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Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
From the Eastertide series on the Apostles’ Creed: Credo
Text: Romans 8:34, 35, 39; John 14:18-19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, May 15, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"... Christ Jesus...at the right hand of God who indeed intercedes for us." Romans 8:34
"What will separate us from the love of Christ?" Romans 8:35
"[Nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God." Romans 8:39
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you... because I live, you too shall live." John
14:18-19
Well, this is the last Sunday of Eastertide. Eastertide, beginning with the
celebration of Easter itself and extending really to the fiftieth day, which is
Pentecost, which is next Sunday.
Our focus this morning is on the consequence of the resurrection and the
development of a faith and the hope with which we live that, because he lives, we
too shall live. We see Jesus’ resurrection as a model. We believe that this is not all
there is, that the best is yet to be, on the basis of our faith that Jesus who died
was raised by the power of God. So today at the conclusion of the Eastertide
series, which has gone under the Latin word, Credo, the verb that takes its own
subject and is translated "I believe,” we consider the final section of the Apostles’
Creed: "I believe the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting".
I always find that one of the great times to affirm that line from the Apostles’
Creed is at the edge of an open grave. It gives me goose bumps when I stand at
the cemetery with those loved and lost a while. Together we unite our voices in
that strong affirmation which concludes with those words: " I believe in the
resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Before the yawning, grasping
jaws of death, symbolized by that open grave, it is the right time for a Christian,
and a Christian community to make the grand affirmation -"nevertheless." We
bury our dead because our loved ones and we ourselves will die, really die. But to
© Grand Valley State University
�Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
Richard A. Rhem
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die in the wake of Easter is to be able to affirm over the grave, "I believe." "Credo,
I believe."
The Apostles’ Creed concludes there because when you have said that, you have
said it all. That is the conviction with which we live. That is Christian hope, that
we have life now and forever.
What kind of word can we use? How can we describe this reality that is beyond
our grasp, this final great mystery? We simply stammer and we say resurrection
of the body, life everlasting, eternal life, life here and now and forever, that is the
bottom line of our faith. It is the hope that inspires us, enabling us to live with
some measure of equanimity and serenity and to die with some measure of peace.
In the Apostles’ Creed that's where it concludes. But it concludes that way
because of what we had confessed earlier in that middle section of the creed
dealing with Jesus Christ, where we confessed that he was crucified, dead, buried,
descended into hell or into the realm of the dead, and on the third day, rose
again, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the power of God,
from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. We confessed that
about Jesus Christ. And what we confess about our own destiny is posited on our
conviction of the experience of Jesus.
Now it may seem that the creed is almost trite in its statement when it says
crucified, dead, buried. It's like hammer blows. It's like, you know, saying it over
and over again. And I think in the Heidelberg Catechism, there is a question
about this statement. It asks, "Why does it say that he was buried?" And the
answer is that it might be demonstrated thereby that he was really dead. The fact
is that they found it necessary to confess that Jesus died.
There were those at the time the creed was formulated, and even before, who
were denying that very fact. There were those who didn't believe that Jesus came
into the full reality of our humanity, that Jesus was genuinely bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh, that somehow or another, at some moment, the spirit must
have left, or the divine nature evacuated the body, or whatever. There were all
kinds of theories and speculation. But in the final statement of the Christian
creed, the most familiar affirmation of our creedal tradition, the Apostles’ Creed,
that just gets hammer blows.
Crucified, dead, buried, descended into the realm of the dead was the original
significance of that phrase. And then on the third day he arose so that the
resurrection of the dead is not somehow or another a soft peddling of death or it
is not some kind of an accommodation of death. It is a transformation beyond
death.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen in our space and time world. And
the creed was trying to say this life came to an end. This was really death. Jesus
died. Jesus was buried. The body of Jesus was placed in a tomb. Period.
© Grand Valley State University
�Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
Richard A. Rhem
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And Easter is a celebration. On the other side it is the affirmation of faith that
that which had ended in a very human way, the cessation of life had been
overcome by the power of God. To believe in the resurrection of Jesus is in no
way to short circuit the reality of the death of Jesus. That, I think, was what was
behind that creedal formulation that seems to bring the emphasis so strongly on
the death of Jesus. In our experience we too believe we live with hope on the basis
of our conviction about the destiny of Jesus Christ: that Jesus who really died is
alive.
