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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/370652d735191c2e3c570dbeafca3eb8.mp3
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/afebbd0c3125a892e005f456dcf27fa5.pdf
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The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible
A Reflection on the Psalms
Text: Psalm 103:13-14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 9, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For
he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:13-14
With this message I will leave the Psalms for a time but, before doing so, I want
to conclude with a Psalm of praise and thanks giving. If you want to classify it
according to the interpretative framework of the previous messages, it is a psalm
of orientation or, perhaps, new orientation, a hymn of praise, "a public song sung
with abandonment in praise of God's person or the nature of God's creating and
liberating actions." (Brueggemann) One could debate if the praise hymn is
response to some surprise of grace or if it issues forth from the heart of one
convinced of the goodness of God and the meaningfulness of life. I treat in this
message Psalm 103, not to demonstrate one of the three classifications we have
been tracing, but rather as one final demonstration of the beautiful way in which
genuine human experience is acknowledged, brought into the presence of God
and thus how human experience is really affirmed. By that I mean that,
according to the best insight of Old Testament faith, it is O.K. to be human.
Human is what God made us; for that we need make no apologies. To be human
is to be a person on the way, a person in process; it is thus to be incomplete. To be
human is to be vulnerable and to be fallible; to be human is to live in tension
between the highest idealism and the lowest meanness, between high aspirations
and moderate achievement, between soaring dreams and visions and frustrating
roadblocks. To be human is to know the good and fail to perform it, to resolve the
best and too often produce the worst.
That being the truth of our humanness, there is a marvelous statement in Psalm
103 that should mean everything to us. It is an insight that makes praise
irrepressible. In a psalm full of insight, it is this insight that makes it impossible
to be silent.
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. For
he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:13-14
Is there any greater comfort than that? He knows our frame; he remembers that
we are dust.
He knows our frame - of course, is he not our Creator?
He remembers that we are dust - of course, that is the way he made us.
And, in contrast, these affirmations are not simply statements of fact; rather, I
hear the Psalmist saying, "It is all right to be human." We can be who we are.
A more accurate translation of our text is:
For he knows our form, mindful that we are clay.
That calls to our minds immediately the creation account in Genesis 2. In the
profound imagery and symbolism of that creation story we read,
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Genesis 2:7
The word for man is generic in the Hebrew; it is adham from whence we derive
Adam. The story, however, is not first of all about a man named Adam, but about
a creature, Adham, who is formed from Adhamah, "dust", or better, "clay." One
translation of Genesis 2:7 puts it this way:
God formed man (Adam) from the clods in the soil (Adama).
We will probably never displace "dust" from our minds, yet the meaning is that
the stuff of the soil is the stuff of which the human creature is formed. Sometime
we speak of a human person as an "earthling" and this would be a comparable
play on words - an earthling of the earth. It would be stretching it a bit if we
found here the source of that negative label we sometimes put on ourselves when
we refer to ourselves or another as a "clod." Yet perhaps precisely that common
put-down points up a critical insight; we do put ourselves and others down for
being what we are in our clumsy and awkward moments. We feel "cloddy."
However, what we must see is that the reality of our identity with the created
order is not in the Bible a put-down; it is simply an open recognition, an owning
of our very creatureliness - a part of a created whole which the Hebrew writer
understood as being pronounced "good" as it came from the Creator's hand. To
the extent that the generic name "man" came to be used as a name for a person, it
reflects the ancient idea that a name literally "named," that is, it bespoke the
essence of the thing named. Adam, then, if you would think of a concrete human
creature, was named according to his intimate relationship to the earth.
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
The image of the Genesis story, which is reflected in our text, is that of God as the
potter who takes up the clay and fashions it into the design of His desiring. The
human creature is the product, if you will, of the Divine design and initiation.
God has created us; God has fashioned us to reflect His own creative purpose.
If we back up to Genesis 1, we find that account of Creation speaking of God
creating the human person in His own image, which truth is picked up in Psalm
8, the psalm with which this series of messages began,
... Thou hast made him little less than God, ...
