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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b4816eb5a31cffd7d3aae8caf9b63dfe.pdf
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Not Converted – Just Amazed by Grace
Text: Acts 9:5; Philippians 3:10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost IV, June 27, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
“Tell me, Lord, he said, who you are… I am Jesus…” Acts 9:5
“…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that
comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”
Philippians 3:10
Conversion is a term that is used frequently in Christian language and Christian
thinking. It is an integral part of our whole understanding of how one turns in
faith to God. The word itself means to turn around, to turn from something. The
dictionary definition is to turn from one doctrine or opinion or from one religion
to another. So we speak of people being “converted.” In the Christian Gospel we
call people to conversion, to repentance and faith.
We have noted in this post-Pentecost series that there are those stories Luke
recounts to show how the telling of the story of Jesus in the wake of crucifixion
and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit was effected in that early community.
There was a movement—there was a Jesus Movement. They were called the
Followers of The Way. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached and thousands
believed that this Jesus was indeed God’s anointed one. Then we have the story of
Peter who had a vision. He went to a Roman centurion, to his house. There he
told the story of Jesus, and the Spirit of God fell, and the Gentiles in that house
believed that Jesus indeed was God’s special emissary, God’s anointed one. Then
there was Philip who went to Samaria with great response to the story of Jesus,
until the Spirit whisked him away to the road to Gaza where he encountered an
Ethiopian eunuch, who also heard the story of Jesus and wanted to be included
and was baptized.
And then there was Stephen, who had understood maybe more clearly than any
of them the breaking forth of the Spirit—of the Spirit of God beyond those narrow
constrictive bounds of national and ethnic identity. And he paid for it with his
life. The account of his martyr’s death speaks of one who was standing there
witnessing that, assenting to his death. That one was a Jew named Saul. Luke
© Grand Valley State University
�Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
goes on to tell us in the 3rd verse of the 8th chapter of the book of Acts that Saul
was ravishing the Christian movement, the church. Then he drops Saul for a
while to tell us about Philip. But now in the 9th chapter he comes back to this
individual and we find that Saul is still breathing out threatenings and murder to
the church. He even gets authority to move out of Jerusalem to go to Damascus to
imprison and persecute Followers of The Way. But he is stopped dead in his
tracks. Flannery O’Connor says, “The Lord must have reckoned in order to make
a Christian out of that one, He’d have to knock him off his horse!” Well, we don’t
know if Paul was afoot or on horseback, but when it happened to him, he didn’t
know either. It was one of those sudden, dramatic, traumatic experiences,
cataclysmic in its effect. Paul was conquered, and surrendered. The voice said,
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Why?” I wonder if that was the question
that was the catalyst of the surrender? Luke doesn’t give us a lot of psychologizing
about the interior life of Saul and the things that had been going on in him, but
that little question “Why? Why Saul? Why are you doing this?” It’s a good
question. Saul surrenders. He rises blind and helpless and is led into the city of
his destination, but now in a totally different state. After three days a Christian
disciple whom he had come to arrest comes to him and says, “Brother Saul.” That
is the story of Saul’s conversion, his turning around.
It doesn’t always happen so dramatically. Luke gives us a number of stories so
that we can see that there’s not one stereotypical manner in which this has to
happen, but this turning in the case of Saul was so dramatic. It lifts up some
elements that are really a part of the conversion process through which we all go
in a number of areas in our life, a number of times. Someone has said that the
first thing that’s true of a genuine conversion is that one is detached from familiar
patterns of identity. Detachment is a painful process. We don’t like to be
detached. We all want a sense of identity, a kind of comfort zone, knowing who
we are, where we are, what we are about, what the meaning and purpose of it all
is.
Then something happens and we are suddenly wrenched loose from that. We are
detached from that. And, that’s very threatening. Often times – and now I am
psychologizing for Paul a little bit, but I don’t think apart from the stuff that Luke
gives us – often time it happens that when one senses that one is about to be
ripped loose, wrenched out of something familiar and comfortable, one grows
very angry. I don’t think it was by chance that Luke gave us that little snapshot of
Paul standing there while they were stoning Stephen. He didn’t pick up a stone,
but he held their garments, and was assenting to what was happening. He saw
Stephen pray, “Oh God, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” It
must have impacted him. In order to suppress that, to repress that, to keep that
down, those doubts that must have been rising within him, Luke tells us that he
increased his hostile violence against the Followers of The Way. We don’t want to
be detached from our familiar patterns of identity.
