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If That’s How It Is, I Can Live With That
From the series: God In the Mirror Of a Human Face
Text: Psalm 82:3-4; Micah 5:8; Acts 2:44; John 20:21
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 4, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I suppose it may be somewhat the world situation that has caused me to be
hounded by two particular thoughts and those I would share with you this
morning as the Easter message. I want to speak about my problem with Easter,
and then the promise of Easter.
Let me begin with my problem with Easter. We have followed for forty days of the
Lenten journey the way of Jesus. We have seen him move ever deeper into the
darkness; we have come to that time when we knew events were culminating into
a climax that would not be good. We have seen him enter the city, negate the
Temple system, find himself under survey by those who would put him to death.
We’ve been with him at that last supper around the table, in the garden with its
anguish, the arrest and the execution, and as we have done that, we have
celebrated in our ritual form, following the Holy Week events and we have sensed
something of the nature of Jesus and the God that Jesus mirrored.
We have known that he was on a collision course because, in a world dominated
by power relationships, Jesus pointed to a God of non-violent justice. We could
see that it would have to end this way because the power of this world has the
power to snuff out the light. We have recognized the darkness of the world and
we can identify with a John the Baptist who would say, "God, can’t you do
something?"
But we’ve come to see that Jesus saw something far deeper, more profound, that
God was not the God of the quick fix, that God was not some God Who would
come in with blinding power to damn the wicked and establish the righteous.
Rather, with infinite patience, God waits for that inward transformation. Nonviolent protest against injustice was the way of Jesus, and we have a sense of that.
We’ve come to this place on Thursday evening and as we’ve been at the table,
we’ve come here in the darkness and that contemplative mode of Good Friday. It
has seeped into our pores; we’ve begun to see something. This is the way the
world is. This cosmic, historical drama of which we are a part is in constant
conflict, injustice eliciting violence, eliciting more violence in an ever-deepening
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cycle of violence that ends in the kind of chaos that is so much a part of our
Easter world today. We begin to feel it; we begin to sense it.
Then barely twenty-four hours later the lights go on, the flowers come in, the
bells are rung, the music sounds forth and we shout "Hallelujah!" That’s my
problem with Easter. It’s just too quick; it’s too sudden; it’s too strident; it’s too
triumphalistic. In that twenty-four hour period, the darkness is not dissipated. In
fact, the darkness hangs heavy upon us, even now 2000 years later.
Oh, I know, this is pageantry. The Christian Year is the symbolic celebration of
those events that point to the very real historical happenings, and yet, the way we
celebrate them is not the way they happened. But, it’s necessitated, I suppose, if
we are to remember those things in some kind of liturgical fashion here as a
people. So, what we celebrate is what comes to us in the four Gospels. But, the
earliest gospel was forty years after the events and the Gospel lesson of this
morning was some sixty-five years after the event. By that time, the meaning of
Jesus’ death and resurrection in the tradition is honed to a consistent story. What
we have is the finished product, and if we would take it as it’s written, one would
think that by Easter morning the darkness was scattered and by Easter evening
the disciples were glad to see the Lord and we could get on with life. God knows
we’re anxious to get beyond the darkness. God knows there is something in us
that doesn’t want to dwell in the darkness, and it is true there’s only so much
truth that we can bear.
Philip Hallie, to whom I referred last week, in his book, Lest Innocent Blood Be
Shed, wrote about the village of Le Chambon in France, a city of refuge and an
oasis of grace, because, in the midst of his researching Holocaust documents, he
felt himself so mired in the darkness and evil that he said, "I was coming under
the coercion of despair," and that can happen to us. We can lose our perspective
and we can lose our joy.
Then, too, I suppose that we’re able to make that quick transition from darkness
to light, to celebrate with all of the glory of this morning because we have really
transformed the message of Jesus. I was going to say we have distorted the
message of Jesus, because, you see, if Jesus really was a divine intruder whom
God sent dipping into this world to be the sacrifice for our sins offering us
forgiveness and life beyond, then the world can reel on its way to hell and all of its
darkness and it’s not really significant because then what I have done is I have
blunted that radical edge, that radicality of Jesus who came to a world of
darkness and protested against it non-violently, looking evil in the eye. Then I
can say, "Let the world go to hell! I’m saved; I’m saved. Hallelujah!"
But, that’s not really what Jesus was about. That’s too easy. It’s too facile; it’s too
superstitious; it’s too superficial. It is not what he was about. It’s so easy. If I can
transform what Jesus was really about - the transformation of this world through
the inward illumination of persons who come to see the nature of God reflected in
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his face, the God of non-violent justice, moving with infinite patience toward a
world community marked by justice and mercy, I’m home free.
The God of Psalm 82 calls the lesser gods into counsel and dismisses them
because they have failed to effect justice on the earth, with the result that the
foundations of the earth are shaken. The God of justice who, in the words of the
prophet, calls us to do justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God
is the God of Jesus. If I can just make Jesus a salvation figure, if I can make
Christian faith a salvation cult, if I can think that it’s all about my salvation and
my getting to heaven, then I can let the world go to hell and it’s a helluva lot
easier!
But, that’s my problem with Easter, you see, because that is not what Jesus was
about, and God is not a God of the quick fix. We saw Jesus facing the inevitable,
crying out, "If it be possible ..." dying in godforsakeness, and God was silent
because the very God that Jesus reflected was the God Who does not send the
thunderbolts that will spring Jesus free in the last moment. The God of Jesus is a
God of infinite patience. When we cry out, "Why don’t You do something?" God
says to us, "I’m waiting for you to do something!"
That’s my problem with Easter. I wanted to stay here in Good Friday for a while. I
wanted to absorb the truth that I saw following Jesus in his passion. I wanted to
let that truth seep into the pores of my being because that’s reality. You don’t
dissipate the darkness with a snap of a finger.
But, I’ve come to see the promise of Easter, as well. You might say to me,
"Haven’t you jettisoned precisely that which Easter is about?" and I would say not
so, for I have come to see something far more magnificent as I have looked into
the face of Jesus and have seen there mirrored the eternal God. I have seen a God
Who will never abandon Creation, Who will never let us go and will never finally
let the darkness overcome the light. For, think about it for a moment, have you
ever felt sorry for Jesus? I don’t think so. Jesus was not a tragic figure. You don’t
feel sorry for him as some pathetic do-gooder, some social reformer.
Much rather, when you see Jesus, are you not fascinated with him? Are you not
moved by his passion? Are you not impressed with his strength? Does not your
heart cry out to be like him when you see the integrity with which he lived and
with which he died? Jesus in all of the strength and wonder of who he was
reflected the God who waits for us, the God of non-violent justice, whose purpose
is world community marked by justice and compassion and mercy and love.
And when I see Jesus, I see one who is simply magnificent because he was able to
live to his death in the strong conviction about the God whom he served who
would never quit and never finally let the truth be defeated. You can attempt to
execute the truth, you can kill the prophet, you can crucify the prophet, but you
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can never finally put the truth to death and you can never finally snuff out the
light.
We started out this Lenten season around this same table with John Dominic
Crossan here reminding us that where there is bread and wine it represents body
and blood and where body and blood are separated, one from the other, it speaks
of violent death, execution. And then he suggested that those of us who come to
this table to take that bread and that cup, thereby are standing in solidarity with
Jesus in the conviction that the truth will never die and the light will never be
snuffed out. Execute, crucify, oppress, repress, but finally, because God is God,
the light will break forth.
Some of us on Wednesday evening were at the Jewish community Passover
Supper, and on Thursday evening I shared a paragraph from a writing about the
meaning and significance of Passover and the Seder Supper in the Jewish
community. This particular writer says of the Jewish community that we have
been "heirs to those who struggled and quested, we are old-timers at
disappointment, veterans at sorrow, but always, always prisoners of hope."
There’s an image for us. That’s the promise of Easter. If you’re following in the
way of Jesus, you can be stripped of everything, but you can finally not be
defeated. The promise of Easter is that the truth will live and the light will shine
and, ultimately, finally, justice will be done and will pour down the mountains as
a mighty, rolling stream. We cannot change the whole world, but we can embody
in this community that justice, that kindness, that love and that grace. We can
stand where we must and go where we must, unflinching, with full integrity, in
total commitment, saying, come what may, we stand in solidarity with Jesus who
embodied God, whose Body we continue to be. If that’s the way it is, I can live
with that.
(The Sanctuary Choir chanting The Christ Community Church Credo)
We live together in the awe of worship
in the Presence of the Mystery of God
Whose inclusive grace moves us to embrace all
with unconditional love and gracious acceptance,
irrespective of race, gender, economic status, age or sexual orientation,
loving the world as God loves it,
following the way of Jesus,
sensitive to the winds of the Spirit,
seeking to discern the Word of God in the biblical tradition,
the Movement of God in the context of our culture.
We are an ecumenical community in background
in faith perspective
in worship expression;
a blending of all the great Christian traditions.
We find our window to God in the face of Jesus
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Richard A. Rhem
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while affirming the quest and insight of other faiths;
opening ourselves to dialogue and mutual enrichment in our pluralistic world.
We are intentionally a community of open mind and warm heart ...
Where the broken find healing,
the doubting learn to trust,
the anxious find peace,
and the strong are confirmed,
trusting God ...
The God of The Beginning,
The God of The End,
The God with us in The Meantime ...
This in-between time.
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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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1981-2014
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Easter Sunday
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God In the Mirror of a Human Face
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Psalm 82:3-4, Micah 5:8, Acts 2:44, John 20:21
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1999-04-04
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If That's How It Is, I Can Live With That
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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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Text
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application/pdf
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 4, 1999 entitled "If That's How It Is, I Can Live With That", as part of the series "God In the Mirror of a Human Face", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 82:3-4, Micah 5:8, Acts 2:44, John 20:21.
Community of Grace
Easter
Non-violent Justice
Way of Jesus
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From the series: The Human Face of God
Text: Luke 24:5; Philippians 2:11
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter, April 12, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Well, we made it once again; we have paid our dues, walked through the
darkness, remembered the passion and pain of Jesus, lingered at least briefly at
the cross and now, thank God, we’ve emerged on the other side. A new world
dawns this Easter morn. The alleluias return, the thrill of triumph, unalloyed joy
permeates our being, all is well, life is good. Spring is here.
Thank God it’s over - Lent, that is, the minor-keyed music, the extinguishing of
light, the disconcerting "My God, my God, why ..."
Were I a decent pastor, I would let you off the hook, let you cut loose, ring bells,
shout Alleluias, let you have at least this day for total triumph, celebration, and
release.
But, for a few moments, let me ask you to reflect on the meaning of the stark
contrast between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
There were only a handful of you here Friday noon, so let me picture it for you. In
fact, let me begin with Thursday evening. The meal shared, the altar stripped, the
sanctuary darkened, the choir lined the brick walls with tiny, illuminated crosses:
I then took the Paschal Candle, walked it out, snuffed it out, using the words with
which John tells the story as Judas was dismissed from the Last Supper, "It was
night."
Friday, the altar stripped, the old wooden cross leaned against the table draped in
black by Cathy Weideman who waited at the cross as a few pilgrims straggled in.
Then as Greg Martin sang, "Were You There?" she danced in vivid portrayal of
the nailing to the tree, the laying in the tomb. In a darkened sanctuary, the Seven
Words from the cross were read, prayers following, concluding with the somber
tolling of the bell.
That’s all - we heard the words again, "My God, why." "It is finished." "Into thy
hands ..."
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And now, look at us - White replacing black, flowers in resplendent beauty, joyful
anthems, hymns resonate with joy.
You know this; it’s all familiar. Some of you have actually experienced it again
right here in these past days. Most of you have had at least some exposure to it
through the worship of the season of Lent. But, I want you to think about it for a
moment.
Darkness to Light
Despair to Hope
Death to Life.
That is the central paradigm of the Christian faith, is it not? In the appointments
of the sanctuary, the mood of the music, the tone of the liturgy, the stark contrast
is brought to expression.
Now, here is a question for you: What is the relationship of Lent to Easter, of the
darkness to the light, of Good Friday to Easter Sunday?
For most of my life and ministry, this is how I would have answered the question:
The human family, alienated from God through disobedience, was lost in
darkness, destined to eternal death. God sent Jesus to live among us, to do what
we failed to do.
As Paul in Phil. 2 writes,
Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with
God as something to be exploited ...
That was Adam’s problem, who stands for us all - created in the image of God, he
asserted himself rather than humble himself as befits the creature before the
Creation.
Jesus perfectly obeyed, took upon himself the sins of the world, endured God’s
just judgment on the cross, and was raised by God as a sign that the penalty for
human guilt was paid in full; therefore, once destined for death, now by faith in
Jesus Christ we are destined for life.
It happened once for all, back there - The darkness was engaged, defeated. This is
now an Easter world. Therefore, the bare altar and darkened sanctuary, sign of
the judgment of God borne by Jesus, become the brightness of Easter morning
with new Easter fire. To say it in other words - Jesus’ death was about atoning for
human sin, absorbing human punishment, effecting salvation, life now and
forever.
That is the classic salvation myth we have inherited from the Christian tradition.
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A new age dawned.
A new world was born.
Death is overcome; heaven is won.
Therefore, we remember the darkness of his abandonment on Good Friday,
hardly able to wait to get beyond it to the celebration of this happy morning.
But, something doesn’t seem to fit with the manner in which we have observed
Lent. The focus has been The Human Face of God. We have followed the life of
Jesus from his baptism, his call and claim, his identity as the Suffering Servant,
the clarity of his vision to portray an alternative world - a world marked by grace,
including all and excluding none, a world marked by compassion, justice and
non-violence. In a word, Jesus was about the mending of creation, the shaping of
a different kind of society, about the transformation of this world, this good
earth, this present concrete human experience.
If that focus is true to the real Jesus, then one might wonder what all the shouting
is about because it doesn’t seem that much has changed in 2000 years. In the
course of the Lenten messages, I have had occasion to point out the parallel
between Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and contemporary voices weeping over
Jerusalem as Israel prepares to celebrate 50 years of statehood. I have pointed to
figures within our own historical experience who, following the way of Jesus,
have suffered the same fate - Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, to
mention only three.
Let me suggest that we have declared victory too soon. We have grasped eagerly
on the resurrection of Jesus as a victory that is ours to celebrate, as though the
battle’s o’er, the victory won, when, in reality, the battle is not over and the
victory has not been won.
Sorry to ruin your Easter, but if I would be a faithful servant of the Word of God
and honest with the human condition, I must tell you the old world has not
changed.
This is not an Easter world; it is rather very much still a Good Friday world. To
deny that is to live in denial. The only way to avoid that conclusion is to stick with
the old evangelical explanation that Jesus was about securing personal
forgiveness and promises of heaven through his death and resurrection. But, I
don’t know how one can fail to recognize that Jesus was about something much
larger, about the transformation of the world, no less.
So, what, then - is there nothing to celebrate? Is there no reason for singing an
Easter song? Is there really no Good News?
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There is good news. It is really good news, given an honest appraisal of the world
as a continuing Good Friday world.
The Good News is that our history marked by Good Friday is not the whole
story; it is part of something larger, the dimensions of which we cannot conceive
and from beyond history, beyond the limits of our Good Friday world, the way of
Jesus was confirmed as authentic, reflecting the way through one in the big
picture.
I came across a tribute to a biblical theologian who died December 30 of last year.
John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite, people whose roots lie in the Netherlands
in the first part of the 16th century. They were part of the radical Reformation;
that is, they went further in their reforms than Luther and Calvin. A
distinguishing mark is non-violence. They are pacifist, living in simplicity, similar
to the Amish.
In Sarasota, Florida, in February, we walked out on the beach in bright sunshine
with a great variety of human flesh exposed to the sun’s rays. There sat a half
dozen or so folk, full-clad, all in black, on lawn chairs, on the beach. They were
Mennonites, appearing so out of place.
