s
an unrealistic kind of idea that will only be shattered on the rocks of human
experience eventually because, finally, we all live fully life with all of its light and
all of its shadow. But, somehow or other, the Psalmist had come in a concrete
experience to feel that just intuitively now, I suppose, that that mystery that
surrounds life is the mystery of grace, that it is a healing mystery.
I love the illustration of Huston Smith of light and darkness. If you had two cubes
divided by a wall, in one there was light, the other pitch dark, if you took the wall
down, the light would invade the darkness. The darkness would not overcome the
light. It is only an image, it is a symbol, it is a story, but it makes a beautiful point.
The Psalmist somehow or other believed it; Paul believed it, and Paul said, “Since
God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing will separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Psalmist said, “I will take the cup of salvation
and praise the name of the Lord. I will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the
presence of all God’s people.”
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�The Root of Good Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Good religion comes out of an experience of grace and it issues in gratitude. It
goes way beyond that initial fear that might hold us prisoner for a while, it comes
to a point of sensing, as Scott Peck said in The Road Less Traveled, that there is a
grace beyond us that continues to come to us, and out of the experience of grace
there is that within us deep down that will out, that will come to expression, that
simply must be spoken or sung or the heart will burst.
The Psalm begins so marvelously, “I love the Lord because ...” Let me suggest at
the head of Thanksgiving week that you go home and in some moments of quiet,
write those words, “I love the Lord because ...,” and then simply reflect on your
life. The old hymn says “Count your many blessings, name them one by one and it
will surprise you what the Lord has done.” If you would take a moment to do that,
I think you would also begin to say, “This, yes, this is what is really central to my
life. This is what is important to me. I love the Lord because ...” And out of that
experience of grace, the issue is thanksgiving that simply must come to
expression, because love needs a song, love needs an anthem, love needs to
dance, or the soul would explode.
The root of good religion is the taste of grace issuing in praise irrepressible.
© 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
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XXIV
Scripture Text
Psalm 116:17
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-20001119
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-11-19
Title
A name given to the resource
The Root of Good Religion
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. 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 November 19, 2000 entitled "The Root of Good Religion", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 116:17.
Consciousness
Epiphany
Grace
Nature of Religion
-
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PDF Text
Text
In Face of Mystery
Text: Job 23:3; Romans 8:38-39
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 5, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Life is a mystery and we live this curious existence before the face of a Mystery,
before the face of God, for God is Mystery. Beyond all of the images and all of the
intuitions that we have, God is beyond all of that, and so, our human existence
and the God of our life are all bathed in mystery.
Job, that epic poem that so powerfully presents the struggle of or the question of
why the righteous suffer, in the passage read this morning, cries out, “Oh, that I
knew where I might find God!” And how many of us haven’t cried the same at a
time of crisis or a time of grief or a time of loss, a time of anxiety? “Oh, that I
knew where I might find God!”
Paul, of course, knew the struggle, too, if you take the paragraph I read from the
eighth chapter and put it in context, you would find that Paul was talking about
the struggle in the seventh chapter, that famous passage about the flesh and the
spirit, what he wills to do and what he ends up doing and who will deliver him.
And then the eighth chapter talks about the spirit and about creation as though
creation is bound and straining, yearning for release and freedom. And then he
comes to that marvelous conclusion to the eighth chapter with the affirmation
that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Job, at the end of that passage I read, said, “When God has tried me, I will come
forth.” There is the intense struggle with the mystery, the mystery of suffering or
the mystery of loss or the questions of meaning, the intense struggle, and then
the trust, the affirmation of trust in the teeth of the struggle, as it were, a resting
finally in the love of God from which we will not be separated.
It seems that the mystery of life comes to its sharpest expression in that
relationship of our body to our mind or our spirit. At that point of human
consciousness, I become conscious that I am. I become conscious that I have a
body. I am not a body, period. I am and I have a body, and I am not apart from
the body. I become conscious of that mind, matter, dualism that marks my
existence, and that is such a mystery.