© Grand Valley State University
�Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
I have made no secret of the fact that I think that the Reformed Church in
America ought to die—and the Christian Reformed Church, the Methodist
Church, the Presbyterian Church. I think those denominations ought to die. Once
they arose very naturally, to be explained geographically, ethnically. And they
have been the agents of the grace of God and the sharing of the Gospel, but they
are not so any more. They are now barriers. They are anachronistic structures
that suck up energy and time and resources. Where once they were the
instruments of the Spirit, they have become barriers to the Spirit. That’s what I
think. This crotchety, parochial, dull-witted, stubborn, obstinate, old Dutch
Reformed Church is my family. I don’t want to be without a family! I imbibed
that culture with my mother’s milk! Who am I then? Where will I go?
Detachment - detachment is painful; it’s wrenching.
We don’t do that easily because what we anticipate is the second step in a
conversion process. That is a period of rootlessness, disorientation. Everything is
changed. We don’t have any place to plant our feet. We don’t know who we are or
where we are going, what the purpose of it all is. It is a very uncomfortable period
of time. And we resist that, but when we don’t have any options left and we are
pushed into it, eventually the ground begins to solidify again and we find a new
configuration. We suddenly see things in a whole new design, and actually it can
be characterized as a bright light. It comes together again. Then, finally, because
this doesn’t happen in splendid isolation as though we are all individuals off on
our own, finally once again we are ushered into a new community. Invited to a
new table. We experience table fellowship. Everything is changed. Everything is
new. Once again we can breathe with some ease and some comfort. That was the
experience of Paul. And that, I think, to a greater or lesser degree is the kind of
experience we all go through in a conversion process.
Now I think we have been sold a bad bill of goods by much of the evangelical
movement of the last century or two, which makes conversion a kind of once-forall momentary experience of transformation from darkness to light, from error to
truth, from reprobation to salvation. That rather modern understanding of
conversion has seeped into our conservative evangelical churches as well. But I
don’t think it was true to the story of Paul, because Paul didn’t move from
darkness to light. Paul didn’t move from godlessness to God. Paul didn’t move
from reckless unrighteousness to righteousness. Because if we read his own
statement in the 3rd chapter of Philippians he tells about his Jewish heritage. If
we read that as a denigration of that heritage, we misread it. There is not a word
of denigration about Paul’s Jewish experience. Paul says, quite the contrary, that
all of that was gain. He says, “You want to talk about credentials, let me tell you
about myself: circumcised on the eighth day, a Hebrew, born of Hebrew parents,
from the Tribe of Benjamin. In terms of my own particular religious conviction, a
Pharisee, a follower of the strictest sect. In terms of my status: top of the line.
And if you want to talk about accomplishment: I was zealous. I persecuted the
Church. As to the law: I was blameless.” Paul is not saying that that was
something apart from his experience as a Child of God. Paul was not brought into
© Grand Valley State University
�Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
the covenant of grace. Paul stood in the middle of the covenant of grace. Paul was
a recipient of that gracious election of God who chose that people to be God’s
special instrument.
Paul did not move from godlessness to God. Paul moved from God to God, from
Light to Greater Light. Suddenly. This is why I call it Not Converted - simply
Amazed by Grace, to point out that Paul didn’t suddenly come to know the true
God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of Israel. That God Paul
knew. That God Paul served. That God Paul loved. But all of that which was gain
for him suddenly paled in the light of this new understanding of God in the face
of Jesus, the Jew. So he says, “For the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus,
my Lord…I’ve lost everything and I count it as nothing.” But that is not a
statement about the value of his tradition. It is a statement about the surpassing
worth of that new understanding that he had of the same God that he’d always
known. That’s what conversion is.
