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Wisdom for Life
From a series on the Wisdom Literature
Text: Proverbs 8:35-36
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XIII, August 21, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But those who
miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death."
I hope it is as much a relief to you as it is to me to be out of the Book of Job
(laughter) and into something light—the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is one of the
Wisdom Books. I have seldom preached from the book. I have made various
sorties into Proverbs. I would read a few verses here and there, but it seemed it
was simply the gathering together of aphorisms and maxims and proverbs from
ancient cultures that made a lot of sense, but over which I didn't really care to
linger too long. There was no story there . . . I've just never been attracted to it.
However, on more serious study, I find that, in neglecting the Wisdom Books in
general and Proverbs in specific, I have missed a very rich mine of spiritual
direction and guidance. There is a lot of wisdom in this Wisdom book. I have
learned that the Wisdom Books offer a strong affirmation of life. In the Wisdom
Books we have not simply inconsequential truisms; we have the distillation of
generations and centuries of observation of life as it really is.
What we have specifically in the Book of Proverbs is the invitation to follow the
Way of Wisdom, thus finding true life, and admonition to avoid the path of
foolishness, which leads to destruction and to death. Lady Wisdom as it were,
(Sophia, the Hebrew word – somewhat akin to logos, the Greek word – that
personification of wisdom and order and principle in the whole cosmic order).
Lady Wisdom invites us to choose wisely, to live well, in order to find life.
As we can only scratch the surface of this book this morning, let me simply give
you some of the fundamental assumptions of wisdom. It will not be exhaustive,
but I think it will at least be enough to perhaps whet your appetite and give you a
modest introduction to the contents of this literature, and specifically this
particular book.
The first thing that I would reiterate again is that in wisdom literature there is an
affirmation of life. The toast with a glass of wine in the Jewish society, "L'
Chaim," “To life”, is a hallmark of Jewish culture, of a Jewish perspective on
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Richard A. Rhem
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human existence. There is something wonderful in Jewish society—they celebrate
life in a marvelous manner. Rabbi Harold Kushner, who has earlier written some
books, last year published a book entitled "To Life," which is a marvelous survey
of Jewish faith and life and community, in which he points out that that is the
hallmark of Jewish existence . . . "to life" . . .the affirmation of life, a strong
positive regard for life, a valuing of life. It is definitely a central theme in the
wisdom literature. Walter Brueggemann has written a book about the wisdom
literature, which he has entitled "In Man We Trust," that is a reflection of this
basic premise, that life and the human person are created good.
The Book of Proverbs and all of wisdom literature was an attempt to gain
knowledge in order to have mastery of life. To have mastery of life here and now
means we should enter fully into it. We should wring the best out of it. We should
live with joy and with delight, and we should exploit all the possibilities that are
ours in a creation that God called into being and said, "It is very good." The Jew
says enter all of it fully, enjoy it fully, delight in it before the face of God. Laced
through the Book of Proverbs you will read that the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom – fear in the sense of reverence and awe, living before the
face of God, conscious that one lives before the face of God, but lived with zest,
for life is God's gift.
We need to hear that, particularly those of us who come as a part of the Christian
tradition, both Catholic and Protestant, and particularly the western Latin
tradition out of which we have flowed, that is, the Protestant Reformation
tradition. In the Latin tradition, the central emphasis was not, as in Eastern
Orthodoxy, on resurrection and celebration, but rather on the cross, crucifixion,
sin and guilt. We have been nurtured in a rather dim view of the human
experiment. We have been given, I believe, a negative perspective on the human
person and on human experience. We are the inheritors of a few statements by
Paul that have been systematized and absolutized by Augustine and by Luther
and Calvin. We are the children of a doctrine of Original Sin. We believe in Total
Depravity, and as the psychologist Maslow says, "The human person will
generally live up to, or down to, the expectations that are held out for him or her."
Our view of human life and the human person has been a rather negative view.
We are suspicious of motives, of intentions, and rather negative on the human
scene as a whole. And, that's too bad.
We've lost something that was intrinsic to the tradition of Israel, and that was a
strong affirmation of life, of human life, of human existence. We could well go
back and embody some of that positive feeling about life here and now that was
their basic assumption, their affirmation of life.