John Howard Yoder was an excellent scholar. He served for a time at Notre
Dame. His most popular work was entitled The Politics of Jesus - a politics very
much as we have observed in our Lenten focus. In the piece, in memory of John
Howard Yoder, was this paragraph appearing near the end of that work:
The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their
patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes
to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of
violence and the other kinds of power in every human conflict; the
triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of
the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects,
nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The
relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of
God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and
resurrection.
Let me see if I can express Yoder’s point and thus express what I am claiming is
the really good news of Easter. Yoder is saying that the triumph of right is
assured. But that triumph will not be the result of the obedience of God’s people
as cause and effect.
The key to obedience is not effectiveness, it is patience, or persistence - the
willingness of following a way that never has and never will win the world. It is a
patient persistence in the embodying of the life of the Kingdom of God in the
midst of this world, which always manages to crucify such embodiment. The end
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of obedience is the cross. Resurrection is God’s action beyond the cross, beyond
history.
But the victory is assured. How can I believe that? Because - a quote from Yoder,
"The people who bear the crosses are working with the grain of the
universe."
I find that a fascinating statement. I have always claimed that the way of Jesus
cut against the grain of our natural inclination. And it does. The call of the way of
Jesus brings us into conflict with the way of the world, with the way of our
natural I inclination. But, here’s the point:
The way of Jesus goes with the grain of the universe. From beyond history comes
the power of resurrection. Authentication is God’s act after the Good Friday
world has worked its worst. We want to pull Easter into history. We want victory
now. We want to win now. But, we won’t to the extent we follow the way of Jesus.
It is not ours to win; it is ours patiently to live out the way of Jesus.
That will mean going against the grain of every natural drive and compulsion, but
it will be going with the grain of the universe - and it will count; it will count with
God. And the end will be transformation. To the extent that we would do that
seriously, we would stick out as sharply as Mennonites on lawn chairs, completely
covered in black, sunning ourselves amidst the company of nearly nude sun
worshipers.
Let me put this question to you: If Jesus’ death and resurrection were not the
effecting of your personal salvation as has been so commonly claimed in the
church, would you still follow Jesus?
What if we simply bracket the question of our personal forgiveness and assurance
of salvation - not denying that, but simply putting that to one side for a moment,
would you still follow Jesus because you really believed his way is the only way
the creation can be mended and the world transformed?
Again - apart from questions of salvation, heaven when you die, etc., apart from
that - do you believe Jesus’ way of being and doing is God’s way? If it got you a
noose, a bullet and surely a cross, are you so gripped by Jesus that you would
follow his way?
I could on this day simply let all the stops be pulled out, simply cut loose, claim
the victory. I suspect there is even some place for that. But, is that really honest?
Does that really prepare you to go back into a Good Friday world? Is it not more
honest for me to tell you that following Jesus’s way will meet the same opposition
today and have the same consequences today as then?
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So then, if you are really inwardly compelled to walk that way in fear and
trembling, partially, falteringly, you will not be disappointed by lack of success or
startled by opposition.
Why would one do it? Why did Jesus? or Bonhoeffer?
Because it is right, it is true - and to obey what one is convinced is right and true
is to be free, is to live, is to experience resurrection now, and the eternal
brightness of God finally. It is to be working with the grain of the universe.
Resurrection is a present freedom of spirit and hope for the dawning of Light
Eternal. It is living from inside out, true to one’s vision, finding hope in the
resurrection of Jesus as sign from God of ultimate authentication. When one
reaches that state of integrity of vision and life, one has moved beyond the
possibility of disappointment or defeat. That is life eternal.
Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.
That was, they say, the earliest Christian creed. Jesus is Lord. That was the
confession that flowed out of Good Friday darkness and the dawning
consciousness of Easter light.
Jesus is Lord! Kurios Jesus!
The whole world shouted back,
No way!
Caesar is Lord! Kurios Caesar!
Jesus is dead!
But, a few followers knew better "The Lord is risen!," they cried. Jesus is Lord!
Jesus’ way authenticated in a Good Friday world by those whose lives reflect that
way, living with the grain of the universe, trusting God that history’s final
darkness is not final; that the darkness will not forever suppress the light, but
finally yield to the brightness of Light Eternal.
The Lord is risen.
Jesus is Lord!
That is the good news in a Good Friday world.
History reels on its violent, drunken drive for power and glory toward death. But,
history is not the last word. The crucified lives. Jesus is Lord. Therefore, in this
Good Friday world strewn with crosses of the gentle ones, there is reason to hope
and to keep on loving, gracing, caring - forgiving, for from beyond history’s limits
dawns the Easter world.
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b4b6e0baea28ecb433a7688c419f3f6e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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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
Easter
Series
The Human Face of God
Scripture Text
Luke 24:5, Philippians 2:11
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-0-19980412
Date
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1998-04-12
Title
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Authentication
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
The nature or genre of the resource
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 April 12, 1998 entitled "Authentication", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Easter, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:5, Philippians 2:11.
Easter
Grain of the Universe
Non-violence
Transformation
Way of Jesus
-
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3f0e0971dc365a40934d48443bf08740
PDF Text
Text
Disciples at Second Hand
Easter Sunday
Text: Luke 24:30-31
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 30, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Soren Kierkegaard, Danish theologian, philosopher and prophetic voice of the
19th century, speaks of disciples at second hand - those who live through an
experience only through second hand information. They are not really there; they
only hear about the moment, the wonder, the real thing.
And who are these disciples? They are Peter and James and John, Andrew,
Nathaniel, and the rest of the twelve - those who traveled with him, listened to
him, ate with him and finally abandoned him.
Well, you say, that is a strange twist. I would have thought they were the disciples
at first hand who encountered him in the flesh and witnessed to their experience
in order that subsequent generations, indeed we ourselves, reading their witness,
might become disciples at second hand.
And that, of course, is precisely the reaction Kierkegaard was hoping to elicit in
order to make his fascinating assertion that being a disciple at first hand has
nothing to do with historical or physical proximity, but rather with the insight of
faith that is the gift of the Spirit of God - an insight that was more likely to be the
experience of one who walked with him in the flesh in the first century than of
one who experienced him through the Spirit's fire in the twentieth century.
Let me ask you - if you could choose to have been present during the days of
Jesus’ flesh as opposed to the experience of him here and now through the Spirit
- which would you choose?
Not, would you choose to live in the first century as opposed to the twentieth just whether you would choose to have been present, on the scene, when he was
teaching and healing in the days of his human, historical existence, or to
experience him in a moment of revealing - a spiritual encounter, a burning
sensation of present grace and love and beauty. Which would you choose?
Unless freed to think deeply about this, I suspect the immediate response would
be for most of us that we would choose to have been there. And if so, it is not
© Grand Valley State University
�Disciples at Second Hand
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
surprising, for Christian piety has conditioned us thus. For example, take The Old
Hymnbook, #460 - "I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old," a children's
hymn, vs. 1: "I should like to have been with them then;" vs. 2, "I wish that His
hands had been placed on my head;" That, however, is not possible; however...,
vs. 3: "Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go." That I can do now and, "If I
now earnestly serve Him below, I shall see Him and serve Him above."
Now do you see there are two golden ages, so to speak? The days of the flesh, now
out of the question, and Heaven, still in the future. And in the meantime, this inbetween time, prayer is a present possibility, but something less than past reality
of physical presence, or future reality in Heaven.
My experience tells me that has been a rather persistent and consistent Christian
perspective. To be a disciple at first hand requires either being present with Jesus
in the days of his flesh, or some day, "Face to Face," but now the best we can be is
Disciples at Second Hand, reliving the stories of the past - imagining the glory
that will be - but stuck in history's ongoing development with prayer our only
access.
Now, let me say clearly that is to miss the reality of Easter. Easter is to be
experienced here and now, ever anew in the community of faith that lives in the
Presence of the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of the Living Christ. That is the
message of the Easter Gospel Lesson - the story of the encounter with the risen
Christ on the Emmaus Road. Luke alone tells this resurrection story. Two
disciples are leaving Jerusalem on Easter afternoon. They are dejected,
discouraged, disappointed. Their world has collapsed, their hopes crushed, their
dreams dashed. As they walk along the road to their home village of Emmaus, the
Risen One joins them, but to them, he seems a stranger. He sees that they are sad
of heart and inquires as to the reason. They cannot believe anyone could be
ignorant of what has just transpired. They tell him of the death of the one they
had hoped would redeem Israel. The stranger chides them for their foolishness,
their slowness of heart to believe the Scriptures concerning the destiny of the
Messiah. They approach the village and the stranger appears to be going on, but
they invite him to join them as it is eventide and the day is far spent. The stranger
accepts, enters their home, joins them at table and then assumes the role of host.
He took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly their eyes were
opened and they recognized him; it was he, Jesus, alive and present. And just the
moment they recognized him, he vanished from their sight. Then, on reflection
they say to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking to
us on the way! Evening or not, they left the evening meal which had become a
Eucharistic Feast, and returned to Jerusalem with the exciting news. The Lord
has risen indeed!
He was made known to us in the breaking of the bread. This is a beautiful Easter
story. Its meaning is that being a disciple at first hand has nothing to do with
historical, physical proximity to Jesus - whether the Pre-Easter Jesus, or the
© Grand Valley State University
�Disciples at Second Hand
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Post-Easter Jesus. It has to do with recognition, with eyes opened by the Spirit,
with the experience of a Presence that makes the heart burn.
In a lecture at Oregon State University a year ago, the New Testament scholar,
Marcus Borg, host of a conference entitled "Jesus at 2000," quoted his colleague,
John Dominic Crossan, who claims "Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always
happens." Borg writes, "Emmaus happens again and again. Or, to echo the title of
one of my books, Emmaus is a story about meeting Jesus again for the first time.
Easter is about the Living Lord who journeys with us whether we recognize him
or not. But, there are moments when we become aware of a Presence. There are
moments when we know he is with us. That he lives. That we, too, are gripped
and grasped by life, the gift of the Living God who again and again shatters the
darkness, breaks the chains of oppression, overcomes the worst that evil can do.
The God Whose light broke forth on Easter morning and shines and will shine
until all is well."
The aisle down which you will walk to this table set with bread and cup is the
Emmaus Road. This moment, as every moment, is potentially the moment of fire
and recognition, of burning heart and sheer joy when suddenly we know, we
know a gracious presence enveloping us. We entered this Holy Season around the
Table that is at the center of the Christian worship experience. Table fellowship
was the hallmark of Jesus' ministry - the ministry of the Pre-Easter Jesus. All
were welcome. All sorts and conditions of persons came; open table fellowship
was the sign of the unbrokered Presence of God - the God Who is accessible to all
- in a sanctuary, or at the seaside, with or without a priest or rabbi.
On the night in which he was betrayed, he gathered his intimate friends around
the Table, took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them.
We entered this Holy Season around our Lord's Table and I suggested, in spite of
the architecture which does not lend itself to table fellowship, nevertheless, we
look at the Faces Around the Table - into the faces of one another - brothers and
sisters with whom we have joined in this pilgrimage of faith, in whose faces we
see God's Presence and experience God's grace.
I made the point then that the Kingdom of God is not "up above us" in some
heavenly realm, nor "out ahead of us" in some future age, but here and now.
God's Presence is present to us in present experience as we look into each other's
faces. In the intimacy of table fellowship, in the intimate connection with the
other, we experience God's Presence as the Other.
Have we not had such moments ... Can you not remember immediately such a
moment full of fire and the reality of recognition when you knew more deeply
than concept could contain or words explain - that God is - that Grace is - that all
will be well, all manner of things will be well - perhaps a sense of comfort in the
midst of deep grief, of calm in the midst of great danger, of overwhelming love in
© Grand Valley State University
�Disciples at Second Hand
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
the embrace of another, in a child's face, the peace of a craggy countenance of one
breathing her last.
Moments to remember because they are moments of recognition. Moments we
would grasp and freeze and hold forever, but moments only, not once for all, but
again and again, as grace breaks over us. That is Emmaus - that is Easter.
They recognized him in the breaking of the bread - at a kitchen table in a Judean
Village, and sad and faithless hearts leapt for joy in flames of deep knowing and
trust . No weariness can contain them - they run to the city to proclaim, The Lord
is risen!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2a11f18544ab9b3a9926938a24a0aff1.mp3
575f801bd74ca55e8c2f6b93172279ab
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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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
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
Luke 24:30-31
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-0-19970330
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-03-30
Title
A name given to the resource
Disciples at Second Hand
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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 March 30, 1997 entitled "Disciples at Second Hand", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:30-31.
All Will Be Well
Easter
Grace
Presence of Spirit of God
-
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df094e3aa7e8b27ee1884b39560c45f3
PDF Text
Text
Easter Faith: Beyond All Human Potential
Editorial by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Perspectives
A Journal of Reformed Thought
April 1988
In For The Time Being, W. H. Auden writes,
Nothing can save us that is possible, we who must die demand a miracle.
Easter faith is faith in the humanly impossible, impossible in terms of human
potential. Easter faith affirms a miracle: The living God raised Jesus from the
dead. Easter faith sees the resurrection of Jesus as a sign of the newness God is
creating and will create in this Good Friday world, this old age that is passing
away.
With every returning Easter we are faced with the decision of faith: Will we settle
for a Good Friday world, or will we believe in the newness of God's kingdom? Will
we with stubborn pride see our world and our lives only within the limits of the
humanly possible, or will we trust in God who brought forth the world from
nothing and promises a new heaven and new earth? Will we with paralyzing
despair see history's sad story of oppression, violence, and death, and our own
life stories of failure and defeat as the final word, or will we look to the living God
who breaks the power of darkness and defeats even death?
The Easter faith of the church points to the living God whose love cannot be
conquered and whose promise of new creation will finally come to
consummation. Easter faith is radical trust in God, the God who is not limited to
human potential or to historical possibilities. Easter faith fastens on the God who
called Jesus from the dead to fullness of life in God's presence where he reigns
and from whence his Spirit continues the drama of resurrection in this old world
that is passing away, this old world that is a Good Friday world, now permeated
by the freedom and joy and peace of the new creation.
Easter faith is biblical faith; it is the faith of the people of God who still live in the
old world but who have been captivated by a new possibility. Over the first eleven
chapters of Genesis one could write disaster, the seemingly insatiable desire of
human society to structure life apart from God. In the bridge paragraph between
© Grand Valley State University
�Easter Faith: Beyond all Human Potential
Editorial by Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the universal themes of those first eleven chapters and the call of Abraham in
chapter 12, there is tucked away a brief notice so easy to overlook: "Now Sarai
was barren; she had no child."
Is that not striking? God calls a man to become the father of a great nation, but
the man's wife is barren. Could that be an accident? No, because the Bible story is
not first of all a story about Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, and Paul. It is
not a story first of all about humankind at all, but a story about God. It is God's
story before it is our story, and the Genesis account of the call of Abraham is only
secondarily about Abraham.
God is about to fashion an alternative community in the midst of a creation gone
awry. God will re-form the creation; God will transform the nations, and God is
not boxed in by human limitations. What God promises cannot be discovered in
what is; God creates newness.
Both pride and despair, two opposite reactions to what is, are based on the
assumption that the world is a project of humankind and that its possibilities are
limited by human potential. But the biblical story is the story of the gracious God
of life-giving power, a power beyond all human potential.
It wasn't easy for Abraham or Sarah to believe. Abraham was getting older, but
still he had no heir. Sarah had moved beyond the years of childbearing potential.
Abraham asked God if his servant's son Eliezer would do. God said no. Sarah took
matters into her own hands and gave Abraham her maid Hagar. But Ishmael, the
child of that union, was not to be the heir. God said no to that human effort, too.
When Abraham was ninety-nine, God repeated the promise. Then one day the
Lord appeared. The coming birth was announced. Sarah heard it and laughed.
