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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6e71df8f6b53adb3b4d3775dcc58b146.pdf
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You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
From the series: Christian Faith: Interpreting An Experience
Text: Acts 10:36; John 21:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 19, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In this season of Eastertide it will be my intention to enable you to see how
Christian faith is the consequence of interpretations of experience. That is true of
all religion. Someone or some group has a significant experience, and out of that
experience comes the attempt to articulate that experience and eventually the
analysis of the experience that issues in a more systematic and intellectual
account of the experience. But it always starts with an experience and the
Christian faith, the Christian church, the tradition of which we are a part everything that it is, is a consequence of a foundational experience and the
interpretations of that experience. For the Christian church, the Christian
movement, the Christian tradition, the foundational experience is Easter. For the
Jewish people, the foundational experience was the Exodus, which is
remembered every year with the Passover festival. This past week the Christian
church remembered its foundational experience in celebrating Easter; the Jewish
community remembered its foundational experience in a celebration of Passover.
That is true, not only of Christianity and Judaism; every great religious
movement has a foundational experience. That foundational experience, then,
cries out for expression.
Have you ever gone somewhere and had some great experience and come home
and tried to tell your spouse or your children about it? You say, "I don’t have
words, I wish I had words, I can’t tell you about it. I just can’t... there’s no way I
could communicate what I just experienced." But, of course, you go on trying to
communicate what you’ve just experienced, nonetheless, and you grab for
language, metaphors, images, symbols, one way or another to try to articulate, to
give expression to that which you’ve experienced, because that which you have
experienced was so dramatic that you need to talk about it. Language is necessary
in order to keep us from exploding when we’ve had that tremendous experience.
Eventually the metaphors and the images and the symbols point to the
experience and then we begin to reflect on the images and the symbols and the
metaphors in order to understand what really was going on down there, the
insights that accrue from that experience which came to expression in image and
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
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metaphor. That’s when we get the more conceptual analysis of the experience.
That’s the systematizing, the intellectual activity. Now you’re into doctrine and
theology and the movement’s dead. The conceptualization of the metaphors and
images which are the result of the experience - that’s, of course, where we come
in. That’s what you do when the experience forms a movement, a community,
and it takes on a life of its own. And then you pass it along by means of the
conceptual understanding, the analysis of the experience and what it meant. But,
you hope, even so, that the foundational experience will continue to be
experienced again because, if it doesn’t, it is dead. Then you are simply
perpetuating a system of ideas which has no fire, no passion, no transformative
affect on the life.
That is the nature of a lot of religion, isn’t it? That is the nature of a lot of
institutional religion. That is a description of a lot of what goes on in the church;
it is the passing along without passion and fire and a transforming experience of a
system of ideas, and a system of ideas never changed the world and never
changed a person. It is finally, one would hope, in the communication of
experience through image and symbol and metaphor and analysis that the
experience would happen again.
This Eastertide I want us to see that what we have in the New Testament
documents are the interpretations of experience, and those interpretations of
experience are somewhat removed from the event itself. Following the crucifixion
of Jesus and the experience of Jesus as living, present nonetheless, there was the
telling of the story and the building and forming of community and, eventually as
the decades move along, there was the felt need for the writing down, the
documentation of that account of the experience, and so we have the New
Testament documents. And then, of course, if you want to go on three, four and
five centuries into the Christian movement, then you had the whole creedal
development - 325, the Nicene Creed; 451, the Council of Chalcedon. You have
the church for 500 years trying to say what the experience meant. But it started
with somebody having an experience, and we’re going to look at Peter today and
Paul next week, and Mary the third week.
"Peter, you can’t go home." Where do you think Easter happened for Peter? When
do you think Easter happened for Peter? You say, "Well, it must have happened
on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem."
The evidence is not clear. That’s one of the liberating things I hope you will learn
in this Eastertide, that the evidence is not clear. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, and you simply cannot reconcile those four accounts of what actually
happened. The only thing they agree on is that Jesus was crucified, Jesus dead
and buried, and that Jesus was experienced as a living reality by the community
that followed in his name. But, if you put those four Gospel accounts together,
you will find an impossible complex of meetings and encounters and persons, and
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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there is no way to reconcile them. So, I doubt that Peter on Easter Sunday
celebrated the resurrection, was encountered by the risen Lord.