Wasn't it about a year ago when I sent some of you out of here in fear and
trembling because I said that Jesus' bones, that were interred didn't all come
together like the bones in Ezekiel's vision, with the flesh and blood Jesus walking
out of the tomb. I wrongly assumed that we understood that the resurrection of
Jesus was not the resuscitation of a corpse. Remember that? I wrongly assumed
that we commonly understood that. Let me go back to that once again.
The flesh and blood of Jesus was as real as yours and mine, and that flesh and
blood that died, was buried. And it was not that flesh and blood that was called
forth by the power of God. The resurrection of Jesus was not like the raising of
Lazarus. The raising of Lazarus, in John's story of Jesus, is the supreme miracle,
the supreme sign. The raising of Lazarus is the sign that Jesus, present in the
midst of that community, was the Lord and giver of life. But when Lazarus was
called forth wrapped in his bandages, Lazarus had to die again. That was the
resuscitation of a corpse. Not so Jesus.
When Jesus was raised by the power of God, Jesus encountered people and they
were sure he was alive. But as the apostle Paul said, writing the earliest on this of
anyone, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Paul thought it was
all going to end very soon and so he also wrote, "We shall not all die but we shall
all be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye." When we talk about the
resurrection of the body we are talking about a transformation of this physical
reality that we know as body. When the creed said of us" I believe in the
resurrection of the body" it was trying to say something about a reality. It's not a
fantasy. It's not an illusion. The authentic person is called to life.
Now how do you say that? Well, the body seems so important to the definition of
our person, yet we know that we are more than the body. One of the beautiful old
men of this congregation– many years ago I went to see him and asked, "Fred,
how are you?" He said, "Well I'm fine, but this old house I'm living in isn't so
good any more." We can make that distinction and yet in the Christian and the
Hebrew tradition there was never a denigration of the body. The body was good.
It was part of the creation of God. The God who created all things had looked and
said it is "very good." So when the Christian community wanted to affirm the
reality of that which lies beyond death, it said resurrection of the body. We know
that the body we plant is not the body that will be that resurrection reality,
whatever that is.
© Grand Valley State University
�Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
Richard A. Rhem
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Paul says it will be a spiritual body. What in the world is that? Paul didn't know,
and we don't know. But we believe it will be a reality that reflects the authentic
personality that is now living. At the end it is not death, in darkness, in
nothingness, but it is life and light in the presence of God. That's what the creed
means to say – resurrection of the body and life everlasting or life in the world to
come without end, however you want to say it. The bottom line of Christian hope
is that what is now, will be transcended by what will follow, that there is more,
that this is not all there is, and, what is more, it is the best that is yet to be. That is
the Christian conviction on the basis of the experience of Jesus. Easter faith was
the confirmation of the followers of Jesus that the end is not the grave. Dead,
buried, to be sure, but then, then, resurrection, life eternal, the Mystery of God,
whatever that is. We hadn't ought to try to be too clear in our definition of that.
I went back to check on what I had mentioned to you on Easter. I looked at last
Sunday's New York Times Book Review, the best seller list. Embraced By The
Light was the title of the Easter message, the story of Betty Eadie and her near
death experience. And I am not surprised to find that six weeks later Embraced
By The Light is still number one on the nonfiction list. It would be number one if
only this congregation was responsible for going out and buying that book. I see it
popping up all over. Embraced By The Light is a good title, but for my taste
Betty Eadie learns too much. She knows too much. She becomes too defining and
too definite about these things. So be it. It doesn't matter. That mystery is full of
light and life and that is the point.
It is that existential need of us all, I believe, that cries out for some basis in which
to place our feet and to set our hope. We long deep down to know that this is not
all there is. Oh, I've read some sophisticated statements and philosophical
treatises and some artful, creative treatments in novels and literature. There are
those in the modern age who speak about this as an illusion. Hans Küng in his
lectures, "Eternal Life," admits that there are those who say it is wishful thinking.
And we have really no defense against that charge. That's why it is "Credo,"
resurrection, everlasting life, "I believe." It is an affirmation of faith. We are
dealing with that which is beyond our ken and our knowledge. It is that which we
cling to, that which we affirm, that in which we set our hope because of our
conviction that Jesus who died and was buried was raised by the power of God,
and that beyond that impenetrable veil, which becomes but a moment of
transition and transformation, there is light and life in the presence of God.