She was responding from her knowledge of human potential. The Lord heard the
laugh and said, "Why did Sarah laugh?" Then we hear the crux of the matter. "Is
anything too hard for the Lord?" (Gen. 18:14)
That is the point of this whole narrative: God's power to create life anew. And the
result of such faith? Isaac. Sarah, the barren one, gave birth to a child and she
laughed once more. And Sarah said, "God has made laughter for me; every one
who hears will laugh over me." (Gen. 21:6)
God had the last laugh, and it was God who prompted Sarah to laugh again.
There are two kinds of laughs in the world. There is the laugh of the cynic who
lives in a narrow world of human possibility. There is the joyous laughter of the
one who trusts God and experiences the impossible. Isaac was born. His name
means laughter. Isaac's birth was God's joke!
The tears of laughter will run down our cheeks, too, when we learn to let go of our
strenuous striving to make our world secure, to carve out our places in the sun,
and to achieve success and health and happiness and simply fall into the
© Grand Valley State University
�Easter Faith: Beyond all Human Potential
Editorial by Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
unconditional love of God who alone can create newness, bring peace, and cause
joy to well up.
There are two worlds. One is a Good Friday world. It runs on human effort and is
limited by human potential. Its hallmark is the performance principle. The other
is an Easter world. It operates by radical trust in the power of the life-giving God.
Its hallmark is grace.
© 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
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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
RA-4-19880401
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1988-04-01
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Title
A name given to the resource
Easter Faith: Beyond All Human Potential
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
Editorial created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 1, 1988 entitled "Easter Faith: Beyond All Human Potential", it appeared in Perspectives, April, 1988, p. 3. Tags: Easter, Trust, Faith, Grace.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Easter
Faith
Grace
Trust
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/60ae0bd1ae1c2ecd69dac1069f501518.pdf
46980a4d275f01e595c50b262aecad75
PDF Text
Text
Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Easter Sunday
Luke 24:13-17, 28-35;
I John 1:1-4; 4:7-8; 12, 16
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 27, 2005
Easter 2005. Who would have dreamed I would be the preacher! Ian called a
couple of weeks ago and asked if I would be willing to be the preacher for Easter,
and I responded that I would be happy to be. He honors me thus and
demonstrates his trust in me; I am grateful for that.
Reflecting back over the year, I went to my file of liturgies, as well as my daily
calendar. If my notes are correct, the Lawtons arrived on March 22 a year ago. On
March 28, which last year was the Fifth Sunday in Lent, I read a note of greeting
and gratitude from Ian, promising to be present the next week which was Palm
Sunday, April 4. And on Easter, April 11, Ian preached his first sermon here.
This invitation to preach at the end of Ian’s first year with us provides an occasion
to look back over that year – not that that was Ian’s intention; nor do I intend to
use the Easter sermon as a backward glance. Resurrection opens the future and I
intend to get to that. But, I cannot pass up this opportunity to make a comment
or two.
Many ask how I like retirement. My answer: I recommend it! I am delighted to be
at this time in my life. The time was right; you created such a beautiful closure.
I’m so content and, honestly, proud of the community I, with the team and lay
leadership, was able to create, that I have no regrets. And I have let go. Some
doubted I could. I knew I could and would and I have. The transition has
happened. Transitions are not for the faint-hearted. Nobody said it would be
easy. We had it so good for so long – 33 years! – and we were so comfortable.
But I knew it was time to catch the next wave and move this community to the
next stage. This was the challenge we laid before Ian and I cannot imagine
anyone coming in and doing it with greater courage and confidence, intelligence
and passion than Ian has.
One realizes in such a transition there will be change but, of course, to know that
intellectually is one thing; to feel it emotionally is another. Faced with the
emotional shock, one must choose between trying to exercise power to hold on,
hold back, resist the new movement and control the development, or, recognizing
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the inevitability of change, and indeed the necessity of it, open one’s being to the
creative interchange that is occurring and trust the process in community to
effect creative transformation. I sense most of us are following the second option
and that is hopeful.
Last Sunday, Nancy and I remained for the Sermon Talk-back and many
expressions were offered which reminded me of similar settings we experienced
over the years and similar comments – for example:
“I can bring my family and friends here and know they will not be
embarrassed;” and, “This is the first church I have been able to feel at
home in.”
There were expressions, too, of love for and emotional attachment to the
tradition; beloved symbols and rituals which move the heart and reach the depths
of our beings.
I saw Ian listening, taking it in, and I’m sure desiring to continue to bridge past to
future with sensitivity and care. And it is happening.
Lent has been for me once more a meaningful journey. The preaching has been
strong and full of integrity. I am so thankful that there continues to be in this
place honest and intelligent preaching that engages me.
I know there are some of you for whom the transition has not been comfortable,
causing dis-ease and discontent. But, I must say honestly to you I believe that is
the result more of style, not substance. I’ll probably never forgive Ian for that
metal bed frame hanging over my head, messing up the aesthetics of my sacred
space! But, so what? That doesn’t matter.
While in Florida, Nancy and I spent our annual evening with the VanHoeven
clan: Gord and Dorothy, Doc and Shirley and Gord’s brother Jim and his wife,
Mary. After a fabulous fish fry which Doc prepared, we watched a bit of the
Christmas Sunday service at which Ian’s father preached, which they had on a
DVD. I was really impressed; it was professionally produced and well done and I
suspect one of these days folks around the globe will be able to experience the
Sunday service from Christ Community – and, God knows, such an alternative
the world desperately needs.
The title of my sermon is “Love That Just Won’t Give Up.” Ian listed that to be his
sermon title before he asked me to preach and I assured him I would stay with
that. After all my years of preaching, I am able to twist any text or title to say
what I want to say.
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
And that title affords me a bridge to my Easter message. Love that just will not
give up is a claim that reveals the grain of the universe, that points to the
Ultimate Mystery of Reality – and that is what I want to say this morning –
Love is the Originating Mystery of the Cosmos
and that Love will never give up.
The Gospels give us a variety of snapshots of the Easter story – snapshots,
incidentally, that cannot be reconciled into a coherent picture. The Easter Gospel
this morning from Luke 24, the narrative of the encounter of the risen one with
two followers on the Emmaus Road, is my favorite, I suspect because I love the
manner in which the revelation of the Easter miracle unfolds. Unrecognized,
Jesus joins the disciples and joins their conversation. They are leaving Jerusalem
in despair with sadness of heart in the wake of the crucifixion of Jesus. This one
unknown reminds them of their scriptures and then, arriving at their home, they
invite the stranger in who, though the guest, becomes the host at table and in the
blessing and breaking of bread, is revealed as the Living One whose death they
had been grieving.
Their eyes were opened even as he vanished from their sight and with
amazement, they speak of how their sad hearts had become burning hearts and
their grief transformed to joy, for they knew Jesus was alive and very much
present to them. They rushed to tell their good news to the disciples, exclaiming
he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Sadness to joy;Despair
to hope, and the deep assurance that the love embodied in their Jesus could not
be put to death, the realization that Love just won’t give up.
I love Dom Crossan’s comment on the Emmaus story:
Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.
The Church has struggled so strenuously with the Easter Event – insisting on its
historicity – that Jesus did, indeed, rise bodily from the tomb. And in the
traditional interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atonement for the sin of the world,
I understand that need to insist that he arose from the grave, because that was
the sign of sin removed and heaven opened to all who trusted him. The bodily
resurrection was God’s sign that salvation had been accomplished for us by him.
But, that has not been our understanding of Jesus’ death for a long time. It must
have been a dozen years ago that I suggested that Easter was not about the
resuscitation of a corpse.
And I raised a few eyebrows and, here and there, a fever arose. (You forgive an
old man and forget that his radical moves in the past caused you discomfort and
confusion.)
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
It was Palm Sunday, 1993, when I preached “Jesus Died Because of our Sins, Not
For Them.” For years there has been no atoning death preached here – my
concise summary statement each Lent has been,
“He died the way he died because he lived the way he lived.”
And Ian has been preaching that eloquently. Jesus spoke Truth to Power in the
best tradition of the Hebrew prophets. He challenged the power of the
established Church and State. He came preaching the Kingdom of God, crying,
“Repent, for the Kingdom of God is here.”
Repent is the English translation of the Greek word Metanoia, Meta the prefix
meaning change, and Noia from Nous, for mind. Change your mind! Change your
thinking!
Etymologically, Metanoia is the opposite of Paranoia, from which we have
paranoia, irrational fear, delusional suspicion. Jesus’ message was,
Change your thinking! The old order of domination, oppression and
human exploitation is doomed!
All too soon the Christian Church domesticated Jesus’ radical social/political
claim and turned repentance into a moralistic call to turn from personal sins and
peccadilloes. But, Jesus was talking about a different kind of sin – the
institutionalized sin of imperial domination that oppressed the people.
Believe me, the authorities would have applauded him, not crucified him if he
had preached “Keep your nose clean; obey the commandments and piously follow
the tradition.” They would have subsidized him, popular as he was – he could sell
family values, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the shredding of the social safety net
so the poor might be stimulated to move to self-sufficiency.
No, Jesus proclaimed an alternative world marked by justice and fairness and
compassion. He was judged a menace to established order and marked for death,
the death of a social/political subversive.
But, that is where the Miracle occurred – On many Emmaus Roads over days and
weeks, over months and years, gathered in community, sharing a meal, blessing
and breaking bread, his followers sensed his presence and they knew all that had
come to expression in him was true – and that truth could not be killed. The love
he embodied just would not give up, because it was the reflection of the heart of
the Originating Mystery of Being. That was Easter Faith – You can’t prove that,
except by living its truth and that was the Easter Miracle: A shift in perception –
and it is a shift in perception that transforms.
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Such a shift in perception is the result of a moment of revelatory luminosity; a
moment of unveiling of what is always everywhere the case. But, in a moment of
disclosure, we see and, seeing, we come to a conscious awareness of a new
possibility and we are transformed.
And what constitutes that transformation? What are the contours of the
transformation effected by the shift in perception Easter brings about? Would it
not be a transformation into the likeness of Jesus? Wouldn’t one so transformed
take on the mind of Jesus? The heart of Jesus? The agenda of Jesus?
Wouldn’t that agenda, now translated into the great issues of Century 21,
have some strong words about corporate corruption, about the unconscionable
increase in CEO salaries when wages of the average worker have decreased?
Have something to say about the Imperial Designs of this nation, even though
woven with idealism? Raise questions about the dismantling of the social safety
net and the re-distribution of wealth upward? Wonder about health care and
education and the cities that face massive deficits?
The historical Jesus and the early Jesus Movement were too soon co-opted by the
powers that be. Jesus was made into a Savior figure. The Cross, instead of being a
sign of the death that results from speaking truth to power, was made into a
symbol of salvation from sin and damnation and the Christian Church became a
salvation cult.
All of this is old news here. But, with each returning Lent I wonder anew if we can
really follow Jesus or are so locked into a social structure so at odds with his
agenda that it would take a revolution to give the way of Jesus a chance.
I’ve been out of step all my life. I kid about it, but I am serious. Growing up in a
wonderful home with all the love and security one could ask for, it was a very
conservative religious and political environment – totally authentic and sincere.
Religiously, as a child, I thought salvation would be limited to a narrow range of
Christians – which certainly did not include Roman Catholics. You get the
picture. The liberal Methodists in my little village were also out of luck, or beyond
the pale. There was no “luck” involved.
Politically, the only option for a Christian was to be Republican. My first
awareness of the political scene was the Presidential election of 1944. As a child
of nine, I sensed FDR was the wrong choice. I imbibed real negativity toward
him, knowing nothing, of course, and many years later having to recognize how
twisted and warped was my estimate of one considered to be one of the greatest
presidents this country has ever had.
In all of this – my home village, my religious affiliation, my political affiliation,
such as it was, I felt in a minority, different, out of step with where the world was
going. That only intensified my youthful commitments – didn’t the Gospel quote
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Jesus claiming, The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to Life and
there are few who find it!
Steered from the womb to the ministry, I studied and studied and studied. You
know that – I tried so hard to support intellectually the nurture and conditioning
of my childhood and youth and then the orthodoxy of the Church. I need not
belabor this, but I remind you of the path I’ve traveled because I am Exhibit A of
one who has undergone a dramatic shift in perception, for me a long process
rather than a sudden awakening, but total, nonetheless.
And that shift in perception was for me a miracle, a miracle of resurrection and it
has been transforming,
And it has made me out of step again as surely as I was as a child and youth.
The shift came from meeting Jesus again for the first time, as Marcus Borg would
say.
It was a Palm Sunday, April 15, 1984, when I preached a sermon entitled “Jesus,
You Are Really Something!” It was the beginning of an encounter with the
humanity of Jesus, disentangling him from the high Christological doctrines that
the Church created in those early centuries as they lost the real human being – a
loss which turned him into a savior figure, removing from him the prophetic edge
that threatened Imperial Rome and got him crucified.
As has been characteristic of my journey, the progress was slow, but with each
returning Lent I felt more sharply the disparity between the way of Jesus and the
way we follow him. Slowly but surely, I knew to follow him would put me out of
step again because as I was being sensitized to the practical implications for
Christian faith and political commitment, religion and politics in this nation were
moving to the right and the contrast with the agenda of Jesus as I have come to
understand it grows ever more sharp. And, frankly, it is painful. So much about
the political agenda of the nation troubles me; so much about most of the Church
embarrasses me.
And it is because the shift in perception caused by encountering Jesus in his
humanity transformed me, changed me – it was a miracle of resurrection
because, you see, the really critical miracle is not some past event, but present
transformation through a shift in perception.
That is the Easter miracle.
Emmaus never happened.
Emmaus always happens.
Jesus arose in the conscious awareness of those who had been his community. In
the love he embodied they met the Ultimate Mystery, the Sacred Mystery which is
the final truth in whom we live and move and have our being.
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
And that means Love is the Final Truth, Love by which every religious institution,
every political agenda, every social program is to be judged, because Love
expresses the Grain of the Universe, the Cosmic intention. And Love just will not
give up.
Love – not sentimental sweetness, but tough, strong, marked by integrity,
committed to the well-being of the other, refusing to respond in violence, taking
the consequences.
Let me be clear; the Love of which I speak, the Love embodied in the flesh of
Jesus, in his concrete behavior, is not some sentimental sweetness. It was Love
that stood up against injustice, that protested human exploitation by religiopolitical systems and structures, that broke down social-religious barriers that
excluded. It was non-violent Love, but not passive; Jesus’ protest was concrete
resistance which provoked and elicited reaction. And then, most amazing, a Love
that received into itself the lethal consequences without hostile response; indeed,
purveying grace and forgiveness to the end. It was such Love concretely lived out
that put its stamp on the Jesus community.
From one of the early Christian communities we get the Fourth Gospel and the
Letters of John. It was the Gospel that told the story of Jesus as “The Word
became flesh” (John 1:14) – the central Christian affirmation of Incarnation,
Jesus, the human as the embodiment of God. In the First Letter of John that
theme is picked up. Listen to the concreteness of the experience:
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched
with our hands concerning the word of life.
In chapter 4, the writer says it straight out:
God is love.
And later he writes,
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and
God’s love is perfected in us.…God is love, and those who abide in love
abide in God, and God abides in them.
To see that is a shift in perception; it is the Easter miracle; it is transforming.
The natural sciences probe the vast expanse of outer space and the amazing
mysteries of sub-atomic particles. Cosmology seeks to unravel the secrets of the
expanding universe and quantum physics the nature of energy fields in which
that universe swims – a Reality marked by chance and necessity, randomness
© Grand Valley State University
�Love That Just Won’t Give Up
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
and order. But, whatever its future unfolding in all its awesome splendor, the
Cosmic Process has issued in the likes of us who know in our deepest core that
Love is the Grain of the Universe, and that love lived out concretely brings to
fullest, richest expression our humanity reaching toward Global Community.