We don’t know, but there is this clue in John 21. Peter was in Galilee and he says,
"I’m going fishing." And the others say, "We’ll go with you." Now, it seems to me
that the picture that the author is painting for us is a Peter before Easter, a Peter
before the experience of that living one, that non-material, living presence, that
same Jesus but no longer in the form of flesh, but in a radically new form. I think
that Peter is going fishing because Peter is trying to pick up his life again, because
Peter’s life had been shattered. His dreams had been shattered; his hopes had
been dashed. Peter, who thought that Jesus was the Messiah, Peter, who thought
that Jesus was going to establish the twelve tribes, Peter, who thought that the
kingdom would come, the heavens would open, that he would be on the inside
track – Peter saw Jesus crucified and not only crucified, but crucified before Peter
could say, "I’m sorry for denying you three times; I’m sorry for my pride and for
my arrogance; I’m sorry for my buffoonery and my bullheadedness, ... all that
makes me who I am. I’m sorry."
Jesus was crucified; Peter went back to Galilee. And he was going to go fishing
because, if our life has been torn apart and all of our hopes and dreams have been
shattered, the thing we need is something familiar, something we can manage,
something we can handle. Peter was going back to fishing. And the others said,
"We’ll go with you."
But, you can’t really go home, Peter, because you’ve seen too much. You know too
much; you have experienced too much. You walked with that one too long, you’ve
sat at table with him, you saw him break bread, you saw him throw the arms of
embrace around the excluded, you saw the compassion that flowed out of him,
you saw the love with which he moved, the compassion that marked his life, the
grace that drenched him. Peter, you can’t go home. You saw too much. You can’t
just go back to your fishing.
Maybe that’s what this 21st chapter of John’s Gospel is about. The weight of
scholarly opinion says that chapter 21 was slapped onto the Gospel that really
concluded with the 20th chapter. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference. I
think what the 21st chapter is trying to deal with is the place of Peter in the
ongoing community and his relationship with John, the beloved disciple. So,
what we have here is Peter going fishing, and Boom! There’s a miracle. There’s a
great big catch of fish, 153 fish, after they had labored all night and gotten
nothing. They throw the net on the other side and there they are.
John’s Gospel begins with the wedding at Cana; they run out of wine. Jesus
produces more wine than any decent wedding reception could possibly use.
Where Jesus is, there’s abundance. Where Jesus is absent, there’s lack.
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
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Is John telling us things that really happened? Or, is John painting a picture for
us? Is John trying to tell us about this One? Of course, he’s trying to tell us about
this One. There probably never was a wedding in Cana and there probably never
was a breakfast on the Sea of Tiberius. But, there was this One, this Jesus who
was crucified and who, in the wake of his crucifixion, was experienced as not dead
but still alive, a presence.
So, the author tells us about the abundance of the catch and, in the intimacy of a
breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, what happened was the same thing
that always happens. Jesus had been crucified. Peter is off in Galilee, trying to
run away. But, now Peter and the other disciples have a breakfast around the
charcoal fire, bread and fish, and you know, it’s like it always was, like nothing
changed, like he was right there. They sensed his presence in the inclusiveness of
that intimate breakfast. Peter thought he could go home, and instead gets
commissioned three times over to match the three times of denial (nice literary
stuff) in order to say, "Peter, you are charged with responsibility for this ongoing
movement. Feed my sheep. Tend my lambs. And Peter, the bottom line is this follow me."
When Peter was called in the first place, Jesus said, "Follow me." And the postcrucified Jesus says to Peter, "Follow me." And somehow or other, in the midst of
the experience, Peter is convinced that that same Jesus Christ for whom he had
so many hopes and dreams was with him still, living still, in the life of God, going
before him, calling him to follow, calling him to keep the movement alive, calling
him to do all that he had seen Jesus do in a continuing, growing movement of
resurrection in this old world that is a Good Friday world.
In this world that is a Good Friday world, there are those signs of resurrection
and Easter keeps happening. That’s the only reason that we are here, 2000 years
later, because Easter keeps happening. We are not here because there was a body
that came out of a tomb 2000 years ago. We are here because the living Christ
continues to confront those who look out into their world and suddenly, in a
moment, experience the presence of the resurrected one, and scales fall from
their eyes and they see. We’ll see next week that it happened to Paul. And I think
it happened to Peter in Galilee along the lake as he was going fishing. Suddenly
he realized that Jesus was not dead, but alive, that all the hopes and dreams that
had been crushed in Jerusalem were not really crushed but simply channeled into
a new direction in which he was to lead the flock into the future into a Good
Friday world with marks of Easter.
Jesus was born into this world and the doctrine of the Incarnation roots the
whole foundational experience of the Christian church in history. Something
happened back there. There was a Jesus. He was flesh of our flesh and bone of
our bone and he was crucified, dead, and buried. And following that experience,
here and there, now and again, someone saw him, experienced him, and
continued to follow him. That’s what Easter’s all about. That’s why Easter keeps
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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happening. That’s why Easter is not on a Sunday three days after crucifixion.