That deep existential need in the human heart is witnessed to by the fact that in
our contemporary society these books are being bought up by the hundreds of
thousands. The question is there. Medical technology has put it in the news, Jack
Kevorkian and the whole euthanasia business, the possibilities presented by
medical technology. But beyond that, deep down in the human heart there is that
question. It faces me when I face that reality personally, or when I face it with one
whom I love. Then all the cool, sophisticated argumentation evaporates in a
moment. We are created for life and we need to know our labor is not in vain.
© Grand Valley State University
�Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
Richard A. Rhem
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And we need to know our love is not finally empty in the end. The Christian
community is a community that stands to say, I believe the resurrection of the
body, the life everlasting.
Two marvelous experiences have been in mind recently. Leon, if I had seen you
ahead of time I would have warned you. Lee Stille's mother died the week after
Easter. I was able to hold her hand, to see her smile, to give her the benediction,
and to promise her the best was yet to be in the week following Easter.
Unbeknownst to me it was within a day of her death, but that's not the point.
The point is that when we finally got out to the cemetery, I thought that the
cemetery crew had gotten it wrong. I thought we caught them with their
equipment down. There was the front end loader with a scoop of sand. Across the
street was that little putt putt machine that carries the top of the vault. There
wasn't any of that nice green carpet, you know, that's supposed to be grass that
masks the cold outlines of the grave. There was the cemetery assistant in his blue
jeans, his work clothes, and it looked as though the funeral procession had come
upon them before they were ready. But I proceeded with the committal service,
only to find out that this was all planned. Three shovels were nearby. Lee, his
sisters Sharon, and Donna took the shovels, bit into the sand in the front end
loader, and began to throw it on the vault after the casket had been lowered and
the vault sealed, all of that happening as we stood there. I can still see the vault
being covered with sand. I can still hear the earth falling on the vault. And then
the children were invited, the grandchildren were invited, the little great
grandchildren, Zinni's beautiful old parents taking not the shovel but just their
hands with the earthy handful of dirt and throwing it on the grave. As Christian
people there is no need to cover the grave with some kind of masking, some green
carpet that cuts away the cruel emptiness of the earth. There is no need to turn
from that to mask it, to make it cosmetically acceptable, aesthetically pleasing.
We can look into the grave. We can throw the dirt down there. It's over. It's
death. It's painful. It's loss.
Oh, it is so healing, so liberating to be able to stare death in the eye and not flinch
because all of that has been overcome and transformed by the power of God as
witnessed to in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We can deal
honestly, authentically with the reality of death and loss and pain in the sure and
certain hope of the resurrection. Dying is transformed in the face of this kind of
faith.
And now I come to bear witness to my dear Menno Klouw, who died a couple
weeks ago. Menno, who is so well loved in this community of faith, who cared
with such tenderness, gentleness for this facility for so many years. On the night
of his death I was privileged to be in his home. Menno had come home to die
without tubes and wires, in his own home, surrounded by his own loved ones.
Coming home to die, day by day, the end in sight. Friday night, his own dear
grandchildren were gathered round. Dear God, how better can you die than with
© Grand Valley State University
�Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
your grandchildren there? The family gathered, death imminent. I took his hand.
I began to speak to him. He turned his head. I said, "Menno, squeeze my hand if
you hear me." And he squeezed my hand. I said, "Menno, it's all right. You're just
fine. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you
peace." And I kissed him and I left so deeply moved that there is beauty even in
the face of death, even in the midst of loss when it is surrounded by love,
saturated with compassion and experienced in the sure and certain hope of the
light that will dawn. Dear God.
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. God
knows I believe.
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Dublin Core
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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.)
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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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KII-01
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Event
Eastertide VII
Series
Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Scripture Text
Romans 8: 34, 35, 39, John 14: 18-19
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1994-05-15
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Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever
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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>
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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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 15, 1994 entitled "Christian Hope: Life Now and Forever", as part of the series "Credo: A Series For Eastertide", on the occasion of Eastertide VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 8: 34, 35, 39, John 14: 18-19.