That idea of the image of God in which we were created speaks of our relationship
to God, that which connects us to Him and sets us apart from the rest of the
created order. But that is not our concern in this message. Here I would
emphasize our earthiness, our connectedness to the created order.
And what I want to emphasize is that that is not noted in a negative tone, but in a
factual statement of the way it is because that is the way God willed it to be. God
knows our form. He remembers that we are clay.
This statement follows a statement of God's compassion for His people. The
image used is that of a parent;
As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him.
Thus the point the Psalmist is making is that God is compassionate. Four times in
this psalm he refers to God's steadfast love, the beautiful Hebrew word hesed we
noted last week in the text from Lamentations 3. God can be trusted to be
merciful and compassionate just as a good parent naturally feels compassion and
mercy for a child. We do not have to apologize for who we are or what we are. The
Psalmist points out that we are what we are because God created us to be what we
are.
That is an insight that makes praise irrepressible. The solid sense of being
accepted as we are, being valued for the persons we are, being affirmed in our
very humanness is the basis for our own self esteem and self worth. We are God's
creation; we are a reflection of the Divine intention.
Now, I can hear an objection:
"Ah, yes, but we have sinned; we have defaced the image of God; we have
forfeited our status as children; certainly you claim too much, you must be
soft pedaling the guilt we have brought on ourselves."
Let me respond to that.
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
First of all, we have been far too obsessed with the idea of sin in the Church. That
is a bold statement and no doubt sounds strange coming from the Christian
pulpit, but stay with me for a moment. I will come to the reality of human sin
eventually and there is no need to downplay that in order to lift up the human
person. But my point here is that too often in the Church being human has been
understood almost as being identical with being sinner. Now from our text I
sense that the psalmist is reflecting the feeling that God is easier on being human
than many of us human beings are - especially we who make up the Church.
What does it mean to be human? To be human is to be created, not creator; it is
to be creature, not God. That must be obvious. Yet we do forget it and perhaps it
is precisely the power of our sin that we forget we are human and are rather
driven by a god-complex. Nonetheless, we are human and, therefore, we are
creatures of history.
We live in the stream of history; we live one day at a time, moment by moment,
with no possibility of jumping out of the stream and surveying it from a
perspective beyond it.
How we would love to know what lies around the corner. How we would love to
know the unfolding drama of history and of our own lives before time, but that is
precisely it – to be human is to have no "before time;" it is to have time, the
present. To be sure, there is a past and we learn from it if we are wise. There is a
future and we prepare for it if we are wise. But the past is written; the future is
not yet; we are writing the present - now is the only moment we ever have.
Our lives are lived in moments of decision - critical choices we must make time
and again - choices of lesser import daily and we must do it with only limited
knowledge, limited insight, some measure of wisdom - more or less -and some
store of experience.
We are fragile, vulnerable creatures. From time to time we hear of someone
whose fragile existence hangs on by a thread. An accident brings one to the very
brink of death and a life support system keeps life until the body functions once
again. A stroke, an aneurism, a coronary.
The psalmist of Psalm 139 wrote, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made," and
we are! The human body is a marvel to fill us with awe. And it is fragile – a
breath, a heartbeat away from being over. Too much thought of life's vulnerability
could drive one out of one's mind.
We are part of a community and world where free choice and responsible
decisions are everyone's. Therefore, we cannot really determine our own destiny
as though all critical factors were for our deciding. Beyond our personal decision
are the choices and decisions of the whole community, the nation, indeed, the
nations. What happens if the fanatical fundamentalism of the Shiite Moslems
brings the world into conflagration?
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Being part of the whole is God's intention for us – living in community – but that
also means we are at the mercy of decisions and choices beyond our own in so
many crucial areas that determine our wellbeing.
We are mortal; we will all die. I could go on citing the characteristics of our
human existence, but let's cite just this one final reality – our mortality. That puts
the limit on our dreams, our visions, our designing, our building and acquiring.
We are limited by that terminus point which no one knows and no one can
predict. Indeed, we do live under the shadow of death.