Out of step, on the edge of despair at the present abuse of power and failure to
protect the weakest members of the human community, I come to Easter; I
experience again the Miracle of Resurrection; I know the Ultimate Movement of
the Creative Spirit is toward the Light and the concretion of Love – and I believe
again.
This present darkness will overreach and implode – because Love just won’t give
up!
A shift in perception – Resurrection, the Easter Miracle – Change your minds!
Don’t yield to the darkness; Light will dawn; Love will prevail.
That is true as broadly as the cosmos. It is true for the global community. It is
true for this community –
But I cannot conclude without acknowledging that for some, perhaps for many,
the darkness and pain is more personal – where you live with those you love, or
those you have lost. Your own hurt is so deep you cannot begin to worry about the
global community or the nation or even this community in transition. Perhaps
Easter is just too bright; your pain just too deep.
Although you cannot take it in, let me nonetheless affirm that the cloud will lift,
the darkness dissipate, and healing will ensue because Love just won’t give up.
Let this Easter morning be a reassurance for you – Love will never give up. And
we will make that love as tangible as this community in its embrace of you.
In these moments, open your heart to the new being Love creates, a shift in
perception; the Easter Miracle which is transforming. And finally, know that
All will be well,
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
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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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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1981-2014
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Event
Easter
Scripture Text
Luke 24:13-17, 28-35, I John 1:1-4, 4:7-8, 12, 16
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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2005-03-27
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Love That Just Won't Give Up
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Richard A. Rhem
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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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Text
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 27, 2005 entitled "Love That Just Won't Give Up", on the occasion of Easter, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 24:13-17, 28-35, I John 1:1-4, 4:7-8, 12, 16.
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application/pdf
Easter
Transforming Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a3d167580a2b4fbd3b891cede40ca63f.mp3
61c56323c15b6aef64c25f5f9214ef16
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ee907204a827dc5a7bf8dae933aa7d57.pdf
11cb31aea340c82b2fbd85a5c04dd612
PDF Text
Text
Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Easter Sunday, The Festival of the Resurrection
Scripture: I Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-50; John 20:11-18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 31, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
We have come a long way in a few weeks. If you have been journeying with us,
with Jesus on the Road Less Traveled, we have been in some dark environments,
and we have felt the heaviness increasing until Thursday evening, the night in
which he was betrayed, and Friday noon, the crucifixion. It has been a long way,
and in a post-9/11 world, we have felt it more poignantly, perhaps, than at any
time that I can remember. In the darkness, as it concluded, the end of the
journey, we heard the mixed messages, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?”, "Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit," and now here we
are on Easter Sunday morning once again, amid the flowers in all of their beauty,
and the flickering candles, the magnificent music, and this setting of Easter
worship.
Is it too bright too soon? Do you ever feel that? Just too bright too soon to move
out of that darkness into the splendor of this moment - is it simply too quick a
transition? One of our families who faithfully worshiped throughout Lent and
entered very, very thoughtfully into that journey with Jesus told me they came
Thursday night but wouldn't be here this morning because they simply couldn't
move that quickly out of the darkness and into the light. I respect that. I feel that
somewhat myself. For, what are we celebrating this morning? What has brought
us from that somber and sobering darkness into this beautiful moment? What is
Easter, after all? What is it all about?
A simple answer which the Church has given down through the centuries, of
course, is that obvious answer. Jesus died in order that I might live. Jesus died to
open heaven's gate. He lives and now we, too, shall live. Easter is about
resurrection. Easter is about that movement from life through death to life
eternal. And certainly, that is no insignificant movement and that is no
insignificant realization, particularly if, as we celebrated here yesterday, we
experience the life of one loved and lost a while. Not an insignificant affirmation
if one receives a terminal diagnosis and knows that one's days are numbered. And
so, in no way do I want to say that promise of Easter, that Christian hope is
without deep meaning and great significance.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But, think with me for a moment about that. Is that really what Easter is all
about? Is Easter really all about the assurance to Richard Rhem that, at the point
of his death, he need fear no darkness, for the light will dawn? I mean, what
about all of the history that we have been traversing together? What about the
journey of Jesus into the darkness of his day which seems to be replicated all too
well in the post-September 11 world when Jerusalem is burning, when Hindu and
Muslim are massacring each other, when the globe trembles with the anguish
that has it in its grip. Is it really enough to say that Easter is about my personal,
ultimate, eternal life? We've done that in the Church, of course. We have made
that promise, and again it is not insignificant, but do you feel my question? Isn't
there something more? Aren't we brushed into a broader canvas? Isn't there
another story going on?
My own personal existence is one thing, but what about the whole cosmic
movement of 15 billion years? What about the course of human history? What
about this creature that we are who comes to consciousness and to awareness and
who gives society and culture and civilizations? What about the vast canvas of
human history? What about the awesomeness of creation? What about the
human possibility, the human experiment? Isn't there more to it than whether or
not I live and die and live again? Isn't that a narrow focus compared to the
broader question? Haven't we missed what Jesus was all about?
Let me suggest to you this morning that perhaps Easter is about human
transformation. Maybe Easter is about social transformation. Maybe Easter is
about a dawning awareness of something new. Maybe Easter is about the
transformation of the world. Maybe all of that in which Jesus was engaged and all
of the struggle and the anguish of the human community is reflective of
something deeper and something more, and maybe the followers of Jesus in the
wake of his death had something dawn upon them that said, "My God! He lives!"
Resurrection and the nature of it has been debated and discussed from the
beginning. Peter read the lessons, Paul's long 15th chapter of I Corinthians. The
Corinthians were Greeks, somewhat philosophically inclined, and there were
those who were saying there was no resurrection, and Paul said, if there is no
resurrection, I have no message to preach, your faith is vain, our preaching is
empty, nothing has happened then if there is no resurrection. But, when he got to
try to explain what in the world resurrection was, Paul didn't know any more
than you do. Did you hear the torturous way he was arguing about that
resurrection? In fact, he starts off that one paragraph by saying, "You fool!"
That’s the kind of thing we do with one another when we're not sure, raise our
voice, get shrill. Paul didn't know what he was talking about, of course. He
certainly wasn't talking about corpuscles. He wasn't talking about a physical
body. I thought some years ago I mentioned that Easter certainly wasn't about
the resuscitation of a corpse. I really thought everybody understood that by now,
but not everybody did. It ruined a few Easters, I think.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
But, you know, if you just hear Paul, he says flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God. What is buried is perishable; what comes forth is imperishable.
He talks about a physical body and a spiritual body and, frankly, Paul is going
around in circles because it's not about corpuscles for Paul, because Paul was on
his horse and on his way to Damascus and the light knocked him off his horse
and he had a vision of the ascended Lord and there were no corpuscles there. He
had to go into the city and sit there in the darkness for a while and think about it.
And what happened to Paul after his resurrection experience was a
transformation, an absolute transformation and he was turned around in his
tracks. He began to think differently and he became passionate about something
of which he could never have dreamed.
John's Gospel, written some six decades after the event, John who is dealing with
people who have no possibility of any kind of encounter with the corpuscular
Christ, tells the story of Mary and she recognizes Jesus. And of course, in the
story, she wants to grab him and he says, "Don't hold me, Mary." Well, John is
simply saying, isn't he, that this thing is not about bodies? Or, Thomas who
missed the Easter Sunday night service, shame on him. And when he's told about
the fact that Jesus was there, he says, "I don't believe it. I won't believe it unless I
can put my finger in the wounded hand." And then the next Sunday night he was
in church and, without coming through a door, no corpuscles there, Jesus - a
hand, a wounded hand without corpuscles, can you believe it? There you are,
Thomas. Well, Thomas doesn't need to touch the hand, because Thomas
suddenly sees something and he says, "My Lord and my God."
It is about transformation of understanding, about seeing something, and John
writing six decades after the event has to deal with people whose only hope is to
be able to believe it without handling it. As a matter of fact, it's not about
handling it. It is about finally understanding it, it is finally to see what came to
expression when the word became flesh. What was embodied in that life? That is
the point - what came to expression, what was the story, what was that initial
impulse of the Jesus story that led to the Jesus movement that caused people
after his crucifixion to say, "The Lord is risen." Wasn't it that they began to see
that in this human one, this human being, God was revealed? So, God is revealed
as human. So, human beings are called to be human. And in these past weeks I
have suggested that we, contrary to what we assume, are not human, we're
advanced primates. But then someone suggested to me that that is a slander on
the monkey world. Monkeys don't behave as poorly as we do. But, you get the
point.
The point is that Jesus embodied something - some truth and beauty and grace
flowed through that flesh, and they saw it, and he was crucified, and they were
crushed, and they said, "Oh, but he lives!" What lives is what he embodied. What
lives is that which he represented. What lives is what he incarnated. God lives.
God's intention lives.
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Easter is about human transformation. Easter is about seeing something. Easter
is "Aha! I understand." Easter is Jesus getting through.
Sometime or other in the past I put aside this little sheet, thinking some Easter
I'd need a message. I came across it recently going through a lot of old materials,
and it talks about an imaginal cell, from imagination. An imaginal cell. It is about
caterpillars and butterflies. You know, the butterfly is the symbol of Easter par
excellence, the transformation. Well, this paragraph talks about imaginal cells.
Let us compare our situation with a metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a
butterfly.
When the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, imaginal disks begin to appear.
These disks embody the blueprint of the butterfly yet to come. All of the
disks are a natural part of the caterpillar's evolution. Its immune system
recognizes them as foreign and tries to destroy them. But, as the disks
arrive faster and begin to link up, the caterpillar's immune system breaks
down and its body begins to disintegrate. And when the disks mature and
become imaginal cells, they form themselves into a new pattern, thus
transforming the disintegrating body of the caterpillar into the butterfly.
The breakdown of the caterpillar's old system is essential for the
breakthrough of the new butterfly. Yet, in reality, the caterpillar neither
dies nor disintegrates, for from the beginning its hidden purpose was to
transform and be reborn as a butterfly.
What a magnificent analogy. What a beautiful picture. Imaginal cells. Someone
named them imaginal cells. I'd love to know the zoologist who did that. I'd love to
know why he/she called them imaginal cells. Those are cells that, coming out of
the egg, the caterpillar carries with it, and they lie dormant in the caterpillar for a
period of time until they begin to make their move and then eventually, in the
transformation, they become the imaginal cells. Are they not the cells, perhaps,
that imagined the butterfly? And imagining the butterfly, eventually the butterfly
becomes the reality of the caterpillar.
Imagination, you know, is one of the great human faculties, and we have
denigrated it by saying, "Oh, it’s only your imagination." Nonsense. Those who
study the human person say the imagination may be that very place where the
Spirit of God has the opportunity of imprinting the human mind. The
imagination can take human language and create a whole new reality, because
when we tell our stories, we create a new reality. Reality is language embodied,
and the imagination is that faculty by which we can dream of something that has
never been.
And what if all of the anguish and all of the travail of the present - what if Hindu
and Muslim at each other's throat, what if the Arab world in all of its anger and
its terror against us, what if Palestinian and Israeli, what if all of the shaking of
the foundations in this present day is the travail and the birth pangs of a whole
new world of which we have not yet dreamed? What if Easter is that indomitable
© Grand Valley State University
�Just Imagine: The Real Miracle of Easter
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
human hope, because of that creative spirit within us that keeps pushing us to
imagine another way of being, a different reality, a transformed world? What if
Easter is about the dawning awareness of that which has never been, except in
the intention of God? What if Easter is about something we've not yet dreamed of
and even now is underway?
Just imagine! That's the miracle of Easter.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:50, John 20:17, 29
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20020331
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2002-03-31
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Just Imagine - The Real Miracle of Easter
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
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Sound
Text
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application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 31, 2002 entitled "Just Imagine - The Real Miracle of Easter", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:50, John 20:17, 29.
Easter
Inclusivism
Transformation
-
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PDF Text
Text
The Truth That Will Not Die
Easter Sunday
Psalm 82; I Corinthians 15:12-29; Matthew 27:50-54
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 23, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Have you ever wondered where the idea of resurrection came from, where the
thought arose? Actually, I suppose the question which is given classic form in the
Hebrew drama of Job says it well: "If one die, will one live again?" That question
probably arose in the very dawning beginnings of the human experience, the
beginning of consciousness, self-consciousness, consciousness of myself and
consciousness of another, and the beginnings of human relationship, and then
one day the breath goes out of the other, the spirit leaves and there is death, and
the mystery of death would eventually cause a thoughtful, human consciousness
to say, "If one dies, will one live again?" What is this mystery of life and of death?
But, actually, that endemic, human question has nothing to do, really, with
resurrection. Resurrection finds its birth, its advent in Second Temple Judaism,
the late centuries just before the birth of Jesus. Actually, the Torah, the five books
of Moses, knows nothing of resurrection or deals at all with whatever there may
be in life beyond this life. The common phrase is, "And he was gathered to his
fathers," which I suppose was an expression of trusting at death as one had
trusted God in life. But the situation of the Jewish people in Judah became severe
due to the brutality of the Roman occupation and, prior to that, the persecution
under the Syrian empire of Antiochus IV. Those awful experiences in the first
couple of centuries before the birth of Jesus created a growing conviction that
those righteous martyrs who suffered because of their faithfulness to God, who
died because of their commitment to the covenant, would surely rise again. It
wasn't the Greek immortality of the soul, an ongoing existence of the soul, but it
was a bodily resurrection that was conceived of, and it was a bodily resurrection
because in the body they had suffered, and the body had been put to death, and
those experiencing that brutality, experiencing the loss of the righteous martyrs,
began to speak of resurrection, a general resurrection when the righteous martyrs
would come forth from the grave, bodily.
What gave them the idea? The idea stems from the fact that the God of Israel is a
God of justice, and in the face of persecution and suffering and the loss of these
faithful ones, the question was asked: If God is just, will they not come forth
© Grand Valley State University
�The Truth That Will Not Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
again, for their life was cut short, their life was cut off? It is in that context that
the idea of a bodily resurrection or the resurrection of the dead emerged. And
again, it emerged not primarily because of the martyrs, but primarily because of
the conception of God.
Psalm 82 was read today. It is as though Israel's God holds a council of all the
gods of the nations and God charges them with the failure to bring justice to the
world, and God dismisses them and says, "Your time is over because you have
failed to effect justice on the earth and, consequently, the very foundations of the
earth are shaken." It was the Psalmist's conviction, reflecting a deep strain of
Jewish faith that justice must prevail and where there is injustice, creation itself
is brought into instability, and so the 82nd Psalm dismisses the gods of the
nations for their failure and ends with a prayer to the God of Israel, "Come, 0
Lord, and judge the world, judge the nations, bring judgment, bring justice to
bear." This was the deep conviction of Israel; it was the character of Israel's God
and, consequent upon that, these righteous ones who died for their faith could
not simply be left dead.
There is a theme in the Hebrew Scriptures which is repeated over and over again.
It is the theme of persecution and vindication. It is a very strong theme that one
can trace through the Psalms and through the prophets. Persecution, vindication,
with vindication taking place in this life, in this world. It was to be a vindication
before the enemies. Daniel is thrown into the lions' den for his faithfulness, and
God stops the mouth of the lion and saves Daniel. Queen Esther rescues her
people from a conspiracy to bring them to annihilation and the adversary. The
enemy is judged and brought to ruin. That theme of persecution and vindication
ran strong in the Hebrew scriptures because of the conviction that God was God
and God was good and God was just, and God was the living God and,
consequently, God could not tolerate that kind of situation to go unmarked.
There is the origin of the idea of the resurrection of the body.
What will we do with it today? You found a piece of it already in Matthew's
Gospel that was read. At the death of Jesus, people come out of their tombs. Now,
Matthew had a little problem. He's obviously putting a couple of traditions
together and it doesn't really make sense, to be honest, because they come out of
the tomb at the death of Jesus but they have to sort of sneak around in the bushes
until Sunday morning because they can't perceive Jesus. They show themselves at
the resurrection, but they come out of the tombs at the crucifixion, and that is a
reflection of this idea that's deeply written in those centuries just prior to Jesus'
death, that the righteous ones would certainly be vindicated by God.