Creeds
Eastertide
Hope
Life
Resurrection
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Text
God With a Human Face
From the series for Eastertide: Credo
Text: John 14:18-20; II Corinthians 4:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 24, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
“I am coming to you... because I live, you too will live; then you will know that I am in
my Father, and you in me and I in you.” John 14:18-20
“For the same God who said, 'Out of darkness let light shine,' has caused his light to shine
within us, to give the light of revelation - the revelation of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ" II Corinthians 4:6
Every Sunday is Easter Sunday and this Sunday in Eastertide reminds us again
that Sunday is always a little Easter and the celebration of the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ. The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.
The hallmark of the Christian faith is "Alleluia." It is Doxology. It is praise. And
the mark of a Christian is the posture of worship. It is the spontaneous eruption
that comes from the realization that in the end it is not Darkness but Light. It is
not sadness but joy. It is not death but life. And so we celebrate on this Sunday in
Eastertide the Resurrection of our Lord, his exaltation, and his presence with us
in power, in the spirit.
Our Lord, in whose face we have seen into the heart of God, our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has given to us in his very embodiment a clue as to the nature of God
so that Christian faith is faith that God is like Jesus, and that what we see in Jesus
is a true reflection of what is in God. In Jesus we do not see all of God, for God is
incomprehensible, a mystery beyond our ability even to faintly conceptualize or
get our arms or minds around. No, Jesus is not all of God, but what we see in
Jesus is true of God. God is like Jesus, and Jesus tells us that God has a human
face.
Paul said we've seen the light of the revelation of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ. John's witness was "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father."
John's testimony to Jesus in the gospel, the fourth gospel, is the most elevated
conception of Jesus Christ that we have in the New Testament.
© Grand Valley State University
�God With a Human Face
Richard A. Rhem
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Last week I pointed out to you the simplicity of that very understanding. This
Jesus whom you crucified, God raised up and has made Lord and Christ. That
was probably the very early groping for expression of what had happened in this
one, Jesus Christ. But within the New Testament itself there was development.
There were different perspectives. The scripture is a very diverse and
multifaceted witness to God so that we have in John not the kind of primitive
simplicity of that statement in Acts: "This Jesus whom you crucified, God raised
up and has made Lord and Christ."
In John we have the word made flesh, dwelling among us. Now, as I said last
week, no one would ever have thought in that first century to affirm Jesus was
fully human. They knew that. They knew that as well as I know you're human and
you know I'm human. They didn't have to confess that. But John even with his
exalted Christology also is very clear. The word became flesh, human, and dwells
among us. Jesus is seen as fully human in John who also gives us the most
exalted understanding of Jesus Christ.
So often we take paragraphs and isolate them out of their context so I went back
and I began to look at the broader context of John's gospel. I saw that in the
thirteenth chapter, where the passion story begins, we have Jesus acting out the
servanthood role, washing the feet of his disciples. And then he starts to become
distressed and concerned and he dismisses Judas. Remember he dismisses
Judas. Judas goes out. And then John says, very significantly, "and it was night."
Now John wasn't making a statement about the time of day. He was making a
statement about the state of the cosmos. It was night. It was dark. It was black.
The old conspiracy, the plot is coming now to its culmination, and as Judas leaves
that inner band, John says, writing his story, "It was night." And then there's a
little deal about Jesus going away and Peter saying, "I want to go with you." And
Jesus saying, "You can't." And then we come to that marvelous fourteenth
chapter about, "Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me," and so forth, and, "I'm going to prepare a place for you," and, "You know
the way.” Thomas says, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know
the way?" which is the setup for this classic statement, so familiar, so oft quoted
in our Christian understanding, "I am the way. I am the truth. I am the light. No
one comes to the Father but by me." And then Philip's dullness, "Just show us the
Father," leads to the statement, "If you've seen me, you've seen the father."
John couldn't say it any more boldly, with any more exalted conception than that.
Jesus: Way, Truth, Life, in a kind of exclusive way, "No one comes to the Father
but by me. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." I and you, you and
me, we and the Father, this kind of Christ mysticism.
There is an indwelling of God in Jesus, and an indwelling of Jesus in us, and us in
God and Jesus. And the Easter promise: "Because I live you too shall live. I in
you, you in me, we in God." That's John's stuff.