© Grand Valley State University
�In Face of Mystery
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
This message for this day was spawned on the day I left my sister who died in
August, left her for the last time, knowing that it might be the last time, and
indeed, it turned out to be the last time. All the way home I kept thinking about
the fact that here we talked together, we sat on the edge of her bed together, she
was fully cognizant, fully alive, fully conscious. We could laugh together about
family stories and weep together about the inevitable end, but there we were
together in all of the normalcy of a human relationship, a family tie and bond,
and as I left there knowing that it may well be the last time, I thought, “What a
mystery.” And sure enough, the next time I saw her was in the casket where the
shell was there. I wouldn’t have mistaken her ever. It was Lois. But not. The
matter was there, the spirit was gone.
What happens when the spirit which doesn’t exist apart from the matter, which is
the host, ceases when the host ceases? We know from all sorts of studies and
human experience that the matter, the body can be so racked with pain that it can
drown the spirit. We know that the testimonies of drug addicts say that the
tissues of the body can scream so loudly that the spirit is lost, it’s captive, it’s
submerged, it’s drowned. Those who deal in human torture tell us that every
human being has a point at which torture will break the spirit. Torture applied to
the matter can submerge the spirit. It’s a mystery, isn’t it?
I’ve been with people on a number of occasions at the moment of their last
breathing and it’s always different, of course, but where there is someone who is
with you, conscious, cognizant, alive, and then in a moment gone - what a
mystery. I think that you and I might have been given a sneak preview into where
things are going in the future with that wonderful person in our midst last week,
Huston Smith, who is probing the edges of that which lies beyond the
possibilities and capability of science, suggesting from what has come to light in
science itself that Spirit may not only be hosted by matter, but Spirit may
generate matter. Thus matter is generated by Spirit, indwelt by Spirit, and,
finally, Spirit departs the matter that was its host.
In the best of scientific probing and religious wrestling there is the possibility in
our day that we may be coming ‘round to where the dogmatisms of a rigid
supernaturalism and the dogmatisms of a scientific reductionism may be
transcended. In Huston’s words, there may be “light at the end of the tunnel,”
where these two great human enterprises that have been in such adversarial
relationship may be coming to a time when we will be able to at least give
expression to that mystery that we are in the face of that Mystery that is God, and
which will enable us to pursue the scientific endeavor with integrity, live with
critical rationality, but also with a trust that is grounded in that reality, that we
may come to see that spirit enlivens matter and then moves on in that cosmic
journey, that evolutionary process to whatever lies beyond.
We may be coming to a point where these great human enterprises will enable us
to not block out the light from any direction, but with good heart, with
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�In Face of Mystery
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
intellectual integrity and human passion, to rest in the wonder that is life now
and hope in that which is yet to come, a journey into the Holy One, into eternal
light which would enable us with good heart to use the words of the poet, those
we’ve loved and lost a while, those who have gone on before us, but in whose
train we shall follow, for we move from light and life through death to light and
life beyond our fondest dreams. Thanks be to God.
© 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
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
All Saints Sunday, Pentecost XXII
Scripture Text
Job 23:3, Romans 8:38-39
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-20001105
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-11-05
Title
A name given to the resource
In the Face of Mystery
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 November 5, 2000 entitled "In the Face of Mystery", on the occasion of All Saints Sunday, Pentecost XXII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 23:3, Romans 8:38-39.
Consciousness
Mystery
Search for God
-
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PDF Text
Text
The World Is Not Enough
From the series: The God Question
Text: Ecclesiastes 2:11; I Timothy 6:17; Luke 12:21
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 5, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In this interim between my return from vacation and the beginning of Lent, I
have been mulling over with you the question of God, the question of God that
will not go away, remarking about the fact that God is alive and well on planet
Earth, and rather surprisingly so, because, as I have indicated a time or two, it
would have seemed at mid-century that the obituary of God was in order and,
indeed, there were those radical theologians who spoke of the death of God. And,
in the dark horror of the Nazi prison camps, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had spoken of
man come of age, about edging God out of the world, and Harvey Cox wrote his
best-selling book, The Secular City, which celebrated secularity and life lived on a
horizontal plane, and as a theologian, tried to find traces of God, footprints of
God in the secular city. And now here, having entered into the 21st century, we
find that there is indication everywhere that religion is strong and vital and the
question of God simply will not go away. It is a surprise.