But, what will we do with it? Paul assumed that with Jesus' resurrection the final,
general resurrection would follow very soon. Everything seemed to hinge on that
for Paul and, of course, as we know, it has not yet come 2000 years later. So,
what do we do 2000 years later with this wonderful conception of the justice of
God causing the vindication of the righteous dead?
© Grand Valley State University
�The Truth That Will Not Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Well, the world is a lot bigger for us than it was for the writers of the scripture.
We know that we are engaged in a cosmic process of some 15 billion years. We
know that we are the end products of that 15-billion year unfolding and that we
live at the very fraction of the last second of that whole process. We know that we
are quite amazing. We are, you know. Here we are on an Easter Sunday morning
contemplating together our life, our existence, our death, and if there's anything
more. Spirit has emerged and the human has become a spiritual being living in
community, and what a wonder is this human existence. What a gift. What a
marvel it is to encounter, here and there, the grace of life.
There was a moment here last night as the Easter Vigil finished. It was rather
chaotic with flowers all over the place, and there was a child barely a year old,
Meika, whose mother brought her and sat her right here, on the steps of the
chancel. She sat there like a little queen, with a long-stemmed tulip across her
lap, and her picture was taken. I suppose that Nancy got that picture, too, and it
will be on the bulletin board one of these days. A beautiful child.
Have you ever stopped to wonder in the face of a child? Have you ever stopped to
wonder in the face of the other in whom love dwells? Do we take time to be aware
of the marvel of the human story? What are we going to do with this story that we
are living and that we are experiencing? I rather think that in the Christian
church what we have done with resurrection is move it from that vindication of
the suffering righteous to simply life at another place and another time. I think
we have lost that corporate community sense in which the justice of God was
called in on behalf of those who died for their faith and we have made it our own
personal excursion into some realms beyond and, in so doing, we have lost its
footage. In so doing, we have lost the message that it was initially meant to
convey.
But, what are we going to do with it? What of Job's question, for it's your
question and mine, as well: "If a man die, will he live again?"
I don't think we can treat it the way the biblical writers did in terms of expecting
God, somehow or another, to come in and "fix it." Could we dare hope for that?
Expect that, after the Holocaust when the heavens were silent and God unmoved
to action? Have we not learned in our human experience that the God of Israel is
the God of justice who, in response to our question, "How long, 0 Lord, how
long?"says to us, "How long, O people, how long?" Are we not called to the
transformation of the world?
You see, if we make resurrection just some personal excursion into the realms
beyond after death, if we wait somehow or other for God to move the gears of the
universe, then another Holocaust could occur. But, if we could only get a sense
that the justice of God that came to expression in that Hebrew prophet Jesus is
about world transformation and that God looks for us to change our world, then
we could live fully. We could be totally engaged; we could love wildly, and we
could give ourselves for the transformation of our world and, living fully, trusting
© Grand Valley State University
�The Truth That Will Not Die
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
God, we could die well after a life full of meaning, full of significant engagement.
And then, who is to say -after fifteen billion years - are we the climax of it all?
Would that not be an arrogant assertion? Fifteen billion years and here we are, in
the wonder of life, in the amazement of grace, in the beauty of human
community. But, who knows? Who knows what yet may be? Who would say that
this is all there is?
In the light of the God of Jesus, the Jesus who embodied the God of justice, the
God of Israel, I can live with meaning and significance now, and die in peace, full
of hope, full of trust... waiting for just one more surprise.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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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
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
Psalm 82, I Corinthians 15:12-29, Matthew 27:50-54
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-20000423
Date
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2000-04-23
Title
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The Truth That Will Not Die
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 23, 2000 entitled "The Truth That Will Not Die", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 82, I Corinthians 15:12-29, Matthew 27:50-54.
Easter
Justice
Resurrection
Spirit
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ebf8372ced3741e2f5179ad43a9607e2.pdf
7b83dbc41ee9e14e7c25455219585b08
PDF Text
Text
Dream On!
From the sermon series: The Dream
Text: Acts 10:34-35
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 16, 1995
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Throughout these long weeks, if you've walked this way with me, you've heard me
say repeatedly that dreamers die. And that's a sad and tragic fact. Dreamers die.
But, we've also discovered as we've looked at the dreamers that the dream, the
vision, doesn't die. The dream doesn't die because the dream is rooted in the
heart of God, and Jesus gave expression to that dream. Being confident that he
was expressing the deepest intention of God, Jesus dreamed of another kind of
world. Jesus dreamed of another kind of society. Jesus dreamed of a world that
was a community, that was laced with compassion, a community that had no
barriers, so that there was no inside and outside. There was no inclusion and
exclusion. There were no lines drawn, but rather, a circle that embraced all God's
children. This was Jesus' dream. And Jesus brought that dream to expression in a
way that brought him to death, but in a way that has also enabled us to continue
to dream on.
If I were to ask you what was the central symbol of Jesus' ministry, what would
you say? Well, I suppose because we're a part of the Christian community, you
would say, obviously, the Cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith. And
that's true. But it's also not true that the Cross is the central symbol of the life and
ministry of Jesus in the days of his flesh. You know what it was? It was the Table.
Table fellowship. You've heard me say many times in these past weeks, Jesus'
ministry was marked by table fellowship. The meal was central in the ministry of
Jesus. That sounds so innocent. It sounds almost innocuous. That doesn't really
sound like something substantial enough to be the central symbol of the whole
life and ministry of Jesus. Let me see if I can establish that from the scripture
itself.
Jesus had a vision of a different kind of world, a world in which there was no
division, in which there were erected no barriers, and so in his life and his
culture, for him to have a meal and to invite all comers was a radical statement. It
was a statement of social protest. It was a political action. It was a religious act. It
challenged the structure of the society of his day that was reinforced by the
temple cult and was guaranteed by the occupying Roman power. That society was
© Grand Valley State University
�Dream On!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
structured; there were custodians of the tradition; there were guardians of the
law. They were the responsible and the respectable people of the society of which
he was a part. They were all invested in that system that was able to demarcate
very carefully who was in and who was out, who was pure and who was impure,
who was given access, who was excluded. And for Jesus to have a meal with just
anyone was, therefore, an action of protest.
You might say, "Well, still, a table? A meal? Is this whole thing about with whom
one eats?" And I want to say, "Yes." Because social protest and prophetic actions
are that which become catalysts for transformation. You see, it was no big deal
when Rosa Parks sat down in the front seat of a bus in Alabama. No big deal: just
one black woman. Why didn't they simply disregard it? Why didn't they just let
her have her nickel's ride and be done with it? But, you see, they couldn't. That is,
those who were invested in maintaining the status quo of a society that was
oppressive, of a society that was not founded in truth, of a society that denied the
dream in the heart of God. For Rosa Parks to sit there had to be dealt with, or the
whole system would become exposed. And isn't that precisely what happened?
Was not that the action that became the catalyst for the whole Civil Rights
Movement? Was it not then Martin Luther King who paid with his life, who led
that people to call for their own rights and dignity in the human story? Just a
black woman who sat in the front of the bus. Social action of protest, when the
time is right and the Spirit of God moves, can change the world.
Ask Robert McNamara. I really don't want to do a commercial for his book but
Robert McNamara in a vibrant old age reflects, in retrospect, on the 60's. Do you
remember the 60's? Well, some of you are young enough to have been a part of
the 60's. And some of us are old enough to have been very angry with you! Wasn't
it during the 60's that the world started to unravel? Wasn't it during the 60's,
with flower children and hippies and young people marching on campuses,
marching at the White House, and the Vietnam protest – wasn't that the time
that our society began to unravel, to deteriorate, to degenerate? Aren't all of our
problems now because there were some of you in the 60's who sat in and
protested and maybe burned things? I think so. That's the problem, you see. In
McNamara's book you'll see an elder statesman who looks back on the 60's, who
in his interview with tears in his eyes, says, "I was wrong. We were wrong. Those
of us that stood in the center of power, we were wrong. We were full of arrogance
and pride so that we would not hear logical argument. We would not hear ethical
appeal." And so now, in his vibrant old age, a very comfortable Robert McNamara
says, "I was wrong. And we were wrong."
I want to say, folks, they were wrong. And the kids are often right. Those of us
who are settled and steeped and stuffy and stultifying - it is we who maintain
repressive structures. It is we who defend with self-righteousness that which is,
maintaining the status quo in a world that knows no justice and has no
compassion and is not at all a community. We support and reinforce and
perpetuate a world that continues to kill the dreamers.
© Grand Valley State University
�Dream On!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Robert McNamara justifies his not criticizing Lyndon Johnson when he left in
'67, though he himself was coming to understand that the war was wrong,
because of protocol. This is what the good and the proper and those in power do they don't say anything. Unless you're a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and then you raise
your voice, then you act, then you see your government going in the wrong
direction. You see the powers that be leading the world toward destruction and
death, then you take your stand. You do your political thing; you act and you give
your life.
Jesus did what appears to be almost an innocuous, non-threatening, simple act setting a table and sitting with all sorts of people. And it is that action that is the
very center of his ministry, which is the expression of a dream that could change
the world. If you don't believe me, this afternoon take the Gospel of Luke and find
that, more than any other activity, Jesus is at meal. He is at meal with sinners. He
goes with those who invite him. He's going through a tax office one time and
there is Levi, and he says to Levi, a tax collector who was on the outside, "Follow
me." And the guy follows him, and Levi is so thrilled about it that he throws a
party, and whom do you think he invited to his party? Others just like himself.
And the leaders, the guardians, those who were invested in establishing and
maintaining the status quo, grumbled at him. They said, "Look with whom he
eats." If you go again to the 15th chapter of Luke, you will find that he was eating
and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, and they grumbled at him, and he
told a story - The Prodigal Son - which is really the story of the waiting father who
waits simply weeping, watching, hoping, eagerly anticipating the return of all his
children. That beautiful story comes because Jesus was eating with those with
whom one ought not to eat. And in response to the grumbling, he told the story.
Or, if you would go to the 14th chapter, you would find that he was willing, as
well, to sit at table with the Pharisees, those who were devout and serious and
deeply concerned and, when he sat there at table with them, he saw that they
were vying for the top seats, for the best seat in the house. And he said, "Don't do
that. In fact, when you have a feast, don't invite your friends and your relatives,
don't invite the rich; invite the poor and the lame and the halt and the blind.
Invite the people that'll never have a chance in the world to pay you back."
And someone said, "Oh, my, wouldn't it be wonderful to break bread in the
Kingdom of Heaven?" Jesus said, "You know what? The Kingdom of Heaven is
resisted by those who have obviously received the invitation." And so, he tells the
story of the lord of the house who sends his servants out into the highways and
into the byways, out in the bush, out in the street, and he said, "Find the riff-raff
of society and tell them to come in, compel them to come in because I want my
house filled!"
You think that the table wasn't central to Jesus? Do you think that was not the
central prophetic act by which he embodied the dream, which was a dream
rooted in the heart of God? That was it, you see? And throughout that Gospel,
© Grand Valley State University
�Dream On!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
he's always eating, drinking with somebody. He gathered with his disciples on the
night on which he was betrayed, when the shadow of the cross hung heavily over
him, and he took bread and he blessed it and he broke it and he said to them,
"This is my body, and when you eat bread, remember me, and don't let the dream
die." Is it any wonder, then, that on Easter eve the risen Lord, joining two
disciples on the way to Emmaus, invited to come into their house as a guest,
proved to be the host at the table, who took the bread and blessed it and broke it
and shared it with them and was gone?
Then they looked at each other! They said, "Did not our hearts burn within us?
Oh, my God!" They said to each other, "He was made known to us in the breaking
of the bread." It was in the breaking of the bread. Because that, Luke says, was
the link, the hinge. The dream goes on, Jesus was saying. Luke was saying in
telling the story - all those meals back there - they're not over! The meals
continue to be the symbolic moment at which the world becomes community.
And Jesus on the evening of the Resurrection once again came to table, broke
bread, blessed it, gave it to them, and he was known to them. His presence, his
power, his transforming, dreaming power was known to them in the moment of
the breaking of the bread.
The Gospel of Luke was written by Luke and so was the Book of Acts, and if you
move on to the Book of Acts, you find that the Jesus movement was characterized
by community, a community of the Holy Spirit, a community in which there was
no human need; every need was ministered to. We are told that they went from
house to house, breaking bread, singing hymns with great joy! That was what it
was all about! It was about table fellowship! A meal that was the symbol of
community laced with compassion.
And if you want one more instance, there's old Peter. Peter would have thought
that he understood. But, as a matter of fact, Peter didn't have a clue as to the
dramatic dimensions of the dream. So, one noontime on a rooftop, he fell asleep
and had a vision of a sheet or something like a magic carpet coming down and
there were all sorts of animals. In the temple system that was a social system and
a political system, as well, they knew which animals they could eat and which
animals they weren't to eat. And the voice said, "Rise and eat." And Peter said,
"Not me. I am a Jew. I stick to the tradition. I am observant. I have been obedient
to the fathers of the faith. I have followed every prescription. No, I will not rise
and eat." And a voice said, "Rise and eat." And Peter said, "I cannot." And the
voice said, "Don't call unclean what I've made clean." And just then there was a
knock on the door and there was a delegation from Cornelius, the Roman
centurion, a military man from the occupying power, a Gentile, one from the
nations. There were two kinds of people in Peter's world - Jews and those who
were not Jews. The Chosen, the elect, the community, and the rest. Now here's
one from the rest!
© Grand Valley State University
�Dream On!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
And behold, this guy is a dreamer, too, because when Peter finally cannot resist
and goes to Cornelius' house, Cornelius tells him of a dream. He saw a bright and
shining angel and the angel said, "Your prayers are heard. Your alms are
received." Here's one from the outside whose prayer God hears, whose offerings
God receives, and is blessed now with the presence of none other than Peter, and
Peter says, "I shouldn't be here. This is against the catechism, against the Bible;
this is against everything I've ever been taught; this is against the tradition. I am
breaking the tradition. In breaking the tradition and going over this threshold,
the whole tradition is shattered!" But he did it. And he told them the story of
Jesus. He told of Jesus' mighty deeds and all that he did, and how he was
crucified and raised and made manifest. And the Holy Spirit fell with power and
they were drunk with God together! Peter, the Jew, follower of Jesus and Gentiles
- they were all drunk with God together.
Ah, do you believe me? The Table. This central motif for our life, this central
image for the ministry of Jesus. To follow the way of Jesus is to take up the cross
by embodying a ministry of inclusivity.
Do you remember where we started in Lent? The first week, also around the
Table? You remember, the meditation was "Retrieving the Memory: A Dangerous
Dream." Do you remember that I pointed to the Table and I said, "Dear friends,
there are Tables in Christian churches to which I'm not welcome." Do you
remember? The Table, which Jesus used as a central symbol of community, has
become in the Christian Church, a symbol of division. When the World Council of
Churches tried to celebrate Holy Communion for the first time in Sweden, in the
50's, they could not have just one Table. The World Council of Churches had to
set up three Tables. Some went to one room and some went to another room, and
some went to yet another room!
I want to ask you, where are you activists of the 60's? Why do you tolerate it?
Why do we allow the Church and its ecclesiastical leaders, its arrogance, its
dogmatism, its blindness, why do we allow it to go on? This Table, this Table that
Jesus set in the middle of the world, inviting all, this Table has become once
again the instrument of the old temple cult! This Table says to some, "You may
come." And to others, "You're not welcome!" It is a scandal! A scandal of the
Christian Church! And if there's a scandal in the Church, there's a scandal in the
world of religions. Japan is on the alert because the fundamentalist Buddhist cult
may attack again. And there are Israelis grieving because Muslin fundamentalists
have once again struck with their terrorism, killing, killing. And tomorrow we
may read of the retaliation of the Jewish fundamentalists, and we will read, as
well, of the violent actions of American fundamentalist Christians.