I suppose somewhat of a corollary of that is, in the wisdom literature and in
Israel's tradition, the human person was viewed as capable and responsible –
capable and responsible of making decisions that would lead to life. It was part of
the tradition, not only of the priests and the prophets with whom we are familiar,
but also of the sages who reflected on life, who observed life carefully and
patiently, and who rendered wise counsel as to the path that led to life, a tradition
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that believed the human person was capable of deciding and responsible for those
decisions. That doesn't mean that they were naive about human nature, as
though the human person was entirely good, but neither would they agree with
Augustine and Luther and Calvin that human nature was basically evil. They
would rather say that the human person is made up of a little bit of both.
In fact I suspect that most of you would agree that we are . . . a little bit of both.
We are a mixed bag. There are times when you feel pretty good about something
that you did, and aren't there times when you despise yourself? Don't we know
about acts every day that are heroic, and don't we know of instances every day in
which the human person has been a scoundrel? Isn't there a constant
interweaving of both in the experience of all of us? So, in the wisdom literature it
was not naiveté that the human person was prone always to choose the right, but
the invitation was there and the person was understood as being capable of
making choices, and responsible for those choices, and reaping the consequences
of those choices be they the right choices or the wrong choices. The invitation was
there because the human person was viewed as capable and responsible for
deciding. Therefore, there was a responsibility placed on the person. No cheap
cop-out, "Well, I'm only human." You are human. Precisely the point. Therefore,
stand up and decide, for you have a choice to make, so choose life . . .avoid the
path of destruction . . . in the multitude of human decisions that you make every
day.
Now listen carefully to me, because this is where the rub comes. According to the
sages, the writers of the Wisdom literature, the choices are to be made on the
basis of the authority of human experience. That means that you can't open up
the book and find a text and find the answer to your dilemma. That means that
morality or ethical choice cannot be laid on us from beyond ourselves, from
another time. That means that there was a consistency between Proverbs and the
Book of Job when God in the whirlwind said, "Don't bother me with that stuff.
You can figure that out for yourselves. You've got minds. You've got experience.
Decide and choose wisely. Order your lives." All the proverbs and maxims and
aphorisms are the distillation of the wisdom that comes after years and years of
reflection, centuries and generations of reflection, pursuing that ultimate. But
there is no authoritarian rule to be laid on us from outside of us. We are called
upon to the careful observation, the living of life as it is and the making of
decisions accordingly in the midst of the concrete context of our everyday life.
"Well," you say, "What about the Ten Commandments, aren't those moral
absolutes which can be laid on us eternally?" No! (Pause . . .) Nobody walked out
yet? (Laughter) What are the Ten Commandments then? They are universal
principles coming out of Israel that have been proven in the test of time. They are
reflective of, for example, the Code of Hammurabi, that predated them. They are
reflective of Mid-eastern culture and the peoples that surrounded them. They are
the best wisdom possible for a fulfilled, successful human life, and the possibility
of human community and society in that day, and maybe in ours. But those
moral absolutes didn't drop out of heaven. There were no tablets that were
penetrated by a divine finger. They were the best wisdom that could be distilled
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out of the ongoing human drama by some of the best possible people who
realized they were living with fear and trembling before the face of God. So it is
with every decision that we have to make in the living of our lives. You can't go to
a book. That's a cop-out. You can't ask a priest. That's a cop-out. You can't ask the
Church. That's a cop-out. That's authoritarianism.
People like authoritarianism, really, even though in the eighteenth century we
threw off all authoritarianisms. The human bud started to flower in the fifteenth
century, in the Renaissance. Then the Reformation came along as an aspect of
that, but that shut down the blossoming of the human spirit with one more
authoritarian mode. Finally in the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason,
Enlightenment, the human person said, "No" to the church, "No" to the Bible,
"No" to the divine right of kings, "No" to every authority—the emancipation of the
human person.
Well, pendulums swing too far. The enlightenment for all that it has given us has
been found wanting in that to make human rationality the limit of reality is to
truncate the Mystery of Life. So now we are in the Post-Modern Age as some
would say. But what in a Post-Modern Age we must never do is to go back and
put our necks under the yolk of some new authoritarian control.