Sigmund Freud, to whom I referred last week, who may be the epitome of
modernity, modern scientific thinking, was convinced that science and religion
were mortal enemies and that religion had to be cleared out in order for the
human society to come into its maturity and live by its reason, by its intellect,
putting away its wishful thinking and its superstitions, the superstitions that
abound in all of the religions and that have been a big part of the origin of
religion. But, Freud was wrong. Not that religion had not fought for 300 years a
losing intellectual battle, but rather, that the human being can live out of his or
her mind alone, that intellect is enough, that if we could only rid ourselves of our
religion and our superstitious ways, we could live out of the intellect by reason,
and thus come to maturity.
That hasn't proven to be the case. The God question just simply doesn't go away
because, contrary to what Freud expected, our problem is not knowledge, but it is
something far deeper: the intuition of a deeper reality. We have knowledge. We
are awash in knowledge, and the super-information highway runs right to our
laptop and personal computers at our side. We have a command of knowledge of
© Grand Valley State University
�The World Is Not Enough
Richard A. Rhem
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the modern world, of the universe, of society, and of our own human being far
surpassing the possibility of ever taking it in, and it's all right there at our
fingertips. But, knowledge in itself is not the answer. Simply to describe what is
doesn't deal with its meaning, its significance, those ultimate existential
questions about whence have I come and whither am I going, and is this all
there is, and what is the meaning of it all? Those are religious questions and they
are of another sort than the knowledge that is the consequence of the use of the
intellect, the rational processes of our mind.
Someone just gave $350 million to MIT for the study of the brain. Wonderful!
The brain is a great mystery and there's a tremendous amount of investigative
focus on the brain. But, once we have come to be able to describe the brain fully,
it's still not synonymous with understanding of that mental activity which is
touched with Spirit which probes a deeper layer than that which is available to
empirical investigation and research.
We have knowledge aplenty. We can know the whole world, but the world is not
enough, nor is the world that we can possess.
Aren't you somewhat amazed at the wealth that is around today? The wealth that
is everywhere, it seems, and even the least of us are among the wealthy of the
world, and who of us has to deny ourselves very much in the way of creature
comfort or pleasure or toys or globe-trotting to exotic places? We are bombarded,
day by day, with the seduction of saying that one more trip or one more toy will
make it all right. There was a study out last week that said 16 minutes and 43
seconds of every hour you watch television is given over to consumerism, making
of us materialists, acquisitors.
Robert Bellah, the American sociologist, wrote something that I jotted down the
moment my eye fell on it, something to the effect that to secure happiness by
material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to
humankind, and yet it is preached on every American television set. Pleasure.
Toys. Adventures. Wasn't that second chapter of Ecclesiastes taken as a script
from our own contemporary life? The king who indulged himself without limits,
denied himself nothing that his heart set itself upon, who ended up with his
famous phrase, "Vanity, all is vanity," which has been translated also "Absurdity,
all is absurdity," or emptiness, chasing the wind, because you can have it all and
have nothing, because the world is not enough.
The writer of the letter to Timothy says the same thing, warning those of us who
are rich in this world not to be haughty or to set our hope on uncertain riches, but
rather, on God.
We find the same point being made in the Gospel lesson where one comes to
Jesus to settle an inheritance dispute. Jesus declines and then tells a story about
the farmer who prospered so greatly that he tore down his barns and built bigger
ones, laying up enough store so he could relax and pursue his pleasure.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
If Jesus had been in Naples this winter, he might have spoken not of barns, but of
homes with a view. All along South Gulf Shore Blvd., houses are being torn down
in order to build great, palatial residences. Obvious prosperity is everywhere, yet
I get the impression we are more driven, more frenzied and under greater stress
than ever.