The scandal of the world of religion that has made this world dangerous, filled
with violence, doing precisely that which denies the dream of Jesus, which he
believed was rooted in the heart of God, that there be no inside and outside, no
exclusion and inclusion. There is a scandal of those who, in the name of God,
© Grand Valley State University
�Dream On!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
while saying their prayers to God, continue to play God, saying who is in and who
is out! It is a disgrace!
But, it's Easter. And when we have admitted that scandal in the Church and in the
world of religion, then let me go on to say that today is a bonus. You see, it was in
the breaking of the bread that they recognized him and knew his presence. It was
Luke's way of saying that now, post-Easter, the living Lord will be made known in
the breaking of the bread. It was Luke's way of saying that this feast is not really a
feast that focuses on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. There is no day in all
the Christian year when it is so important to celebrate this feast, which is really a
feast, not of crucifixion, but of resurrection. This is a feast that says, Dream on!
I know that there are those of you who are celebrating your first Easter since
having loved and lost a while someone so dear. And right now you can't even
think about the scandal in the Church or the scandal in the world of religion.
Your heart breaks because of the loss you've sustained. But let me be very clear the Lord lives. We, too, shall live. And those who have moved through death have
passed into light eternal. And for them all is well. All is well.
But for us, the presence, the recognition, the manifestation of the living Lord
does not come as we passively try to get through unscathed, hoping for heaven by
and by. This is the insight of Bonhoeffer - for us who are still on the way, though
we take up this cross, it is at this Table that we follow Jesus. And it is in the
following of Jesus, living out the dream, embodying the dream that paradoxically
we find communion with God. This is what Bonhoeffer learned - it is in joining
God in His sufferings in the world that one finds oneself in the arms of God,
communion with God. Recognition of the living Christ who is crucified and raised
again - this comes to those who follow the dream, who follow the way, who walk
in the steps, who risk, who commit, who dream and will not quit dreaming until
the dream is realized in the eternal purposes of God.
Dream on, believing that Easter assures us that all will be well and all will be well,
and all manner of things will be well. Thanks be to God.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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c851d9247f23668272b4b4de99dd098a
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
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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.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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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
Easter
Series
The Dream
Scripture Text
Acts 10:34-35
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-0-19950416
Date
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1995-04-16
Title
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Dream On!
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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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 April 16, 1995 entitled "Dream On!", as part of the series "The Dream", on the occasion of Easter, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 10:34-35.
Community of Grace
Divine Intention
Easter
Inclusive
Table Fellowship
-
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4a3faedb739404c4559afe13101d7b09
PDF Text
Text
Embraced By the Light
Easter Sunday
Text: I Corinthians 15:54, 57; Psalms 116:8; Mark 16:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 3, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It’s good to celebrate the resurrection. This is not really a day for preaching. It’s a
day for witnessing to a wonderful truth. It’s a day for praising and praying and
singing and dancing. And the service is laced with all of that, and eventually we
will come to receive the tangible sign of God’s everlasting love as we take bread
and cup: an invitation to you to come to this table, for the Lord is risen, He is
risen indeed. And we celebrate in bread and cup that ongoing life of Christ that is
ours.
This is a day in which we celebrate the fact that we now and forever are
Embraced By The Light. The title of the message was intended to hook you if you
had been aware of this book Embraced By The Light, by Betty J. Eadie. This book
has sold in the thousands and, when I realized that it had become a phenomena
in our day, I thought, what better to do on Easter than simply to celebrate what is
celebrated in this book—the story of a near death experience and eternity being
packed into those few moments in which insights were learned and intuitions
were satisfied and fulfilled as Betty Eadie testifies to her grand tour of heaven,
her encounter with Jesus Christ, even her encounter with God.
Well, Embraced By The Light happens to be a phenomena in our day. The other
day I got an article, which Nancy cut out for me. It was from the Detroit Free
Press of a couple weeks ago entitled, “Spiritual Books Touch Many Readers”. She
knew that I was going to refer to that book, and this article speaks about that
book and Where Angels Walk and The Celestine Prophecy, and it goes on to
describe what has got to be a trend and probably a fad of rather large proportions
in our day of people who are witnessing to the fact that there is something deep
down in us that wants to know what lies beyond, whether there is something
more, or whether this is all there is. In last Sunday’s New York Times book
review, as I opened up to the back, I recognized that in terms of the hard cover
books that are out there, there is a fiction book The Celestine Prophecy, about an
ancient manuscript found in Peru that provides insight into achieving a fulfilling
life. That’s a novel. It’s number two in the fiction column. But in the non-fiction
column, number three is How We Die, a physician and surgeon reflecting on life’s
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
final chapter. Number one is Embraced By The Light. Forty-six weeks on the list.
Then, once the hard covers are out and you go to the paperbacks, some books just
keep selling. Here in the paperback best seller’s non-fiction is number one: Care
of the Soul, by Thomas Moore, whose latest book is on the other list number four
or five, Soul Mates . Number two, The Road Less Traveled, by Scott Peck with
which many of you are familiar, 542 weeks on the best seller list. How would you
like the royalties on that one? Number four, Where Angels Walk, by Joan
Wester-Anderson, stories about angelic interventions in human affairs.
Now folks, this is not The Christian Century or Christianity Today, this is The
New York Times Book Review list, and it evidences to the fact that there is a
widespread yearning in the human heart to pierce the veil and to determine an
answer to that primal question within us. Is this all there is? Or, is there
something more? There is a whole world out there beyond the parameters of the
organized church and institutional religion, people who perhaps long since have
given up on religion per se, but who cannot finally deny that question that in our
day has erupted again with a fury. What lies beyond the veil? Is there something
more? Or, is this all there is?
I began to look at that literature again; some of it I’ve had around for a long time.
It was 1970 when Elizabeth Kiebler-Ross the Swiss psychiatrist wrote her book on
death and dying, the consequence of interviewing terminally ill patients to see the
stages through which they went as they came to terms with the fact that they
would die. It was 1975 when another psychiatrist Raymond Moody wrote the
book Life After Life , documenting 150 cases of near death experiences, these out
of the body experiences, as Embraced By The Light tells Mary Eadie’s experience.
Then, I remembered that in 1983 at the University of Michigan I had listened to
the Catholic theologian, Hans Küng talk about “Eternal life?”—question mark—
with all of these questions: death?, and hell?, and heaven?, purgatory and
judgment?, etc. He begins with this near death experience and he examines that
and he’s writing an account from somewhere and it sounds a little bit like it could
have come out of Embraced By The Light , and I’m thinking where is Küng
getting this story, only to find, as I concluded the paragraphs that recount this
experience, that it was written by none other than the Greek philosopher Plato,
twenty-five hundred years ago in Book X of The Republic. As Küng points out,
you can document this from Indian philosophy and in religious writings from
ancient Egypt across the world, across the generations, universally—there is this
question. Is this all there is? Or is there something more?
Well, Easter is the day in which in the Christian church we bear witness to our
conviction that this is not all there is. But, rather, that the best is yet to be. On the
dawn of Easter morning when Christ arose, he became for us a light that
illumines our life backwards and forwards. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is
the heart of the Christian Gospel. We worship not only on Easter morning but
every first day of the week in celebration of that event. Every Sunday is a little
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Easter. It is the very heart and center of the Christian message. In Mark’s account
simply, “He is not here. He is risen.” St. Paul says, “Death is swallowed up in
victory. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
I don’t know whether the Psalmist had a near death experience or not. I am sure
they didn’t call it ‘clinically dead’ at that time, but he speaks about being
“enwrapped in the snares of the hades, of Sheol . . . the pangs of hell that hold
upon me,” he says. And then he praises God and says, “You have saved my eyes
from tears. My soul from death. My feet from falling.” So the Psalm is a Psalm of
praise in which he begins, “I love the Lord.” Well, who loves the Lord? The person
who has been touched deeply in the depths of their being, the person who has had
some life-transforming experience.
The Apostle Paul says, “I show you a mystery, and it is a mystery, it is a mystery
about which none of us know in terms of scientific verification. It’s not for
verifying. But the person who has had a deep experience finds themselves
transformed. I had wished that Betty Eadie had been a bit more modest. She
learned an awful lot in those moments. My goodness, what she learned! However,
she doesn’t know, and I don’t know, and you don’t know, but her life was
changed. Thank God, she used her experience in order to call people to kindness,
to say that ultimately all is love, and apart from love there is nothing.
Embraced By The Light, yes indeed! That’s the Easter message. That’s what we
celebrate today— the gospel of Jesus Christ is the Good News about life beyond
life, and both are important, and both perhaps should receive equal emphasis.
Life beyond life—this is the life—and the best is yet to be. That’s the story of
Easter. And as I reflect on that I recognize that the Church has this marvelous
message that the center of it is the Gospel, and that means Good News. Then I
realize that the whole world out there is so hungry, yearning for some answer,
some peek through the veil. And I say to myself, “If we have the Good News, and
if the world is longing for that news, why have we become so much the place of
bad news in the minds of so many of the human family? If the world is asking the
question and the heart of our faith is the answer, why . . . why has the Church
been identified with legalisms and moralisms and oughts and shoulds and musts?
Why has the Church been identified with the imposition of guilt and the
exploitation of that guilt with threat, with the fear of judgment and the possibility
of hell? Why? If Easter is our day, if it is the heart of our message, if this is the
question that finally will not be dissolved in the human mind and heart, then
must we not become once again a place of Good News?
A few years ago I coined a phrase for Christ Community, calling it “An alternative
to church as usual.” I’m wondering if we have to be even more radical than that?
The Christian tradition is a grand tradition, but with all of the baggage of the
Church that we get brushed with, perhaps it should be the “Unchurch,” like the
“Uncola,” so that we could separate ourselves from all of that that is so dark, so
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�Embraced by the Light
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
dismal, so miserable. I mean, the world longs to know this, but somehow or
other, the way we have packaged it, the message isn’t getting through. And what a
message it is. Look at Jesus. Look at that life. Just look at that life. We’ve gone
seriously through that life again in this Lenten season. What a life! What a man!
What integrity, what strength, what grace, what love! What a life! I can
understand that the writer of the fourth Gospel would say, “This is the way, this is
the truth, this is the life. No one will come to the Father except that way, with that
truth and that kind of a life.”
What a life . . . and what a death. Look at the shadow side of the whole human
condition, which comes to expression in the crucifixion of such a life. Then today,
what a story: He lives, not because of him, not because of any human possibility,
but because God will not give up, because God will not abandon creation, because
God will not let us go. There is life beyond life because it’s God’s gift, and God will
never quit.
This past week I visited the nursing homes where a number of our people live in
various states and conditions. I must say to you this morning, if you are young
and able bodied, doing well, prospects good, go ahead and deny the question or
nibble around the edges of a bit of cynicism, but if you would walk the halls of the
nursing homes with me, up and down the halls with me, you would see
concentrated in that place — what is the end of this human experience,
physically, biologically, physiologically. The question would press in upon you
and you would say then too, “Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?
My word to our dear people in nursing homes this week was simply this: This is
not the final stop. This is not the last chapter. Thank God Easter is coming, and
the best is yet to be. And, by God, I believe it! I believe it! Credo. That Latin word
that says I believe. I don’t know, but by God, I believe it!
© 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University
�
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1a214b40d478e0feea14ab0cc9174d52
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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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
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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
Easter Sunday
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:54, 57, Psalms 116:8, Mark 16:6
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-0-19940403
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-04-03
Title
A name given to the resource
Embraced by the Light
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 April 3, 1994 entitled "Embraced by the Light", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:54, 57, Psalms 116:8, Mark 16:6.
Easter
Love at the core of reality
Spiritual Quest
Transformation
-
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0de8f44af70f1f599749585a5301089e
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/993a0284743ca0a1602d753c2b69aca6.pdf
0740458f6bebd4bafcc47a5dc71499e2
PDF Text
Text
Observing Sabbath: Celebrating Grace and Freedom
From the series: The Sacramental Character of the Church
Text: Deuteronomy 5:15; Colossians 2:20
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost VI, July 19, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Remember that you were a slave ... and the Lord your God brought you out ...
Deuteronomy 5:15
If with Christ you died ... why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?
Colossians 2:20
The call to Israel to observe the Sabbath is contained within what we call the Ten
Commandments: the Law. Sometimes the first five books of the Old Testament
are called the Law. But that translation, “Law,” is really inaccurate in terms of
conveying how Israel received that teaching. Torah was the word. The first five
books were the Torah. Torah means “a way of life,” and Israel received that word
as a gracious gift of God, an invitation to fullness of life, a way in which life could
be lived most richly, and human potential realized most fully. But because the call
to observe Sabbath is in what we call the Ten Commandments, the Law, there has
always been that tendency among us to legalize that command as though it had a
kind of compelling compulsion about it that forced us into a ritual of servants and
we often failed, I think, to sense the gracious gift that was the Sabbath.
The original Ten Commandments, is in the book of Exodus, the 20th chapter.
There, as we noted last week, Israel was called to observe Sabbath in order to
recall week by week the creative act of God, in order to be reminded one day in
seven, in order to have their being permeated with the realization that the whole
world was alive with the life of God, to understand that the whole reality was to
be viewed as a sacrament, as a source of knowledge and a cause for worship, that
the world, what we call nature, the cosmic expanse, was to be received as a means
of grace.
It is only in the last couple of hundred years, in the wake of the Enlightenment,
that we have spoken about nature as something over against us and as a kind of
self-contained reality that could exist on its own. The breakthroughs in scientific
understanding and technological advance have tended to reduce nature to a
realm out there, as though it had independent status and was a self-contained
© Grand Valley State University
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existence. How many hours haven’t we argued fruitlessly about whether or not
there is such a thing as a miracle? Have you ever been in a heated discussion
about whether or not “prayer changes things?” I think that those very questions
are the wrong questions. They propose a model in which there is the whole realm
of nature, with God out there somewhere, having to break in. We speak of
intervention, breaking in, as though all of this kind of exists on its own and now
and then, on occasion, here and there, God drops in but, if God would be
involved, would impact, would influence, God must come as permeating, as
breathing in, as the life of the cosmos being the consequence of the breath of God.
“You breathe and give them life,” said the psalmist.
The last couple of hundred years in modern culture we have lost that sense of the
world as Sacramental. Israel was called to pause at the end of every week, to stop,
to look, to listen and to delight in creation as the gracious work of the good and
gracious God; to rest, to let go, to cease their ceaseless striving and struggle, their
desire to control and to manipulate; to give them a sense that they were not after
all indispensable for the sustaining of all things. God is quite able to keep the
planet in motion and the stars in the sky. God is beyond us; God is in us, with us
and in all things so that all things must become a Sacrament that points us to
God. To stop on Sabbath and smell the roses and luxuriate in the prodigal
goodness of God who made the world, whose intention is for us to live in the
world as if it were a Garden of Eden, a place of delight - that is the call of Sabbath.
In a wonderful essay entitled “On Common Prayer,” Catherine Madsen makes the
point that there is a holiness there - there! It is a given. She makes the point that
holiness, that otherness, is in us intimately, permeating every atom of our body.
God can’t abandon us. God is with us, in us, permeating the whole of reality,
holding all things together. And then she goes on to make this wonderful
connection to that sense of God that haunts us whether we name God or not. That
presence of God that permeates us whether we are conscious or not is that which
gives rise to unrest and the dream of redemption.
She writes that “there is something that loves you in the world. ...there is
something that loves you in the world.” A voice that speaks to you within, in the
worst despair, is not different than the voice that called the world into being.