We’ve been sold a bad bill of goods to think about conversion as bringing people
from outside in. I think sometimes what we are really doing in our evangelism is
to bring people in to make them like us, to confirm our own convictions and to
shore up our own faith. Conversion is for the Church. That was the Reformation
insight. In the Heidelberg Catechism the definition of conversion is not once-forall being born again and sailing on from there. In the Heidelberg Catechism
conversion is the daily dying of the old person and the daily rising of the new. It is
a daily reorientation because we are a pilgrim people. We are on pilgrimage
passing through ever-new landscapes. And with every turn of the corner there is
potentially some surprise of grace. The Christian life is a life of growing in
understanding and insight. Sometimes there are those crises periods and it is
dramatic. More often it is a quiet, “Oh, I see.”
The Reformation heritage that is ours understood it perfectly in its inception,
because what happened in the sixteenth century was not the Reformed Church. It
was the Church of God Re-formed according to the Word of God. If I could give
you the Latin phrase, the Latin would be translated this way: A church re-formed
according to the Word of God and always being re-formed. And the moment the
church became The Reformed Church it became a blot to the Spirit of God. What
we want to do in our humanness is to nail it down. To make it simple. To make it
clear. To be able to get a handle on it. To have it as comfortable as an old pair of
slippers. So we can’t live very long, we can’t live beyond the first generation of
those that were able to live with the Church re-forming according to the Word of
God and always being re-formed. We want The Reformed Church! And we
become an ideology. We become a cult, we become sect, and we deny the Spirit of
God whose freedom must continue to break down all those forms and structures
that would imprison us. Ah, it would make us feel secure, but they bind our soul
and deny the liberty of the children of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Not Converted- Just Amazed by Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” Paul said, “there is liberty.” The Christian
experience is one of ongoing, continual conversion. Ongoing. Turning. Twisting.
To gain new insight into the greatness and wonder of the God of all grace. That is
the exciting adventure—the pilgrimage to which we are called, to which we are
invited.
I would ask you: Have you been converted? When is the last time you were
converted? When is the last time that something that seemed so clear and simple
suddenly slipped through your fingers and you felt yourself spinning, twisting in
the wind until finally your feet came to stand in another place and you said,
“Wow!” J.B. Phillips wrote long ago Your God is Too Small. Has your God grown
lately? Have you been alive and excited with the marvel of the wonder of the
grace of God that would continue to beckon us into ever-wider vistas and everricher experience?
We as a community have celebrated with gratitude the retirement of John
Gregory Bryson from his teaching in the public schools. We know him for his
music, but generations of students know him for his geography. If you think he’s
a taskmaster in front of the choir, you should have had him for geography. You
see, I had a couple of boys that went through that process. He was unrelenting in
his demands, and Greg made students color within the lines. (Laughter) John is
neat as a pin — takes after his mother— “a place for everything, everything in its
place.” That’s the regime I live under. (Laughter) I am able to sustain that
because that’s the way I was raised too, but my genes are different. So if you’ve
got a teacher that gives you a set of colored pencils and a blank white map with all
the lines and you have to get it all right, that can be persecution. Now Greg has
retired. Generations of students have gone through, probably still scarred in their
psyche (Laughter), but with Greg’s retirement the whole world changes. The map
doesn’t work. It’s obsolete. All the lines have to be withdrawn. But the world’s still
here. The world is still here.
So, let yourself go. Breathe deeply. Trust the Spirit of God who takes it all away
and gives it back better than you ever dreamed of. If you want a place still to nail
it down, then take the bread, take the cup, remember and be full of hope. For
Jesus said, “Do this…‘til I come.”
© Grand Valley State University
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/799b5a44e53b236a94d3183bc5a836d7.mp3
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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
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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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
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Event
Pentecost IV
Scripture Text
Acts 9:5, Philippians 3:10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19930627
Date
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1993-06-27
Title
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Not Converted - Just Amazed By Grace
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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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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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 27, 1993 entitled "Not Converted - Just Amazed By Grace", on the occasion of Pentecost IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 9:5, Philippians 3:10.
Conversion
Pentecost IV
Reformation
Spiritual Growth