My Sony stock took a big hike this week. It's wonderful. I thought of how much
more I could give to Christ Community. Twenty-three points, I think, and I
wondered why until on the world news last night I noticed that Play Station Two
is coming out. I didn't know there was Play Station One. I hadn't gotten beyond
my grandchildren's Gameboys, but apparently there was Play Station One and
now coming out in Japan is Play Station Two. Thousands of people sat up all
night in the bone-chilling cold in Japan in order to be in line to get one of the two
million Play Stations available on opening day. Stores had signs that they were
sold out before they could open the doors. There was a frenzy of activity, and I
watched as the people were playing these things. They were absolutely out of this
world, playing with such intensity. This is not just a game. I don't understand it,
but it apparently is like having in the palm of your hand a connection to
everything you'd ever want to be connected to in the whole world. They
interviewed one young lady who had a smile on her face and said, "Oh, I just love
it. I couldn't live without it." And all the Play Stations in the world won't fill the
hole in the soul or give one a peaceful heart.
The question of God won't go away, and in our day we have such possibilities,
endless learning, limitless pleasure, toys galore, the whole world to travel, but the
scriptures which are ancient sound like they were written yesterday when they
remind us that a life not built on God is a life that will ultimately unravel and
come apart.
It used to be easier to preach about this kind of stuff. I don't do this very much.
Probably because it's more difficult now because God isn't some super-human
person just above the sky. God isn't some King Almighty who is turning the gears
of the universe and pulling the strings of people. God is not that external deity
that runs things and rules things. When God was that for me, I knew how to tell
you how to please and appease that God. And, with a sermon like this,
particularly if you just bought a new lot with a view and planned to tear down the
house on it and build a new one, you'd go out of here with guilt so heavy it would
probably take you another seven days to recover.
The pulpit traditionally in the church has been wonderfully eloquent in the
imposition of guilt, crabby about people who have done well, who are successful,
who are having a good time in life. That's not the point. I don't quite know how to
do it with a conception of God so radically altered, as it is for me, and I think for
many of you. It's not to please or appease some external ruler who holds us
accountable and is ready to call in our guilt, but, how do we live with a God that is
not outside, but inside? How do we live in harmony with a God who is the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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inexhaustible ground and source of all being, that creative Spirit within the
process, this process, this cosmic process of 15 billion years that has been
unfolding and developing and emerging, of which we are a part, out of which we
have emerged, we who are the outposts of Spirit, as it were, we who have come to
consciousness and awareness, who are the containers of Spirit, who allow Spirit
voice, who are able to be conscious of the wonder of it all, the amazement of this
whole fantastic drama, and we are a part of it? How do we live with a Godconsciousness of the God who is not threatening just beyond the blue, but who is
part and parcel of the process itself within us, the Spirit that would come to
expression through us?
Isn't it a matter of becoming comfortable in our own skin? Isn't it a matter of
being at home in the world? Isn't it to find delight in being a part of the whole,
wonderful process?
Knowledge isn't the problem; it's just not the answer. And wealth isn't the
problem, except if we've set our heart on it. But, all things are ours to enjoy if we
come to the consciousness of God who is, once again, the inexhaustible ground of
all being, that present Spirit that energizes all and enlivens all, that God who calls
us to know ourselves, and I wonder, finally, if I would come to know myself,
would that be to know God? And I don't know how to tell you to do it; some of
you would do it, perhaps, with me, in a class where we'd go at it in an intellectual
fever. Some of you could better walk the Labyrinth with Toni. All of us need to
pause now and again and hear the questions of our existence which are the
questions that are the voice of God, to be still and know that God is God, and if
God is God and I live in that awareness, then all will be well. All manner of things
will be well.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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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
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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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Event
Epiphany IX
Series
The God Question
Scripture Text
Eclesiastes 2:11, I Timothy 6:17, Luke 12:21
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2000-03-05
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The World Is Not Enough
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Richard A. Rhem
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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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Description
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 5, 2000 entitled "The World Is Not Enough", as part of the series "The God Question", on the occasion of Epiphany IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Eclesiastes 2:11, I Timothy 6:17, Luke 12:21.