What makes your body give off heat? It is the same fire that sleeps in the rocks
and is changed from light into matter by the plants. The fire that lights the sun
and the other stars. Holiness is there and there is “something out there in the
world that loves you,” and the world is a means of grace if we would pause to take
it in, to give heed, to pay attention with a kind of regular, rhythmic discipline.
Observance of the Sabbath – resting, pausing long enough to dream another
dream, and to allow our imagination to connect us with that which is not simply
beyond us but is woven into the very fabric of our being.
But that raises a question for us. There is something that loves you out there in
the world - how would one name that love? God created the heavens and the
© Grand Valley State University
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earth, and so nature is not some independent existence but is in-breathed by the
breath of God. But God is not only the God of our space, but the God of our time.
Israel was called to observe Sabbath in Exodus 20 to be reminded of the spatial
dimension of its home in God. But in the second giving of the Law, in the book of
Deuteronomy in the 5th chapter, the verses we read a moment ago, Israel is
called to observe Sabbath - not to remember creation, but to remember its
liberation from Egyptian slavery. There God calls Israel to remember the
Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath in order to be reminded one day in seven that
they were slaves one time and God set them free. The God of creation is the God
of covenant faithfulness. The God of creation is the God of redemption. The
something that loves you out there in the world – that which is intrinsic in the
very fabric of reality – has a name and a face. It is a God who is for us, who would
always liberate and set us free, the God who is gracious and who is on the side of
God’s people.
And so Israel was called every seventh day to stop, to rest and to worship. And in
that pause, in that oasis at the end of the week, to have its perspective shaped
once again. To know that it lives in the environment, the spatial expanse brought
forth by the Word of God, and that it lived as a people graced by the God that
would set all humankind free.
The God of Creation. The God of Redemption. And we can see how Israel
annually in its Passover Feast celebrated that release from bondage, from the
slavery in Egypt – but not only annually in the Passover Feast, but every Sabbath.
Every week in the rhythm of labor and liturgy, in the rhythm of work and worship
it was called to remember and to hope. God is not only the God of creation, but
the God of history, the God of our time. So Israel was called always to remember
that the God of its past would be the God of its future, and Israel was the one who
gave to the world a whole sense of history - of movement.
The ancient Eastern cultures lived in the eternal cycle of the coming and return.
Israel gave to the world the idea of a beginning, and an end, and a meantime, and
in its festival celebrations, it remembered and it hoped. It had already received
and it had a promise of more to come, and it lived always in that remembering
and hoping. Christian worship is patterned obviously on that as well, for we are a
people who come together weekly. We celebrate one great central event, when
God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We celebrate on the first day of the week
because on the first day of the week God raised Jesus from the dead. We call the
first day of the week the Lord’s Day. And we come together, not only on Easter
Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection, but we come together Sunday by Sunday by
Sunday, because every Sunday is a little Easter. Even the Sundays in the season of
Lent are not Lenten days, they are Sundays in Lent, because in the inside of the
church it was recognized that, after Easter, you cannot keep Lent on Sunday.
You know I see how difficult it is for churches to make changes, but twenty years
ago we changed our name to Christ Community Church. For twenty years pastors
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have contacted me to ask, “How in the world did you do that? We had a “Name
the Church contest and everybody got offended and we lost the whole thing.” I
don’t know how we did it, but we did. But most of the time churches can’t do
anything. Most of the time you can’t change anything in the church because it is
all absolutized and made sacred as though it is God’s way once it’s done. And it
seems the greatest blasphemy to violate the principle “we have always done it
that way.”
I would have liked to have been there in the early church when they moved the
Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Can you imagine the discussions around the
table as they were breaking bread and pouring the cup? For centuries, for
generations, it’s in the Bible, the seventh day.
When I was a kid there was an old man in the north end of Kalamazoo who had a
stake truck with big sides. It looked like that house over on Jackson in Grand
Haven, where it’s written all over you know - verses, and you can read the news
by going by the house. (Laughter) This truck was plastered with writing. I
remember as a little kid that he offered so much money to the person that could
prove that the church should move from the seventh day to the first day of
worship. I always wanted to take up that challenge, but the prize wasn’t enough
to validate the work. But I will never forget that, and I wondered about that as a
kid. But now I wonder about how they were ever able to do it. Can you imagine?
Moving from Saturday to Sunday? And, obviously in doing that, they were
moving to the first day of the week as the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead because they knew now that the center of their life was in
Christ. “Your life is hid with Christ in God, if then you will be raised with Christ.”
Their whole life was in Christ. The whole ball game was the new life, the new
creation in Jesus Christ.
And so they moved from that Sabbath observance to the observance of Sabbath
on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, Little Easter, in order, week by week,
by week, to remember. It wasn’t enough once in the springtime to come together
in a great press of people in the resurrection. Once every week, the first day of the
week. Every time we gather here it is because God raised Christ from the dead.
And because he lives, you too live! Every week we come here in order to have
confirmed again in the depths of our being “that there is someone out there that
loves us,” that the God that we serve is the God of grace and liberation and
freedom, who would break the shackles of every form of human bondage and
servitude. The God whom we worship is a God for us, the God who brings us joy
and springs forth from us - doxology and praise and hallelujah.
The whole worship of the Church is celebration of Easter, and that was so
overwhelming that they were able to break with that deeply imbedded tradition.
Something written in the Word of God to observe the seventh day - moved to the
first day, which shows that they were liberated. They were freed from religion.
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Oh, to be free from religion. Religion binds and cripples. Jesus was so angry at
the religious leaders who piled legalism upon legalism, regulation upon
regulation. He said, “You make these people seven times more the children of hell
than when you began with them.” Paul writes after the resurrection and after
Easter to those who were disturbing the Easter at Colossi. And he said to the
believers, “Don’t let anybody upset you and deceive you with philosophies about
don’t handle and don’t touch, and don’t taste. Don’t let anybody lay on you some
kind of ironclad rule that says you’ve got to do this on Sunday or Saturday or on
Monday or Tuesday. Are you not free? Have you not died with Christ and been
raised again? If then you be with Christ, set your mind on the things that are
above, while your life is hid in Christ with God. You are free by God’s grace, and
don’t forget it.” The only way not to forget it is to observe Sabbath, to pause in the
regular rhythm of one’s life. Instead of six and one it becomes one and six. And it
is the same principle. It is that we might never doubt that there is a great,
gracious life force permeating into the whole of reality and every molecule and
atom of our body that could never abandon us.
“Something out there loves you in the world,” and that love has a name and a
face, and it has appeared in our midst as Jesus Christ our Lord, who was raised
from the dead.
As I was thinking about this I realized how important it is. I confessed to you last
week and said that being raised as a kid amid the heavy legalism of Sabbath
observance, I was tempted to kick the habit. Going into this profession that was
difficult, but I did everything possible to convince myself that I wasn’t really still
bound in that kind of legalism. Then I began to see that the observance of
Sabbath was such a great gift and grace, and that the only way that the people of
God have continued through the generations is that they have been a people who
have never forgotten because they have always been called to remember.
And unless there is a discipline and a routine and a rhythm in our lives, we will
soon forget. It is easy to forget. God will not cease loving you, but you will cease
being conscious of it. And what is it to be loved and not be conscious of it. And so
we are called to take heed, to pay attention. So I grumble a bit about ugly
Sundays, but as a kid I did know that there was a special day, and as a kid I did
know who I was and to whom I belonged.
The only problem is, I think in the western tradition of the Christian church, we
somehow or other got our focus off Resurrection and Easter, and moved it to the
cross and Good Friday and our sin and our guilt. You say, “Well isn’t that what
the Bible says?” No. Not the only thing the Bible says. You say, “Well isn’t that
Christian?” No. It’s western, medieval, Catholic Christianity that permeates our
Reformed Protestantism as well. The focus of the Western Church – Roman,
medieval, filtering into Reformation, Protestant – has its center in the cross. Its
fascination is with sin and guilt as the major problem, and the atonement.
© Grand Valley State University
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Now if you were raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Istanbul, if you were a
child of the Eastern Rite, you wouldn’t know all about that cross and heavy sin
and guilt, and strong emphasis on atonement. You would come into this church
and it would be foggy. You could hardly see me - and that might be a means of
grace. (Laughter) But the reason that you wouldn’t be able to see me clearly is
because there would be these clouds of incense. If you went to San Sofia in
Istanbul in this marvelous, marvelous place you would see an old mosaic of the
victorious Pentocrater, the triumphant Christ. And from the altar there would be
billows of smoke going heavenward and there would be priests everywhere in all
kinds of flowing garb. There would be all of the warmth and sensuousness of that
which is human, poised and praising in Doxology the Creator who had raised
Jesus from the dead.
A totally different feel. A different focus. A different center. Which is right? Well,
you need a little of both. But I would have to vote with the Eastern Rite because and this is my basis for saying that – in the Eastern Orthodox Church, with its
focus on Easter, on Resurrection, on a risen Christ and Doxology as worship and
praise, you still experience the original intention of moving off Saturday to
Sunday, rather than moving off Saturday to Good Friday. Now I have never read
that anywhere and I can’t swear it is true, but I wonder. Isn’t that interesting? In
the instance of the infant Christian community, they did not make their sacred
day Friday, they made it Sunday because the central thing is not sin and our guilt
and the cross, it is the life-giving gracious God who raises Jesus from the dead
and permeates us with life, who promised “because I live, you too shall live.” So
Sunday is a celebration. It is a day for Doxology. It is a day for incense. It is a day
for pulling out all the stops. For dancing and singing. (From the congregation “Amen.”) All right - I have been waiting twenty-five years for that. (Laughter and
applause.) I’ll bet you I am right. I bet I’m right. And I’ll bet you church going
wouldn’t be just a heavy obligation, a legalistic demand, if it were such that one
came just one day in seven into this place and was lost in wonder, love and grace
and praise, knowing that the whole world is resplendent and shot through with
God’s life, that the something out there that loves one is the Creator and the
Liberator, the God revealed in the face of Jesus. Then Sabbath observance would
become the gift and the joy that I suspect that God always intended it to be.
Paul said, “Don’t let anybody lay a lot of legalistic clap-trap on you, but don’t
forget to remember.” As I said, I grumble a bit about all those ugly Sundays. They
nearly killed me as a kid. But I’ll tell you what, parents and grandparents. You
bring your kids here regularly Sunday after Sunday, bring them to the Eucharist
Sunday after Sunday, kneel with them. Let them hear you sing and watch you
pray, and they’ll be as hopelessly addicted as I am. The center of Christian
worship is Doxology, and the central act is Eucharist, which is a Greek word for
thanksgiving. And on Easter this past year I celebrated the bread and the wine as
Eucharist for the first time in my life - I took Holy Communion on Easter and
suddenly understood its true heart: the presence of the risen, living Lord. That that’s worship. That’s good, huh? I like it.
© 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
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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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 VI
Series
The Sacramental Character of the Church
Scripture Text
Deuteronomy 5:15, Colossians 2:20
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19920719
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1992-07-19
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Observing Sabbath, Celebrating Grace and Freedom
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 19, 1992 entitled "Observing Sabbath, Celebrating Grace and Freedom", as part of the series "The Sacramental Character of the Church", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Deuteronomy 5:15, Colossians 2:20.
Creation
Easter
Immanence
Love
Sabbath
Sacrament
Worship
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3dd9e643e68ea95d326ed36a65d0d723.mp3
3bc157e5a0f715ab4ceb77b218d90d86
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a52f42e8873b3d9af324a3df8f34f918.pdf
e96d403f1c1efb63544a1b9f922b2546
PDF Text
Text
Authentication
From the Lenten sermon series: The Servant of the Lord
Text: Isaiah 53: 11; I Corinthians 15: 22-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 3, 1988
Transcription of the spoken sermon
After all his pains he shall be bathed in light, after his disgrace he shall be fully
vindicated; so shall he my servant vindicate many, ... himself bearing the
penalty of their guilt. Isaiah 53:11
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. ... He must reign
until he has put all his enemies under his feet...that God may be everything to
everyone. I Corinthians 75:22-28
God raised Jesus from the dead.
That is the great truth we celebrate on Easter. Jesus died. That is the somber
reality marked in this sanctuary and around the world on Friday. As Jesus was
hanging suspended between heaven and earth, they cruelly mocked him – the
soldiers, the religious authorities, even those condemned with him.
Did he trust in God? They taunted, let God rescue him… Matthew 27:43
How that must have wrenched him. His whole life, his whole message was
posited on trust in God. Where was God, the God Whom he addressed intimately
as “Abba, Father”? Is it any wonder that that terrible cry of dereliction found
expression in his awful agony, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
He trusted in God; let God deliver him now...
But there was no deliverance; Jesus breathed his last. Jesus died.
Unless that black reality has seeped into the pores of our being, Easter will fail to
appear in all its radical reality. Only the horrid darkness of Golgotha can
adequately set the stage for the brightness, joy and wonder of Easter's dawn.
The taunters at crucifixion were not without profound insight. They knew
everything hinged on God’s intervention on behalf of His Servant. If heaven
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remained relentless and Jesus really died, then put to death as well was all he
claimed to be, all he claimed was true, the way he claimed to be God’s way. Those
who conspired to put him to death knew instinctively that if there was no move
from heaven, no action from God, they had won the day.
“He trusts in God; let God deliver him now.” Quite right. That was the issue.
If we are right - in agreement with the Gospel writers - that Jesus found his
identity, the model of his ministry in the Servant Songs of Second Isaiah, then he
must not have been surprised at the opposition he met in the days of his ministry.
In the third of the songs, Isaiah 50:4-9, the Servant says,
I offered my back to the lash and let my beard be plucked from my chin; I
did not hide, my face from spitting and insult;
Opposition and suffering must have come as no surprise. But the Servant was
certain of the Lord's strong support.
... but the Lord God stands by to help me; therefore no insult can wound
me. I have set my face like a flint...
Beyond the suffering and persecution there was the promise of God's support and
the clear call
... to be my salvation to earth’s fartherest bounds. Isaiah 49:6
And so, on the model of the servant, Jesus carried on a ministry of bringing
Salvation, a ministry of healing executed with compassion in gentleness.
... not breaking a bruised reed, not snuffing out a smoldering wick. Isaiah
42:3
All of that must have passed before his mind's eye as he felt death closing in as
the tormenters reminded him that the issue at stake was whether his trust in God
would be vindicated; whether he, the Servant of the Lord, would be vindicated.
O God, where are you now in my hour of desperate need?
Yet, there was more that must have been going on in the mind and heart of Jesus,
ravished with pain, alone in his anguish. If he found his identity and destiny in
the Servant Songs, then he knew well the, to us, familiar 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
We have referred to it in this series twice, noting the Lamb led to the slaughter,
the innocent one bearing the transgression of his people. The Servant dies.
... he was cut off from the world of living men; stricken to death for my
people’s transgression. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, a
burial place, among the refuse of mankind. Isaiah 53:8-9
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The Servant died.
Jesus knew he was precipitating a crisis in Jerusalem. He must have sensed the
inevitability of death. The institution of the Last Supper certainly indicates that.
The Servant died.
Jesus was dying, but the taunts must have been sharp spears thrusting into his
heart.
He trusts in God. Let God rescue him.
But God made no move; heaven was silent. The evil designs of threatened religion
and political leaders simply unfolded with no sign of intervention.
But still there is more; the Servant of Isaiah 53 dies, but the Servant is also
vindicated; the Servant's life and ministry is also authenticated. At the
conclusion of the report of the Servant's vicarious suffering, bearing the
transgressions of his people, we read:
Yet the Lord took thought for his tortured Servant and healed him … so
shall he enjoy long life and see his children’s children, and in his hand the
Lord’s cause shall prosper. After all his pains he shall be bathed in light,
after his disgrace he shall be fully vindicated. Isaiah 53:10-11
Jesus was dying. That could not have been a surprise to him. But, where was the
vindication spoken of?
This, of course, was Jesus’ supreme test; would he hold on trusting through his
last breath?