Now, what does this mean for the decisions that face us as a society and as
human persons? Well, it means that fundamentalism is a dead end street,
whether it be Christian or Jewish or Islamic. In a hinge time in history, when the
old ways have been shown to come up short and the new ways are not yet clear,
people get very fearful, they get very insecure. In fact it's a good time for the
Church, because people who are fearful come to church seeking answers, wanting
a priest, wanting someone, some prophet to say it clearly. Make it simple. Make it
burn. Answer these quandaries for me. Give me some ground to stand on. The
Church is all too happy to beckon those who would come to find in it a crutch in
order to avoid having to stand up and be an adult and make mature decisions in
this world where it is so ambiguous and hard to decide.
But fundamentalism is not the answer. It is simply the reiteration of yesterday's
answers to today's questions. You cannot go home. You cannot go back. When it
seems that the tide of society is moving back, you can be assured that it is a
reactionary movement that will explode in ever greater force one of these days.
The Church ought not to be pandering to people's weaknesses. What we need to
do is to call people, as the wisdom literature did, as the sages did, to be adult, to
be mature, to look at the evidence, to live with observation and discernment, and
to make decisions that lead to life.
Let me be concrete for just a moment. The Pope says, for example, regarding
women in ministry, that he has no right to make a decision, that women cannot
be ordained to priesthood because Jesus chose men. That, if the Holy Father will
forgive me, is ridiculous. Jesus did not choose any women to be his disciples in
that age, in that culture, for it would not have been tolerated. But it would not
have been tolerated in that patriarchal age because women were devalued.
Women were understood to be second class citizens, less capable, less gifted. Now
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in the movement of culture, if we really believe that women are equal human
beings, equally gifted, equally capable, then to perpetuate a decision out of the
past that was based on an understanding of women that we no longer hold, to
perpetuate that decision to the present when we understand something quite
differently, that is fundamentalism. That is blindness. That is oppression. And,
that cannot stand the light of day. You see, you can't have it both ways. To say, "I
refuse to ordain women to ministry," but equally value them is a contradiction.
They weren't ordained back then because they were not equally valued. Had they
been equally valued they could have been a part of it. If they are equally able to
serve, then they have every right to enter fully into Christian ministry.
Well, where else would you like to go? In the last two months in this congregation
I have dealt with families in the critical care unit, about Living Wills. If you
haven't gotten yours made out, I would suggest you do. We may think the cranky,
kinky Kevorkian is out in left field somewhere, but I'll tell you he is dealing with a
real life issue. To say that he is wrong, that human life is not at our disposal and
that it is something for God to decide is simply to cop out. The moment you
inoculate, the moment you are put on a respirator, the moment you give an
antibiotic you are playing God, you have taken responsibility. You have entered
into the life determining process. You have interrupted a natural course of
nature, and you can't stop. You can't stop simply because it is a situation of fear
and trembling. You are responsible, and God says, "For God's sake, stand up and
be an adult and make a decision." We must be responsible. We must choose the
ways that lead to life. We must discern. We must struggle. We must talk together.
We must dialogue. It's not clear. It's not simple. It's not black and white. These
are decisions that wrench us, but we are humans created in the image of God,
called to think . . . and to decide.
We could move to the question of human sexuality. Two or three years ago the
Presbyterians came out with a report finding that the Church ought to deal with
this fundamental issue in our human existence, given what we know today about
the human person. The report was defeated by the General Assembly by about
400 to 30, and I said in a sermon at that time that I would have been on the
minority side. I think we lost a family that day. But I'll say it again. The Lutherans
didn't do any better. They had a report this past year and it never even made it to
the Synod there was such an uproar. People don't want to talk about human
sexuality because it may tamper with the moral absolutes. That's ridiculous. The
moral absolutes arose in a concrete context where people struggled together to
find the way of life. To take yesterday's answers and absolutize them for today
apart from the concrete situation in which we live is to abdicate our responsibility
to be human beings to whom God gave minds and called us to think God's
thoughts after God. The Episcopalian head bishop, Browning, said to the House
of Bishops that, when they meet in September and present their paper on human
sexuality, they should just pass it without debate, because there are just so many
things that we don't know about and we are just going to disagree on, so let's not
get into a debate. Let's just pass it!" (Laughter)
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Richard A. Rhem
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Abortion. People willing to kill in order to abort abortion. Convinced that they
know God's mind and God's will on that very difficult issue. The wisdom
literature would say that God is pro life, because God is pro choice.