All Will Be Well
Consciousness
Presence of God
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3ac0795d7548124d03565b1149adb088.mp3
058f1d3e5cb239455bee5f7f55726e2c
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f53ccd395529ebe27c7392fdf8122624.pdf
4f17f4b65394fe26e0117afa6c99dffa
PDF Text
Text
From Babel to Bethlehem to Spirit and Truth
From the series: A Millennial Vision
Genesis 11:8; Acts 2:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 16, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I described for you last week a millennial vision of mine, the vision of a world
where the great religions would live at peace with one another, mutually
respecting one another, teaching each other, enhancing one another, and
dedicated together to the well-being of the whole world and the whole human
family. I used my favorite image of a cathedral whose respective areas have
stained glass windows that relate the biblical story, but no section has the whole
story. Each section has a part of the story and the common element that draws all
together is the common source of light, the one Light that illumines all of the
parts of the story that create the whole, and you can use that analogy for the
respective religious traditions, none of which has the whole story, all of which are
illumined by the one Light that enlightens us all. That particular image, I think, is
justifiable on the basis of the biblical story, for that image speaks about the
particular and the universal, all of the particular traditions pointing to the one
universal, and I think that is true to the biblical understanding, as well.
In the book of Genesis, the first eleven chapters are pre-history to Israel's history.
What we refer to commonly as the Old Testament is the story of Israel. But,
Israel, in telling its story, knew that it was a part of a larger story. It wasn't the
whole story. It was well aware of that, and so those first eleven chapters of
Genesis deal with universal themes, creation themes, the human theme, creation
of the human being, and disobedience and alienation and confusion and
judgment and salvation - it's all in there. After the judgment of the Flood, the
rescue of Noah, there is, very interestingly, in the eighth chapter of Genesis, this
covenant of God never again to destroy the earth. And that's with the whole of
creation. And then in the ninth chapter we find the covenant with Noah, never
again to destroy all flesh, and that covenant is with all flesh; it is a universal
covenant with humankind. Israel doesn't exist yet. And then, as though to
demonstrate that we human beings never would get it right, there's one more
story told, the story of the Tower of Babel, a fascinating little tale about the
human family, the flood survivors going to get together and build themselves a
tower and create a city, a sort of a fortress over against God, as it were. They were
going to do their own human thing, so God looks down and says, “Oh, that's
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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interesting.” God comes down and confuses their language because they had had
one language and so they could pass bricks with one another and they could build
a tower together, and then suddenly, they can't understand one another. But, the
word for understand is shema in Hebrew, it's a word to listen or to hear, so
ostensibly, that little myth perhaps explains why people are scattered over the
face of the earth and why there are so many different languages but, at its deeper
level, it was a story of our human community that is broken. It was a story of
human beings who do not listen to one another, and when one does not listen to
another, there's a breakdown of communication and then there's a breakdown of
trust, and there's a breakdown of community.
The story which prefaces Israel's history is a story of universal humankind
marked by broken community. So, God knows that another strategy is necessary
and so, in the 11th chapter of Genesis we find Abraham and Sarah, and Sarah has
a barren womb because God will start over and out of barrenness will create a
people and that people will be light-bearers to the nations. Israel understood its
particular vocation; it believed it had the light, it believed it was in touch with
God the Creator, and it believed that its light in the Torah was to be the
instruction for all nations. All nations would someday flow to Mt. Zion and Israel
would be the instructor. But, Israel knew it was not the whole story. It knew it
was a particular amidst a universal humanity, and so its prophets dreamed of a
day when one would come fully endowed with the spirit of God who would create
shalom and there would be a time when they would not hurt or destroy in all
God's holy mountain.
You see, the biblical understanding, in this case Israel's understanding of God's
intention for creation, was that it would dwell in peace and that there would be
well-being and that it would be marked by community. In the Christian reading
of that story it culminates in the birth of a child in Bethlehem, the child Jesus,
and the parents bring the child to the temple and aged Simeon, the voice of all of
Israel, takes the child in his arms and says, "Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared
beforehand for thy people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy
people Israel."
Beyond Jesus comes Pentecost and the outpouring of the Spirit of God and what
is the consequence? Well, the city is full of visitors from around the ancient world
and the Spirit falls on the disciples and they go out into the streets and they
proclaim the story of Jesus and everyone, from the respective geographical
locations and various languages, hear as though the word was spoken in their
own native tongue. And Babel is reversed at Pentecost and the Spirit causes
people to listen, to hear, to understand, and out of that gross community in those
early chapters of the book of Acts we have that early Jesus movement marked by
community in which no one had any need and all cared for the other. There was
the intention of God realized.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Too bad it didn't last. Too bad Pentecost got sidetracked. Too bad the church got
stuck in Christology rather than in the theology of the Holy Spirit. Let me
suggest, and it's a rather radical suggestion, but I do think that I can support this,
that the intention as the story unfolds post-Pentecost was that God Who was
Spirit would embrace the world until there be world community. What really
happened? Well, this Jewish prophet, this one in whom God was visible, the
embodiment of God, this Jesus, this Jesus in those early centuries, was exalted to
high heaven, made to be none less than God, resulting in a rupture between that
Jewish movement that gave birth to the Jesus movement, and the Christian
church, and instead of community, we had one more great religious tradition.