Easter is the moment in the world when the risen One is experienced as a power
of the future.
For example, on February 25 of this year a new president was inaugurated in
Korea, Korea that had been in the throes of military dictatorship and oppressive
domination for so long, and the new president had behind him a General Chung,
who, in 1980 came within a hair’s breadth of executing the new president who
was a dissident at the time. But this new president, before he was inaugurated
with the then reigning president, agreed to the liberation of political prisoners
because he said, "In my new regime there will be no political retaliation." A sign
of Easter in this old world that is still a Good Friday world.
Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in a cell and is able now to entertain the President
of the United States and even give him a lesson or two in moral authority, and in
South Africa, within the last decade, there is a transformed situation with all of
the problems that still remain, but it is a sign of resurrection in this old world
that is still a Good Friday world.
Do you still remember in the late 80s when we would not ever have expected it,
would not have dared dream about it, the Berlin Wall fell one day and that great
divide, that impasse, the Iron Curtain, was removed? We move again into
tribalism and ethnic cleansing and it’s not as though everything is rosy, but we
are moving at least; there are signs of resurrection in this old world. It is possible.
I can paint with you a very dark picture of the human situation and then I can
also point to you signs of resurrection and of Easter, because there are people
now and again, here and there, for whom the scales fall off their eyes and they see
what Jesus stood for and what Jesus was - the inclusivity of his table fellowship,
the compassion of his life, the grace of God that flowed through him, and there is
transformation, there is salvation, there is healing, there is the mending of
creation, here and there.
Peter, you can’t go home. You can’t go back fishing, because there’s a Roman
soldier named Cornelius who needs to hear about Jesus. Peter has a vision.
Cornelius has a vision, and sends for Peter. Peter comes, having had the scales
fall off his eyes at the Sea of Tiberius, but only partially. And now he’s confronted
with a concrete situation.
"Now, what do I do? Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’ What does that mean, now? Here’s
Cornelius; he’s a Roman soldier; he’s a Gentile. Jews by law according to Torah
have nothing to do with Gentiles. I can’t be an observant Jew and sit at the table
of a Gentile. I can’t even go over the threshold of his house!"
More scales. Rubbing his eyes. Coming into Cornelius’ house, not too sensitively
saying, "You know, I shouldn’t be here." He knew he shouldn’t be there; his whole
training, his whole tradition, his whole study of Torah said he shouldn’t be there.
But, he hears Jesus’ word, "Follow me." Maybe he said, "What would Jesus do?"
© Grand Valley State University
�You Can’t Go Home, Peter!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
And he opens his mouth, moving now beyond the initial experience, but on the
basis of the experience, and says, "Well, my, I see that God shows no partiality."
Do you hear it? Can you sense at all what that meant to Peter? That God shows no
partiality?
Peter, you have to be kidding. You’re running counter to your whole experience
as God’s special, elect people.
But, you see, the worm continues to turn, and the insights continue to come from
those who have had their eyes opened and begin to draw the implications of what
they see, because when you see it, you can’t go home. Once you see it, the word of
Jesus, "Follow me," is compelling. Once you see it, you recognize that the world
needs to see it, that there is salvation in no other way, that this is the way and the
life and the truth, that there is no way to God except the way that Jesus opened.
So, you go into Cornelius’ house and you start telling the story of Jesus and sort
of, to justify this bold act, you say, "Jesus is Lord of all. Jesus is Lord of all. This
Jesus that I follow, this Jesus that was crucified, this Jesus was right. This is
God’s way; this is God’s intention; this is the embodiment of God’s love, of God’s
grace. Jesus is Lord of all. Therefore, with fear and trembling, I will follow him.
I’ll take one step at a time, but I will follow Jesus because I have seen the Lord is
risen. The Lord is risen, indeed." Easter happened when Peter thought he could
get away by going home.
I have a good friend who celebrated his 80th birthday recently who chided me a
little bit for forcing him to rethink some things theological, and he wrote a
beautiful piece about in his 80th year, thanking God that he still has opportunity
to repent of the narrowness and the exclusiveness of his faith journey and to
begin to see brothers and sisters of every stripe as loved by God. Easter can
happen even when you’re 80, and when it happens, there’s no going home.
© Grand Valley State University
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d4f2eafa53bb6d14b6245ee69fd1126c.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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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
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
Eastertide II
Series
Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience
Scripture Text
Acts 10:36, John 21:19
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
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KII-01_RA-0-19980419
Date
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1998-04-19
Title
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You Can't Go Home, Peter!
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 19, 1998 entitled "You Can't Go Home, Peter!", as part of the series "Christian Faith: Interpreting an Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 10:36, John 21:19.
Easter Experience
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
Resurrection