God would expect us as responsible human beings to find our way in this maze in
which there is no simple answer to any one of these issues that I've raised. For if I
read the wisdom literature correctly, the one thing I may not do is try to find an
answer in a book, or in an institution, or in an authority figure. You and I live
before the face of God. We live in fear and trembling before the face of God,
believing that there is an order, that there is that which is true and good and
beautiful. But we'll never capture it absolutely . . . only tentatively, provisionally,
partially. And on the basis of that, we are called to decide and to act.
I can't coddle you, friends. This is not a place where you can run for refuge from
the tough decisions of the human story. If the Church could only be a place where
people, rather than being coddled in their infancy, would be called to maturity . . .
to seek wisdom . . . act wisely . . . find life.
God will not abandon us in the struggle, but neither will God write simple
answers in the sky. It's tough. It takes courage. But in the end that's what it is to
live as a human being before the face of God.
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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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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Pentecost XIII
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Wisdom Literature
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Proverbs 8: 35-36
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1994-08-21
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Wisdom For Life
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Richard A. Rhem
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Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 21, 1994 entitled "Wisdom For Life", as part of the series "Wisdom Literature", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Proverbs 8: 35-36.
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Wisdom
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God and Cosmos
From the sermon series on the Cosmos
Text: Hebrews 11:3
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 8, 1981
Transcription of the spoken sermon
By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God…
Hebrews 11: 3
If you had come past my home last evening about 10 o'clock, you might have
thought that I was really desperate, for you would have seen me with my cap and
coat, out on the deck with my telescope, gazing at the moon and surveying the
stars. And you might have figured that, after a week's vacation, having played all
week, at the eleventh hour I was desperately looking for a message in the stars to
bring you. Such would not have been the case, of course, for the message was well
under way by then. But having reflected all week long on the fantastic cosmos of
which we are a part, having already savored the wonder of yesterday - the clear
air, the blue sky, the radiant sun; walking along the beach with its lapping water,
cold and clear as crystal; having seen the magnificent sun slip into the sea in the
West, and then the stars glimmering in the night heavens providing a fit setting
for the silvery brilliance of the moon, I thought to myself, why not get out of the
study and savor it even more? And so, I did. With my telescope, I gazed at the
moon and I located a star or two and thought to myself that it is true O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!... When I
look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars
which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Psalm 8: 1, 3, 4 (RSV)
The depth of eternity symbolized in the immensity of space in this vast cosmos of
which we are a part, is but a finger pointing beyond itself to Him Who, in the
beginning, created the heavens and the earth.
I am sure we all identify with the awe, the sense of majesty which is reflected in
this psalm of wonder and praise. I am sure we have all had the experience on a
starry night when the atmosphere was clear as it was last night and the sky
cloudless. We have looked up and we have wondered at it, and then we have
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Richard A. Rhem
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found peace and comfort in the conviction that this is our Father's world. The
glories of the cosmos are a reflection of the glory of God. For, as the writer to the
Hebrews says in the words of our text taken from the 11th chapter,
By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God.
By faith. It is certainly by faith. It is our conviction that He Who revealed Himself
supremely in the face of Jesus and Whom, through Jesus, we have found to be
gracious, is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. And, believing that, we have
found a home. We know this is our Father's world.
This is the first of a series of messages about God and Cosmos. God and Cosmos,
in that order, because I do believe that God is prior to Cosmos, and Cosmos is the
consequence of the deliberate intention of God to call into being that which was
not. All that is, is because God said, "Let there be." I deal with this right now
because I am currently viewing the television series, the 13-part Cosmos series,
which is written and narrated by Carl Sagan, who must be one of the world's
finest astronomers, and who is, besides being an excellent scientist, an
outstanding communicator. I hope that you have seen some of that series and, if
not, I hope that you will, for it is an amazing production. The photography is
thrilling, the technical aspects of it are superbly handled, and the communication
skills of Carl Sagan are something to behold. As I view that series, it causes me to
look beyond the cosmos to the creator of it all, to experience again what the
psalmist experienced, and to say within my heart, "O Lord, our Lord, how
excellent is Thy name in all the earth."