This claim of vindication and authentication in the fourth Servant Song is
amazing. There was as yet in Israel no knowledge of resurrection, no
understanding of a rising from the dead. Yet here we have an idea set forth of
which there was no experience and no general expectation.
The Servant dies on behalf of his people; God vindicates His Servant and the
Servant is satisfied, content, that his mission is accomplished and his triumph is
secured.
This message is entitled “Authentication.” I contemplated using the term
“vindication,” which appears in the text (Isaiah 53:11 NEB). However, that term
has taken on a nuance with which I would not like God's raising of Jesus to be
associated. It carries the meaning “to clear from censure, criticism, suspicion, or
doubt, by means of demonstration; to justify or uphold by evidence or argument,”
all of which properly applies to the significance of Jesus' resurrection. Yet it also
conjures up images of vindication as avenging or revenge.
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Therefore, I have chosen the word “Authentication.” It is defined as “to invest
with authority, to give legal validity to, to establish the title to credibility of a
statement, or of a reputed fact.” It carries the idea of authorization, genuineness.
It is this that God accomplished in raising Jesus from the dead. Easter is God's
mighty “Yes” to Jesus, to the way of life he portrayed, the salvation he offered, the
God to whom he pointed. Resurrection was for Jesus authentication.
With real insight, the crucifiers taunted:
He trusts in God; Let God rescue him now.
God did; not before the mission was accomplished; but, miracle of miracles,
when he had really died, God raised him from the dead. Resurrection is Jesus'
authentication.
So what?
To answer that, we will move from the promise of vindication, life out of death, in
Isaiah, beyond the narration of the event in the Gospel, to the consequence of
resurrection in the Epistle. Paul's classic discussion of the reality of resurrection
– Jesus’ and ours - in I Corinthians 15 makes the simple, straightforward claim:
... The truth is, Christ was raised to life. (vs. 20)
He then draws the consequence:
As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be brought to life.
Paul envisions an unfolding drama - the story goes on from Easter.
Christ, the first fruits, and afterward, at his coming, those who belong to
Christ.
Israel gathered the first-ripened grain and offered it to the Lord - a sign that the
whole harvest was God's. Using that figure, Paul sees Jesus' resurrection as the
first instance of a general resurrection to follow at his coming - an event Paul
thought was near. At his coming, history would come to its End. Paul understood
Jesus to be reigning even as he, Paul, was writing. Jesus was overcoming all
opposition to God's rule. When completed, he would overcome the last enemy,
death. Then he would yield up the Kingdom to God and God would become all in
all, or, “everything to everyone.”
Thus, in the resurrection, God authenticated His Servant Jesus and established a
whole new order, an order Scripture speaks of as the new age, the Kingdom of
God, the Kingdom Jesus had claimed was arriving in his ministry. Jesus was
authenticated: his claim authenticated. His resurrection was a sign that
everything was new; a whole new world was born.
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We are already participating in that new order. We have passed from darkness to
light, from death to life.
Once, by nature, we were “in Adam,” subject to death. Now, by grace, we are “in
Christ,” recipients of life.
The old order did its best to defeat the gracious, saving purpose of God. Adam's
race of which by nature we are all a part, crucified the Servant of the Lord. But
God raised him up.
In his death he bore the transgressions of his people, he justified the many whose
sin he bore. In his resurrection he gives life to his people. Because Jesus lives,
there is a whole new reality.
The Kingdom of God, God's rule, acknowledged now by the Church, but one day
every knee will bow, every tongue confess: Jesus is Lord.
Because Jesus lives, we believe every obstacle and all opposition to God's desire
and design to save will be overcome. Grace will triumph over all the forms and
structures of evil, of darkness, of injustice, of sin and death.
He trusted in God; let God deliver him - God did.
And because he lives,
I can face tomorrow.
Because he lives, all fear is gone.
Because I know he holds the future,
and life is worth the living
just because he lives!
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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
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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
Easter Sunday
Series
The Servant of the Lord
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:22-28
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-0-19880403
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1988-04-03
Title
A name given to the resource
Authentication
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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 April 3, 1988 entitled "Authentication", as part of the series "The Servant of the Lord", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:22-28.
Easter
Resurrection
Salvation
Servant of the Lord
Suffering
Trust
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/522c00faa76359d3e335b5d60cf55745.mp3
a70fd9576c9181f907103cc7e0de0d92
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a15109431c6107731e66e49e8e538e64.pdf
5da2c0dd39decccba5353c320e7d5285
PDF Text
Text
He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
From the sermon series: The Human Face of God
Text: John 14:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Easter Sunday, April 19, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Because I live, you too shall live. John 14:19
"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!"
This is the Lord's Day, the Lord's Day of which every first day of the week is a
joyful celebration. This is Easter; Christ is risen from the dead. The word from
the Gospel for our celebration today is
Because I live, you too shall live.
It is a simple text; just seven words. You can carry it home with you; you can take
it with you through Eastertide; you can take it with you throughout all the
seasons of your life; it will give you confidence in your youth, courage in life's
middle years, peace at the end; you can take this text to your death, repeating it
as you move through the valley of the shadow, into the momentary darkness and
into the brightness of the light that will greet you, light streaming from his
countenance who spoke this simple, straightforward word. Jesus said:
Because I live, you too shall live.
Today we focus sharply on the very center of our Christian faith and hope. On
Easter we celebrate and rejoice in the final Truth, the last word of our faith:
He lives, we live, Alleluia!
Today we celebrate the center from which our every Christian celebration stems,
the reason why there is any cause at all in this world, in our human condition, to
celebrate.
Let me set forth but two thoughts around which to center our Easter celebration:
the foundation of our celebration, and the reality that we celebrate.
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The Foundation
The foundation of our Easter celebration is the truth clearly and simply set forth
in our text, the claim of Jesus, "I live."
That is the great Easter reality. Jesus lives. It is the proclamation of the Gospel
story. It was the overwhelming revelation to Mary in the Garden when, in gentle
grace, he called her by name. It is the declaration of St. Paul in perhaps the
earliest Easter document, the first Corinthian letter, where he declares,
... the truth is, Christ was raised to life.
In simplest, most concise terms, Jesus says,
I live.
Perhaps you were surprised to find the Easter text taken from the Last Discourse
with its setting at the Last Supper. That discourse begins with the 13th chapter of
John, the moving scene of last supper during which Jesus girded himself with a
towel and washed his disciples' feet. Death was at the door; Judas was dismissed.
John tells us movingly, "It was night." It was in such a setting that the words of
our text were uttered. They appear in a paragraph where Jesus is preparing the
disciples for his absence. He assures them that they will not be left desolate,
bereft; rather, he will come back to them. Then we hear him say,
Because I live, you too will live.
How are we to understand these words placed by John in this solemn setting on
the eve of crucifixion? Was Jesus aware of Easter before ever he endured Good
Friday? Traditionally, the Church has attributed such foreknowledge to him but, I
think, wrongly.
One thing we can be quite certain of: Jesus knew the end had come; his "hour"
had arrived. And further, we can be quite certain that he was confident that God
would effect His purposes through life or death. And further, should it be death,
still Jesus placed his trust in the Father.
But if you ask why I choose a text from the Last Discourse as an Easter text, let
me remind you that the whole Gospel and each of the four gospels are PostEaster texts in their entirety. If, as we assume, John's Gospel is the latest of the
Gospels to appear, then the Christian community had been living in the light of
Easter for several decades. By this time the whole of Jesus' life and all the words
remembered that he spoke were understood in the light of Easter.
A study of the Last Discourse will show that it is really made up of several pieces
of tradition. If, for example, you compare John 13:31 - 14:31 with John 16:4b-33,
you will find that they are parallel passages, no doubt remembrances of the same
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
discourse of Jesus stemming from different circles and different times in the
developing tradition.
There are commentators who go so far as to call these discourses Post-Easter
conversations of the risen Christ with his disciples. That is probably not the case,
but there is no doubt that these chapters contain various time perspectives and
some of the statements appear to be made in the light of the Easter experience
and the presence of the Spirit. They reflect the reality of the Post-Easter Christian
community.
The only point I wish to make out of all of this is that what in the chronology of
the Gospel of John appears to be a pre-Easter statement is really a Gospel
proclamation in the wake of the Easter experience. Raymond Brown, in his great
commentary on John, writes,
Although he speaks at the Last Supper, he is really speaking from heaven;
although those who hear him are his disciples, his words are directed to
Christians of all times. The last discourse is Jesus' last testament: it is
meant to be read after he has left earth. Yet it is not like other last
testaments, which are the recorded words of men who are dead and can
speak no more; ... the Last Discourse has been transformed in the light of
the resurrection and through the coming of the Paraclete into a living
discourse delivered, not by a dead man, but by the one who has life ...
(p. 582)
C.H. Dodd writes:
It is true that the dramatic setting is that of the night in which he was
betrayed, with the crucifixion in prospect. Yet in a real sense, it is the risen
and glorified Christ who spoke.
Brown explains this rather strange mixture of present and future as follows:
The Last Discourse explains the significance and implications of the
greatest of Jesus' deeds, namely, his return to the Father; but it precedes
what it explains. The reason ... is easy to see: it would be awkward to
interrupt the action of the passion, death, and resurrection, and it would
be anticlimactic to place so long a discourse after the resurrection. (p. 581)
Having explained how such a statement as our text appears in a pre-Easter
setting, I want now to examine the foundation of our celebration - Jesus'
declaration,
I Live.
Who makes this claim? It is Jesus, the man of Nazareth whose passion we have
traced in these past weeks of Lenten observance. It is Jesus our brother, flesh of
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
our flesh and bone of our bone. It is Jesus, the human covenant partner of the
faithful covenant-keeping God. It is Jesus whom Paul calls the last Adam in
contrast to the first Adam.
In sum: resurrection happened to a fully human person; it was God's mighty act,
but the action was worked on Jesus, a human person who had been "made like
these his brothers of his in every way," to quote the writer to the Hebrews from
whom we took our text on Passion Sunday.
Our Lenten pilgrimage began around the Table and the text affirmed the mystery
of our salvation: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." God was in
Christ. God was in this thing from the beginning, from eternity, in the conception
and birth, in the life and in the death, but the one in whom God was fully present
and active was the man Jesus.
Our whole understanding of Jesus, of God's action in him, of the salvation
accomplished through him comes from the New Testament, all of which was
written a good while after that first Easter - a perspective from which the Early
Church was fully convinced that God was in this thing. In order to witness to that
Truth and to proclaim that Truth, Jesus was given every conceivable title of
honor and dignity. There was no doubt that God was fully present to, active in,
working through Jesus and when the creeds were formulated in the subsequent
centuries, the way the Church gave expression to its understanding was to point
to Jesus and say,
True God, true man.
And in the history of the Church, the "True God" soon overshadowed the true
man.
But we have followed a different tack these Lenten weeks. We have attempted to
see him "from below" in the genuine human existence he lived out. We have
attempted to see him as our brother - in fear and trembling before the "hour,"
determined fully to follow the will of the Father in costly obedience, setting us an
example that we should follow in his steps. This Jesus: made in every way like us,
the Jesus whom Mary did not know how to love, the Jesus who wrestled in
anguish only finally to say, "Thy will be done," the Jesus who with disarming
vulnerability faced down the alignment of worldly power determined to maintain
its position by fear, coercion and intimidation.
If we have done justice to the portrait of the man as the New Testament still
portrays him, even through the overlay of deity ascribed to him, then Easter is
really something to shout about because then a man has risen from the dead,
then a human person has conquered death through the mighty power of God.
Now, that's a miracle!
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
This is no God-man with an ace up his sleeve who couldn't die anyway because he
was God.
Don't tell me about a God-man whom death could not conquer. That would be no
miracle. Then Jesus was only a masquerade. Then he seemed human, but was not
really our brother. Then one can say God was here and death could not touch
him, but one cannot say a fully human person was here and he conquered death
by the power of God, Whose will he fully followed and to Whose care he trustingly
committed himself.
The glory of Easter is that God raised up one like ourselves, that in a fully human
existence, death has been conquered. Jesus said,
"I live."
That is more than I exist; that is, "I am alive with the vitality of God, the source of
life, and consequently, because I live, you, too, shall live!"
The Reality We Celebrate
The reality we celebrate today is that we, too, shall live. That is, that we are
enlivened with the vitality of the resurrected Christ and that we now are alive
with the life of God and we shall move through the moment of death into a fuller,
richer dimension of life forevermore. The biblical term, the great theme of John's
Gospel, is Eternal Life – life in a new dimension. Union with Jesus through faith
was for John the union with God that was the source of life in a new dimension –
eternal life – a present possession and an even more wonderful reality yet
awaiting us beyond the terminus of death.
You, too, shall live.
That is the transforming consequence of the great Easter event. He lives, we live,
Alleluia!
Again, let me stress, we are not speaking of the mere perpetuation of life, the
mere extension of some kind of biological existence. It is not simply to have more
of living "at this poor dying rate." Although there is a strong, natural drive to live,
to keep alive, it is also true that life can become a burden. Last evening my aunt
told me of an uncle who said to her yesterday, "How I wish the Lord would take
me home." That is not a rare desire. He, who was full of life and loved to travel
and loved to have half a dozen children crawling over him at one time, has been
wounded by a stroke. Emotions are out of sync, the mind goes out of focus, the
motor skills are damaged, and he who always cared for others is now the object of
care, handicapped, crippled, a bird with broken wing whose song is silenced.
You, too, shall live!
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
But not in the limitation, brokenness and tragedy of this present experience. We
shall LIVE; that is, we are now and we shall be more so, alive with the very life of
God, this vitality by which he powerfully raised Jesus from the dead.
In the first letter of John, the wonder of what we are now and the anticipation of
what we shall be is beautifully experienced.
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we
should be called the children of God; and such we are now and we know
not what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like
him for we shall see him as he is.
Now! The present possession of life is the gift of the risen Lord and there is still
more to come.
In an Easter letter from prison, Bonhoeffer contrasts Socrates and Jesus. Socrates
mastered the art of dying. Jesus conquered death. The first is within human
capacity; the latter implies resurrection.
The Easter message is a message of radical renewal. What we celebrate today is
not just the return of a dead person to life, but the death of death, the conquest of
death, the last evening and therefore the triumph of grace in the whole cosmos,
the very victory of God over every obstacle, all darkness, every tragedy and all
suffering.
The resplendent strains of triumph reverberate down the post Easter decades of
the Early Church. Paul writes nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. He breaks out in triumphant acclamation,
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Socrates mastered the art of dying. One of philosophical bent can come to terms
with almost any situation or condition. One can, with discipline and
concentration and contemplation, come to a measure of peace in any storm - at
least some seem to; that was true of Socrates - he mastered the art of dying.
But Jesus conquered death. Socrates calmly drank the hemlock. Jesus anguished
before the moment of evil's assault. Jesus wept. Jesus cried for release. Jesus felt
utter desolation.
Socrates died; nothing changed.
Jesus died and then God changed everything.
Jesus conquered death through the mighty power of God and therefore it is he
who addresses us on each recurring Lord's Day, each First Day of the Week, with
the assuring words,
© Grand Valley State University
�He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
Because I live you, too, shall live.
We shall live, my friends - live beyond a mean and selfish extension of this
present scene; live beyond the dis-ease, the restless anxiety, the broken down and
disappointed hope; live beyond the gaping wounds of denial and betrayal; live
beyond the weakness of our mortal bodies vulnerable to sickness and crippling
disability.
We shall live in love in communion with Jesus, in union with God in the eternal
praise of His glory.
© 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
Easter Sunday
Series
The Human Face of God
Scripture Text
John 14: 19
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-0-19870419
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-04-19
Title
A name given to the resource
He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!
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 April 19, 1987 entitled "He Lives, We Live, Alleluia!", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Easter Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 14: 19.
Easter
Followers of Jesus
Joy
Resurrection
Transforming Love