I wonder if that was not a betrayal of Jesus and Jesus' own vision. Take, for
example, that conversation with the woman from Samaria at Jacob's well. Does
that one impress you as God of God, Light of Light, before all world, etc, etc.? Or,
is this Jesus, in all of his humanity and all of his fullness of spirit, engaging a
hungry, thirsty human being, pointing her to the universal? She says at one point,
"I think you're a prophet. Should we be worshiping here, we Samaritans on Mt.
Gerizim where our shrine is? Or, should we worship at Jerusalem where you Jews
say God is to be worshiped?"
And Jesus says to her, "Lady, the hour is coming and now is when you'll not
worship in Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth."
It seems to me that Jesus in that conversation, or the gospel writer instructing
that conversation, was pointing to a universal that would transcend those
particularities, that the intention of Pentecost would be that God would be
worshiped in spirit beyond all tribal loyalties and religious particularities. It
seems to me that the reversal of Babel at Pentecost can only be realized in global
community, and that would be my vision, a millennial vision, a vision for the
third millennium.
As I grow older and more reflective on the religious scene which marks me more
these days than once it did (once I was a busy pastor, I was building a
congregation, I was working in the broader Church, I was involved in all of this
institutional concern and construction and structuring and hardly had time to
think about God), these days as I observe the religious scene, I'm not pleased with
what I see. I see a frenzied religious activity on every hand. I know we live in
Western Michigan which is saturated with churches and religion, but there are
other places, Bible Belts, for instance, where this is evident. I think that what we
see here is not characteristic of the whole country, but it's also not totally without
duplication in other places. There is a tremendous amount of religious activity
and it's a frenzied effort in many cases, it seems to me, to miss the point of
Pentecost and the intention of God for the whole creation and the creation of a
global and world community.
There is worship as entertainment. It seems to me that it is a church in trouble
trying to find out what will possibly bring people in. There's the whole
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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therapeutic religious dimension, bringing health and healing, which is certainly a
positive thing, and yet, it's not the main thing. There is the hot salvation sector
calling people to repentance and faith, to deliver them from eternal
condemnation. There is the emotional, charismatic community. One can go to
any one of these sectors and find an intensity of activity which is religious, it is
busy, it engages tremendous financial resources and a lot of human energy, and
the more I look at it, the less satisfied I am with it and I wonder if it is really
dealing with the longing in the heart of the Samaritan woman which is the
longing in the heart of all of us who are human, which is to have our lives
touched, in touch with experiencing the living God who is Spirit, that God beyond
all of the trappings of our respective religions, the structures and institutions and
forms, the various stories that we tell, that God Who is the Source and the
Ground of all being, that God Who is eternal Spirit Who embraces the whole
world.
In a preacher's mind, a simmering sermon idea is like a magnet that draws filings
from all over, but I didn't have to look very broadly yesterday. The religion
section of the Grand Rapids Press had one article after another on God as Spirit
and Truth. There was the note about the National Council of Churches that's in
trouble, hoping that the Presbyterians will give them $400,000 because they
have a $3.2 million debt, and the Methodists have withheld funds until they get
financially responsible. Well, the National Council of Churches is a good
organization. Dr. Joan Campbell went to Cuba and talked to the father of Elian
Gonzalez who has the good sense to know that a child belongs with the child's
parent. I know Joan Campbell; I've preached to Joan Campbell; she is a lovely
woman, and the Council does a good thing, but it cannot get support anymore.
Structures are just not there.
And then I saw a little note about the University of Michigan Research Center
that did some comparisons between 1981 and 1998 and there was a fall-off of
church attendance in the country from 60% to 55%, which isn't too bad, actually.