© Grand Valley State University
�God With a Human Face
Richard A. Rhem
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In the Gospel of John you have it clearly stated that Jesus was human, and with
equal clarity and power that God was in that human person. To meet Jesus was to
meet God. To hear Jesus was to hear God. To follow Jesus was to follow God's
way. Jesus was the embodiment of the eternal God, and in Jesus the eternal God
is revealed, or is unveiled, or is laid bare, if you will. There is the embodiment of
God. And seeing this one, John says, is seeing God. He says earlier this God is
personal, is full of love, is full of grace, with an intention to save the world, having
loved the world. All of that he weaves into his gospel. He says, "This God is
reached by way of Jesus and in no other way." What you have is John's witness
that we have access to God through Jesus.
Sometimes I want to water John down. One of the temptations when you're in my
business is to try to get around letting somebody say what they really want to say.
Sometimes I'd like to water John down a little bit because, though I think that he
made a magnificent witness to the revelation of God in Jesus, I think that in his
exuberance he claims an exclusivity with which I'd want to argue.
The Jesus of John is a Jesus you have to love. And the God that you see in that
Jesus is a God that you love, a God you can trust, and that you would want to
follow. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the
Father but by me." I can understand that, I can affirm that. Jesus was the Way.
You want God, you want this conception of God as personal, as Father, as caring
parent, then Jesus is the Way to such a God. Jesus, in his life and in his teaching
is true. He is the truth, and he is the life. He came to give us life, and he offers us
life, and in the emulation of his life there is life, and it is in this Way, and in this
Truth, and in this life that I come into relationship with God, the God I see in
Jesus. That's the God I want. That's the God I love and the God I want to serve
and follow.
Now why do I like that God? Well, maybe I've just been brainwashed, you know,
warped from the womb. It's true. So what? That's God for me, the God I see in
Jesus, this God full of grace, this God who is represented in the Father, in the
story of the prodigal son, this God who reaches out, who embraces, this God,
who's personal, this God who is full of grace, that's the God I see in Jesus. That's
the God I want. Maybe it is God's spirit in me that makes me want that. It's not
the fact that I want it therefore I create it. I have experienced that God through
Jesus Christ in the community of Jesus' people, in the Christian Church, in the
Christian tradition.
I have come to understand a God who is love, a God who is a depth and an abyss
of mercy, a God full of compassion. That's God. I want to serve that God. I want
to worship that God. I call you and invite you to join me in the praise and
worship, in the service of that God.
John can't say too much. John cannot lift that God represented in Jesus too high
for me. The only thing I realize is that, in a context of that first century where the
Jesus movement was necessarily trying to gain a separate identity, developing an
© Grand Valley State University
�God With a Human Face
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
over-againstness, that if I read John's gospel and am not sensitive to that context
I could become an anti-Semite. I could get caught up with anti-Semitism because
the Jews don't come off very well in John's gospel.
Now we can understand that. If you want to have a good, honest, authentic,
understanding of Martin Luther, don't go the archives in the Vatican. And if you
want to have a fair evaluation of the Pope in the sixteenth century, at the time of
the Reformation, don't read the writings of Luther. You get my point?
The gospels do not give us a balanced, unbiased, fair portrait of first century
Judaism, of Pharisaism. If I'm not sensitive in my reading of John's gospel, I
could get a very negative feeling. It has caused that over the centuries. The
Christian church simply has to acknowledge that we have a horrid record of antiSemitism. We have called the Jews God crucifiers, God killers. There has been a
terrible record because there has not been a sensitivity to see that what was
happening there was a natural sort of over-againstness, adversarial spirit. So
must I read it with some sensitivity.
Now I live in a world that is no longer separated by mountain ranges and by
continents and oceans. I live in a world now that is like the size of a grapefruit
where there is instant communication. I live in a world now where there are
world religions of which mine is one. And now I say, "Could I water John down a
little bit so that we could level things off a little bit and make some room for
somebody else?" No, that's not the way to do it.
Let me hear John. And when I hear John I say, "Go for it John." That's exactly my
experience. That's my Jesus, and that's the God I see in Jesus. The only thing I'm
going to argue with you about, John, is if you meant “no one comes to the Father
except by me" in an exclusivistic sense as though anybody that didn't come in this
avenue of Jesus was lost in darkness forever. Then I'm going to argue with you.