There is so much more one could say, but this is enough to make the point I am
trying to make. We are fragile, vulnerable creatures. We are a marvel; we ought to
stand in awe of our humanness; yet it is also a threatened existence that is ours. I
have a book on my shelf entitled, The Worry and Wonder of Being Human.
Indeed!
If all the above is true, then we fragile creatures of dust (or clay) are bound to live
with some anxiety. We are constantly moving into uncharted waters exposed to a
thousand threats having limited knowledge and yet having to make choices for
good or ill. And we will make mistakes, wrong choices.
And being anxious, we will become defensive and self-protective. And being free
and independent (relatively), we will be pushed by self concern and concern for
those closest to us. And such self-centered motivation gone awry has written the
horror story of human history, but we could not be the creatures we are without
that drive for independence and a certain aggressiveness.
We feel that tension in the family. We try to socialize our children, teach them the
limits of acceptable behavior. Yet we do not want to break their will or crush their
spirit and sometimes when our own children plunge and lunge at life we may get
nervous and yet, at the same time, feel a little pride at their daring.
A great danger of our educational system is that we socialize too successfully and
cut the creative nerve of the child. It is only a further development of that when in
totalitarian countries the system would undercut all free and independent
thinking and produce row after row of socially controlled robots.
Now hear the text again.
As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He
knows our form, He remembers we are clay.
Was not the psalmist saying that it is precisely in our fragile and vulnerable
human existence that we are looked upon with compassion by God Who made us
and made us just the way we are? It is on that basis that I began with the
assertion that it is O.K. to be human. It is O.K. to be limited, vulnerable, fragile
and susceptible to err.
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
But, my objector persists:
"Are we not sinners? Have we not rebelled against God's purpose and do we not
set ourselves up against God and our neighbor?"
Of course.
Let me say again, to make my point I do not need or intend to whitewash the sin
of the human person. I could go on now to paint the canvas of the human portrait
black and shadowy gray: selfishness, meanness, pettiness, cruelty, violent
madness. The picture does not have to be overdrawn to convince us of something
in the human creature that is twisted, warped, distorted, and we know it well
because there is no sin "out there" that I cannot find "in here," in the secret
depths of my own heart.
But again, to be honest with all of that is not simply to write off the human
creature. In his Christian Faith, Berkhof suggests that the Genesis story of
human creation ought to be heard not so much as a story of a perfect state
followed by a fallen state, but of a human creature always caught between the tug
of the lower and the call of the higher. But even that is not the point. The point is
made so beautifully in the Psalms. The God Who, father like, has compassion on
us and knows us is the God Who has also provided for us forgiveness.
Sometimes I think we have never really heard the declaration of forgiveness.
Sometimes I hear it spoken here and still condemn myself. Could the Scripture be
any clearer?
As far as the East is from the West - as high as the heaven is above the
earth, so great is His mercy, His steadfast love;
He does not deal with us according to our sins.
How shamefully we have muffled that message in the Church. How assiduously
we have marched over the earth preaching sin in order then to present sin's
solution. How much wiser we would have been if only we had preached the
solution already in effect and then invited persons to come home to the Father's
house because there is no longer any reason to stay away.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ which is only the full realization of the grace of which
the psalmist sang is the announcement of the radical, unconditional, allencompassing, universal love of the eternal God Who made us and loves us just
as we are - human, all too human!
That is the biblical message; that is the passionate center of the one story of the
Bible. It is a story of a Creator, full of grace, Who fully understands us and
unconditionally loves us. God created us human with all the struggle that that
entails and God will not let us go 'til we take on the shape of the one who lived a
© Grand Valley State University
�Insight that Makes Praise Irrepressible
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
fully human existence as the faithful human covenant partner of the covenantkeeping God.
No wonder the psalmist burst forth in praise as he reviewed what God does for
His children - forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies and renews.
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
© 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
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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
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 X
Scripture Text
Psalm 103:13-14
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-0-19870809
Date
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1987-08-09
Title
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The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible
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
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 9, 1987 entitled "The Insight That Makes Praise Irrepressible", on the occasion of Pentecost X, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:13-14.
Creator God
Divine Intention
Forgiveness
Human Nature
Praise
Psalms