Carl Sagan would not agree with the psalmist or with you and me that the cosmos
is the consequence of the deliberate, creative act of God. Carl Sagan is an
excellent scientist and an excellent communicator and I acclaim the job that he
has done. I want to go on record as saying that I think it is tremendous that the
depths and the deep secrets of the physical universe are being more and more
unraveled in this wonderful way through this marvelous medium, by this great
communicator. For he is skilled, not only in his understanding of the universe,
but in his ability to make the profound simple. And when he is an astronomer, a
scientist, and when he is setting forth all of that data which is available through
the explosion of knowledge and through the use of instrumentation which is so
sophisticated that it boggles the mind, then I listen intently and I learn.
This past week I spent the week trying to master the book which is the narration
of the video series. It is entitled, Cosmos. It's a very big and beautiful book, and a
very expensive book. I recommend it. When Carl Sagan is a scientist and an
astronomer, I learn a great deal. When he ceases to be an astronomer and a
scientist and becomes a philosopher and a theologian, then he has moved into my
territory and I carry on a dialogue with him. As long as he is talking about
protons and neutrons and quasars and pulsars and galaxies and all of that, then I
am an innocent bystander listening in and learning and eagerly so. When he
becomes a philosopher and a theologian, then I say, "Carl, let's talk about that."
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Richard A. Rhem
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Now, a scientist has every right to be a theologian and a philosopher, and I
suppose most all of them really are, because all of us finally are. The difficulty
comes when the two are so closely intertwined that one hardly knows whether
this is the result of the data gathered through some radioscope, testing the outer
limits of space, or whether it is the configuration conjured in the mind and heart
of the scientist. When he becomes a philosopher and theologian, then I take
exception to him, because then he would not agree with our Judeo-Christian
tradition, our conviction that all that is, is as a consequence of the Word of God.
He would commit Genesis and the Letter to the Hebrews and the great Psalms to
that great body of myth and fable which is a part of the common human
experience. Every people who have ever lived have had some kind of an
explanation, some kind of a myth which explains why there is anything. And Carl
Sagan would lump our Biblical tradition with all of those religious and semireligious explanations for the fact that there is something rather than nothing. It
is at that point that I would differ with him and call him to account.
He is a materialist. Now, a materialist is one who believes that, finally, everything
can be reduced to matter or energy. Now, you all understand Einstein's Theory of
Relativity, which says that those two are interchangeable, that mass and energy
are interchangeable, that finally, ultimately, the building blocks of reality are very
simply molecules that can be reduced to energy. So a materialist believes that,
finally, you can reduce the whole of reality to energy, electricity if you will, to
chemical reactions, so that the emotions that we feel are the result of chemical
reactions and nerve connections, and so forth. A materialist believes that the
whole of reality and the totality of human experience can be reduced to that
which is material, physical.
Now, in saying that, he has to deal with the fact that you and I are intelligent and
we are conscious. We are self-conscious people. We can reflect back upon
ourselves, we know that we exist, we think about ourselves, for better or worse.
And we have an intelligence. We can communicate. He would say that there may
be intelligent beings in other universes. If there are, we don't know about it. They
haven't signaled us yet, nor have they returned our signal. But, be that as it may,
as far as we are concerned, and after all we can only deal here with planet Earth,
the highest form of the cosmic evolutionary process has resulted in human
intelligence and human consciousness . We are the only beings that know that we
are. We are the only beings with the intelligence and the self-consciousness to
reflect on the cosmic process of which we are a part. And, consequently, if
everything can be reduced down to that point of energy or matter, then human
intelligence and human consciousness and human emotion, likewise, can be
reduced down and be explained in terms of electricity, chemical reaction, etc.
And that would mean, of course, that we are at the top of the ladder. This is as far
as the process has gotten. And that would mean, of course, that there is no higher
rung as yet realized. Who knows what may be up there? One might say that
humans have become godlike. Human existence with its intelligence and
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consciousness is the highest rung of the ladder at this point and, consequently,
with nothing beyond, there can be no one beyond.
A materialist explains the totality of the cosmos in terms of the building blocks of
reality that are reducible in the laboratory. Human intelligence and
consciousness may be praised and affirmed and acclaimed. It is the highest
development of the cosmic process. There is no one beyond. Such is the view of
the materialist. Such a one is a naturalist. He would be a humanist, too, I
suppose.