But, they said, then, that they had added a question about the meaning and
purpose of life which they ask people and there had been a significant increase in
the number of people who think regularly about the meaning and purpose of life.
In Italy and South Korea and Australia and Germany, The Netherlands, over 10%
increase in the number of people were asking spiritual questions. And then there
was the Jewish Rabbi Laibl Wolf, who was in Grand Rapids last week who is from
Australia but who is a Jewish mystic dealing in the old Cabala system 3500 years
old, a system of meditation and contemplation which seeks to bring a balance
between body and soul, and it reported that he has recently held a seminar with
Fortune 500 company CEOs and also that Madonna is into Cabala. The rabbi
didn't put Madonna down because he saw it as a sign of that emptiness, that
hunger which is so common to our humanity, whether we're CEOs of a Fortune
500 company or Madonna or any one of us. In all the frantic religious activity, I
wonder how much is offering some living water for the parched soul that cannot
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
ever be satisfied with religious busy-ness and activity and tribalism and
triumphalism and success.
And then there was an article about the great religious traditions of the world that
are the same at the third millennium as at the second millennium - Hinduism
and Confucianism and Buddhism and Christianity and Islam and Judaism. If I
could have gotten to the writer before he wrote his article, I would have told him
the article could be better than it is because you could have said that it is the
same as 2000 years ago, as well, because, as a matter of fact, great religious
traditions arose simultaneously around the globe between 800 and 200 Before
the Common Era. They all arose simultaneously, and the reason those great
religious traditions arose with their significant insights is that there was a
transformation of human consciousness. We call that period the First Axial
Period when the human individual emerged out of that tribal sense and came to a
sense of self-identity and individualism, and with the rise of that human selfconsciousness arose these great religious traditions, and they are representative
of that which was happening similarly around the globe, in the human family.
And then I wonder, are we at a hinge point in history now for another
transformation of human consciousness to break forth? Might this period of time
in which we are living be a time of the transformation of human consciousness
from individualism to global consciousness? Might this not be the time to pick up
Pentecost and to reverse the Babel sounds that mark the failure to listen to one
another and the breakdown of trust and thus the breakdown of communication
and the devastation of community? Is it not time that we look at the intention of
God reflected in the scripture that the respective particularities pointing to the
grand universal need to come into conversation and community? Might we have
detoured off Pentecost for 2000 years when the one at the well fully intended that
that particularity would be transcended as people came to worship God as Spirit
and Truth? This Jew who dared speak to a Samaritan between whom there was
terrible hostility, this male who dared speak to a female which was unheard of in
that day and culture, this Jew who dared to say it's not in Jerusalem, not is it at
Gerizim, but it is in spirit and in truth.
Do you think there's hope? Is it the possibility that this vision and this dream
could catch fire? Do you think that in a thousand years someone will write an
article and will say that the same great traditions that there were 1000 years ago,
or might someone a thousand years from now write and say, “You know, there
was the breaking forth, here and there, of a larger dream, of the premonition of
global community.”
Well, it's a dream, but Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate this
week, had a dream, too. It was just a simple dream of how little black children
and little white children could learn to play together and to live together, where
there wouldn't be domination, prejudice, bigotry, hostility, and brokenness, but
where there would be community, and that dream is far from being realized, but
© Grand Valley State University
�From Babel to Bethlehem to Spirit and Truth
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
the dream has become a dream widespread. Isn't it time that we learn to listen in
order that we might understand in order that we might live in the Shalom of God
whose Spirit is beyond all of our separateness? The God who is beyond all of our
partial insights, absolutized and made exclusive. Isn't it time for us all to wake up
to the dream of Jesus?
© 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
Epiphany II
Series
A Millennial Vision
Scripture Text
Genesis 11:8, Acts 2:6
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-20000116
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-01-16
Title
A name given to the resource
From Babel to Bethlehem to Spirit and Truth
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 January 16, 2000 entitled "From Babel to Bethlehem to Spirit and Truth", as part of the series "A Millennial Vision", on the occasion of Epiphany II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 11:8, Acts 2:6.
Consciousness
Global Community
Spirit