I'm not going to take that from you, John. I'm going to say that, in the exuberance
of that context in the first century with all of your conviction that Jesus was the
final word, the last word, the full revelation, the authentic revelation, you claimed
exclusivity too.
You kicked off a movement that has become a worldwide magnificent movement,
with this downside: its exclusivism had not made room for the authentic spiritual
experience of others. It has not given room to the freedom of God, the possibility
of reaching a world other than through the channels of the institutional Christian
church. It has been a source of arrogance, of self-righteousness, of superiority,
and it is time the Christian church simply faced up to that.
Now hear me again. John doesn't say anything that I do not affirm. John doesn't
tell me anything about Jesus that does not cause me to say "Alleluia." He doesn't
show me anything about God in the face of Jesus that does not cause me to bow
down, and to worship, and to adore. But why do I have to go beyond that and say
© Grand Valley State University
�God With a Human Face
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
not only this is true, but it's the only thing that's true? Why do I have to say this
gives me joy, and at the same time deny the source of someone else's joy?
No I'm not going to water down John. I'm going to hear him. I'm going to hear
that testimony and I'm going to say, Yes, that's the way I see it too, in terms of
that Way, that Life, that Truth. Ah, yes, that can draw from me worship and
adoration. That deserves my life, my soul, my all. Then I'm going to enter into
dialogue and into relationships bearing my testimony, pointing to the God that
my Jesus points to.
Someone has said that our forebears sent missionaries into the world because
they could not conceive of how men could die without Christ. I would say we
would send missionaries into all the world because if we really got the story and
the message, we would not be able to conceive of how people could live without
Christ.
It is not a matter of a secret door into heaven; it is the possibility of a fully human
existence. It is the possibility of life in all of the richness that was embodied in
Jesus, who lived totally committed to the eternal God, creator of heaven and
earth, lover of the world. This God brought just this, tangibly.
If you go into an Eastern Orthodox congregation you'll find them praying, and
kneeling, genuflecting before an icon painted in gold and all different colors. I
was raised to think that was some kind of idolatry. Well frankly that's not right.
That icon, if you were raised in an Eastern Orthodox condition, if you were a good
Greek, that icon becomes a focus that points beyond itself. It is a way of
spirituality.
If you were raised in the Roman Catholic Church there are certain rituals, certain
sacramental acts, statuary, the whole Marian development, Maryology. All that is
nothing more than our human need to have something that we can get hold of
that can move us, through itself, to the invisible God, the incomprehensible One.
I suppose that's why we've been so heavy on this book because, again, we needed
something that can rein in our thoughts, and focus us, and give us a picture,
something tangible. My God has a human face. He's like Jesus. I love God, and I'll
serve God to my dying breath. I'll not water down John's gospel pronouncement.
But I'll reserve the right to disagree, to believe that God is all John says—and
maybe even more.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/188280855671b43b71021d5d095fdb5a.mp3
ac2be195f09e1941fec69434c0c60761
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/.
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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>
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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
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Event
Eastertide IV
Series
Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Scripture Text
John 14: 18-20, II Corinthians 4:6
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19940424
Date
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1994-04-24
Title
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God With A Human Face
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
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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 24, 1994 entitled "God With A Human Face", as part of the series "Credo: A Series For Eastertide", on the occasion of Eastertide IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 14: 18-20, II Corinthians 4:6.
Eastertide
Grace
Nature of God
Resuretion
Spirit
Worship
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e44487514c6a36c8dd97cc8de23ea6a2.pdf
2867cd20f3a929ab0582891e44326fd1
PDF Text
Text
Good News of Cosmic Dimension
Eastertide I
Text: I Corinthians 15:22; Matthew 28:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 6, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Easter is focused on Jesus. That's quite understandable, because Jesus is the one
who was raised from the dead, and so our liturgy, the music, the anthems - all of
it is very much focused on the risen Lord. That's understandable. But, I want to
say to you this morning that Easter is not so much a matter of Christology, that is,
the doctrine of Christ, as it is theology, that which is about God and that which
God has affected. Resurrection was God's mighty act. Resurrection was God's
sign, a sign in the midst of history of cosmic significance and eternal dimension.