But you and I believe more than that. As long as Carl Sagan is an astronomer and
a scientist, we learn; we learn with fascination and with eagerness. We marvel at
the ingenuity of the human mind, at the intellectual powers of an Einstein, the
exploratory endeavors of Galileo and Copernicus, Kepler and the whole host of
those who have probed the depths of reality and given us today such an amazing
insight into the cosmic order. It is exciting and fascinating and we ought to affirm
that in the Church.
When Carl Sagan has said everything he has to say, he has not yet dealt with the
religious question. Being a materialist, he has planted his feet squarely within
this cosmos, whereas you and I see the totality of the cosmos as the consequence
of the creative act of One Who transcends the cosmos, Who is not encased within
the system of which we are a part, with our galaxies and our planets and our
stars. We look to One Who is beyond, One Who stands apart from and Who
spoke and called into being that which did not previously exist. By faith, we
believe the worlds were fashioned by the Word of God. That God was, and
nothing else was, and God spoke, and it came to be. That is the affirmation of the
Letter to the Hebrews, the reflection of that first chapter where he sees the
cosmos to the extent that he was able to understand it and he says,
…they will perish, but thou remainest; they will all grow old like a
garment, like a mantle thou wilt roll them up, and they will be changed.
But thou art the same, and thy years will never end. Hebrews 1: 11-12
Or the psalmist who said, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the
earth." When I consider the heavens, the moon, the stars which you have made,
my worship is not offered, as it has been through so many ages of humankind, to
the stars and the moon or the sun or the cosmic order itself, but to the God Who
is apart from it and brought it into being. That is the Biblical tradition. That is the
Judeo-Christian faith. It is our faith.
And so we study the cosmos. As we view such a marvelous presentation as the
television Cosmos series, we are fascinated and we marvel at the wonders, the
complexity and the simplicity of the created order. But we always look beyond,
and then we know this amazing place is our Father's world.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
We have learned a lot through the research of astrophysics. They tell us that 15 to
20 billion years ago this universe was formed. Science, itself, has formulated what
is today the most accepted model of origin - the ''Big Bang." There was a high
concentration of energy and mass, almost a pinpoint. And from that intense
concentration of energy evolved a nuclear explosion that scattered the elements
in every direction, from which explosion we can still, through very delicate
radioscopes, hear the pulsing of radiation. From that Big Bang 15 to 20 billion
years ago, this whole cosmic order of which we are a part emanated. They tell us
that it is still expanding like a balloon. If you blow up a balloon that has polka
dots on it, the polka dots keep getting farther apart, but they remain relatively in
the same position on that sphere. And so, this universe is going outward. They
tell us if there is enough mass within this expanding universe, the force of gravity
will eventually stop the expansion, that it will, in turn, contract so that after the
Big Bang will come the Big Crunch. And then, they tell us, possibly with that Big
Crunch and that high concentration again, there will be another nuclear
explosion that will start the whole process over again.
Does it make any difference to Genesis? Does it make any difference to Hebrews
or to Psalm 8? Not a smidgin, really. For, who knows what God is up to? Who
knows what fantastic things He has in store for this, our planet Earth, which is
just a little speck of dust occupying an instant of time in this dramatic, cosmic,
evolutionary process. But on this little speck of dust, in this instant of time, we
exist, conscious and intelligent, able to reflect on the process and to adore the
God Who is behind it all.
What we have learned about space is so amazing. For example, they talk about
black holes. I wish I understood black holes. In the next life I'm going to conduct
great music. The third life I want to be an astrophysicist. I have never had a
physics course in my life, and I am really out of my element. But, anyway, try to
understand the black holes. Have you ever pulled the plug in a basin of water?
You pull the plug in the sink and the water goes down the drain. If you had good
drainage, the water was pulled down forming a whirlpool over the drain. Well,
they say that where there is a high concentration of energy from the collapse of a
great big star, maybe four or five times bigger than our sun, there is such a
concentration of gravity that it rushes right out of the universe. Like if you had
your hand inside the balloon and pushed it out. That gravity is so great, so
intense, that it doesn't even let the light out, so that you look in the sky and there
is a black hole. (You can't see the black hole where the star was, but you know
that the star was there because there is such a strong emanation of x-rays from
that point that they can tell by the radioscopes that it is there.) It is a tremendous
source of power. Well, even Carl Sagan says that those black holes might be the
shoots that would send us from one universe to another.