Easter is good news. Good news for the cosmos about God's intention, God's
"Yes" to life, God's "No" to death, God's "Yes" to love, God's "No" to hate, God's
"Yes" to light, God's "No" to darkness. It is understandably a story that lifts up
Jesus, but it is more profoundly a story about God.
Jesus died. If you followed or participated in the drama of Holy Week, if you were
here on Maundy Thursday when the sanctuary grew dark and the altar was
stripped and we left in silence, if you were here in the meditative, somber mood
of Good Friday, if you came to the Easter Vigil and saw the sanctuary engulfed in
darkness, then you know that Christian faith acknowledges that Jesus died. Jesus
died a human death. Jesus as a human person entered into the powerlessness of
death. As far as Jesus was concerned, it was over, which is why the brightness of
Easter Sunday is not because of something intrinsic in Jesus, but of something
intrinsic in God, the Creator, the One Who will not allow death to reign. God's
way is life. That is Easter. It is a theological affirmation. It tells us something
about God and it is the good news that in the end, there is life !
Paul understood that. Paul was one who was absolutely gripped by that vision of
the risen One whom he knew had been crucified but now knew to be still living,
and who had called him to tell this good news, particularly to the Gentiles. After
he founded the Church in Corinth, he kept in touch with them via letters, like the
two epistles to the Corinthians. They were raising some questions, and so, in his
letter, the one we call First Corinthians, he deals with this matter of resurrection.
He cannot express its truth, its mystery. He stumbles and stammers around as he
tries to give expression to it, but of this he is quite convinced - that the whole of
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the Christian Gospel, the "Good News" has to do with the fact that God raised
Jesus from the dead. He tries to explain the magnitude of what has happened by
borrowing from the Genesis story, the Creation Story, the story out of Israel's
tradition where, through the disobedience of one man, Adam, death came upon
all. He says, as it were, Jesus is the new Adam, the second Adam, and as death
came to all through one man, so life comes to all through one man. As in Adam all
died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Notice that the Hebrew thinking was always corporate, always concerning the
total community. So when he said, "in Adam all die," he meant all humankind
die. There was a commonality of the human story, which was under the sentence
of death. In the light of God's action, raising Jesus from the dead, Paul saw a sign,
a sign that that sentence of death was not ultimate. Rather, the ultimate, final,
last exciting word was life. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.
It is as inclusive on the one hand as it is on the other - and here is where we sense
Paul's strain of universalism. For what he is saying is that God's action in Jesus
has implications for the whole human family. This Good News, the raising of
Jesus by the power of God was a sign, a light, an indicator, a marker, something
that could be laid hold on and believed in and hoped in for all of us. Paul had had
a particular revelation, but he understood it to have a universal application. A
transformation of the whole of reality, which he understood to embrace the whole
of humankind.
Now Matthew had a similar understanding of the momentous transforming
power of the resurrection. Matthew's Gospel is the only Gospel that sees Jesus'
ministry, pre-crucifixion, as focused strictly on Israel. Did you know that? The
reason we don't know that is that we don't study these Gospels as units having
their own context and their own message. We throw them all into the blender and
pour out a homogenized Gospel. We pick up a little of Matthew, a little of Mark, a
pinch of Luke and a dash of John, and we get one blended picture. But, Matthew
has Jesus, pre-Easter, interested only in Israel, the Jewish people. He only talks
to two Gentiles in Matthew's Gospel. One is that Syro-Phoenician woman.
I love the way Krister Stendahl talks about that story. He tells it as one of his
students preached it one day. Jesus and his disciples needed a retreat, so they
journeyed into the countryside, beyond the precincts of Israel. A woman
approached them there, pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter. The disciples
said, "Go away. We're on retreat. The master said if we don't do this once in a
while, we'll burn out. Go away." Well, she was not going to take their "no" for an
answer. They said to Jesus, "Do something about this woman." So he says, "Look,
I am sent to none but the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Can you imagine
Jesus, meek and mild, shunning this woman, saying, "Look, it's Israel, not you"?
She said, "But I have a great need." He said, " I can't give the food on the table to
the dogs." This is Jesus, now, referring to the woman and Gentiles as dogs. She
was quick. She responds, "Look, under the family table there are crumbs which
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the dogs may eat." Jesus is taken aback and replies, "Woman, that's some faith. I
have never found such a faith even among my own." And he healed her daughter.