I was thinking about the book Life After Life, and all the stories of those who have
edged right up to death and then come back. They talk about that tunnel of light.
Who knows but maybe it's a black hole? It's a black hole from the outside, but
© Grand Valley State University
�God and Cosmos
Richard A. Rhem
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inside, the light is there, you see. Does it make any difference to Genesis, or
Psalm 8, or the Letter to the Hebrews? Not a bit. The more we learn, the more we
probe, the more we understand, the more wonder, the more sense of awe,
because of the majesty, the mind-boggling nature of the cosmic order.
Our earth, 4.6 billion years old, part of a cosmic evolutionary process 15 to 20
billion years old. They say if you took a few baseballs and scattered them on the
North American continent they would be crowded compared to the stars in space.
And our galaxy, the Milky Way, has four billion stars, and our galaxy is in what
they call the Local Cluster, a relatively small cluster. There are numberless
galaxies. Sagan writes,
We live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner
of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we
also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages. Cosmos, p. 20f.
Can you begin to take it in? I cannot. But whoever said God wasn't big? And
whoever said God lacked power? By faith, we understand that the worlds were
fashioned by the Word of God, and the more we learn, the more we stand in awe
of One Who stands apart from and creates the heavens and the earth and this
place for you and for me.
When the Bible affirms that God created, it doesn't mean to tell us all of the
scientific details about where everything came from, or the process by which it
arose. The Church too long has used the Bible that way, as a scientific text. And
because of that kind of use of the Bible there has been the unnecessary and tragic
conflict between science and religion. The Bible simply is trying to say that God is
at the beginning and God is at the end, and whatever exists, this cosmic
evolutionary process contains nothing that can be threatening to you and to me,
because God is at the beginning and God is at the end. And when the Bible says
Creation is good, it simply is saying that it is a good place for us to develop and to
grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. And when it says that God
called into being that which exists from nothing, it is simply affirming that there
is nothing in the cosmic order that can be threatening, because God is sovereign
and Lord over all. That is really all we are saying, but that is to say tremendous
things about our human existence, and the cosmic order of which we are a part.
I am excited about this, because I believe too long in the Church there has been
an atmosphere of fear and an attitude of defensiveness. I grew up being
threatened by science. I grew up fearing every new discovery. I grew up wishing
there would be no more explosion of knowledge, fearing that somehow or other,
the faith and the things that were most dear to me would be exploded by some
new view under a microscope or some distant vista from a telescope.
The Church's history is tragic: Catholic and Protestant. Johann Kepler was
excommunicated by the Lutheran Church in the 17th Century, and Galileo was
put under house arrest the last years of his life by the Roman Church for simply
© Grand Valley State University
�God and Cosmos
Richard A. Rhem
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affirming what he knew was true, that the earth went around the sun rather than
vice versa. The Church's record is tragic, to be repented of, and the Church too
often continues to react negatively to the increase of knowledge. It stifles creative
thought and experimentation and offends its best spirits and drives out its finest
minds.
I am excited about this, because I believe that we can allow the fresh air,
knowledge and research and investigation to flow through the Church, and then,
if we have faith enough, we can stand with the psalmist and say, "Lord, our Lord,
how excellent is Thy name in all the earth. When I consider the heavens, the
moon and the stars which You have made, then from my heart arises wonder,
love and praise." By faith we believe that the worlds were fashioned by the word
of God, and whatever is out there of which we are a part, whatever its future, and
whatever its past, it is encompassed in the eternal love of God, Who has
manifested Himself as Grace and touched us in the flesh of Jesus. Blessed be His
holy name. Amen.
Father, we revel in the wonder of the Created Order, the mind-boggling
experience of the natural world, and we rejoice in the confidence that we have
that we have a home here, that this is our Father's world, and that you uphold all
things by the power of your word. Receive our adoring worship, through Jesus
Christ, our Lord. Amen.
© 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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Scripture Text
Hebrews 1:1-4, 10-12
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19811108
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1981-11-08
Title
A name given to the resource
God and Cosmos
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
Text
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 8, 1981 entitled "God and Cosmos", at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hebrews 1:1-4, 10-12.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Awe
Consciousness
Cosmos
Creation
Creator
Eternal Love of God
Faith