There was one other exception he made, and that was for the servant of a
Centurion who was ill. He healed that servant. That Centurion also demonstrated
great faith. If you read in Matthew's Gospel, you will find the story, but you don't
find the reason that Jesus responded to that Centurion. You have to go to Luke
for that. But, it's obviously the same story. Luke says, when the Centurion came,
the elders of the synagogue came over to Jesus and they whispered in his ear,
"Help him out. He paid off our building debt." True. True story. Luke 7:1, you can
read it yourself!
Two times only he addressed Gentiles in the book according to Matthew. For the
rest, the pre-Easter Jesus was interested solely in Israel. When he sent out the
disciples on their missionary journey, he said, "Go through the cities of Israel. Do
not go any place where there are Gentiles." He said, "You're going to have enough
to do before the end comes. You won't get through all the cities of Israel."
Yet it is this Gospel, Matthew, that concludes with what the Church always calls
The Great Commission: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature, to the nations, to the Gentiles, teaching them, healing, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." That's the conclusion of
Matthew's Gospel, post-Easter.
Now remember, this book is written six decades down the line. There's already
now a Christian Church, a Christian community. I think we have to admit that the
resurrected Jesus did not gather with those disciples and say to them, "Go to all
the world and teach the Gospel and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit." If that had been done, if it had been that clear a few days after
Easter, there wouldn't have been such a struggle in the early Church to find out
who they were and what they were supposed to do. Obviously, Matthew is taking
the whole story of Jesus and then he's giving a distillation of what now is his
understanding of the resurrection, what the implications were. For Matthew, the
implications of Resurrection were that this one who had been focused strictly on
Israel had now, by the power of God, been raised up to create good news for a
broader community. Now was the time to break out of Israel's particularity and to
create a community universal and inclusive, of all the nations, of all people. This
Good News had universal implications for the building of another community.
Krister Stendahl likes to say that Israel was Laboratory One. God's Laboratory
One. Israel understood itself as a particular community that was, in its life, to be
a light to the nations. And now it was time for Laboratory Two; now it was time to
break out of that narrow community and to have, well, Gentile time. It was a
broadening, a building of a new kind of community that was inclusive, that was
universal, that was for all.
Stendahl also notes that the Jewish people believed itself to have a particular
revelation of the one true God, and the truth that it understood was the truth that
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
impinged on all people, but what Israel never expected was that all people would
become Jews. Israel was content to be Israel, to live in the light of its revelation,
to witness to that revelation, and to let the positive effects of its witness wash off
on the world, but not everybody was supposed to be a Jew. There was never a
movement to make the whole world Jewish. They were a particular community
with a particular revelation and a particular understanding of salvation, and they
shared it far and wide, but people could receive that light and remain in their
respective communities.
Stendahl believes that Matthew had the same kind of an idea for the Christian
movement. Once again, it had a message, a particular message, a particular
revelation, and it had universal implications. It was for the broadening of that
community of faith, but it was not as though now suddenly the whole world
would have to become Christian. The whole world should be told the good news
and the Good News was for the whole world – Good News, that is, that God, the
Creator, is a God of life and not death, that God is for us, that God has an
intention for the cosmos. And all of that was and is enough to make you dance
and sing, because the news is so good. That in this world where death and decay
are all about us, the ultimate word is life and light and love and community! So,
go tell the world!
With the Christian movement, that's very likely the way it began. Now, the news
was brighter. Now there was an exuberance, there was an excitement, there was a
joy, there was a confidence, so that, in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, a
movement developed. Have you ever been part of a movement? Movements are
spontaneous. Movements are powerful. Movements are confident. Movements
are passionate! And in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus, recognizing now that
this good news is about God Who says "No" to death and "Yes" to life, this good
news was to be spread everywhere. It was for everybody. It was for the whole
world. For anybody who would hear it and heed it and become a part of it - it was
an open community now.
But, that movement was so powerful, so full of fire, it gained such ascendency
that within two or three centuries it became a force to be reckoned with. And as it
gained in dominance, it became domineering. Then, contrary to the model of
Israel that shared its witness but didn't force everybody to become a Jew in order
to have access to God, the Christian Church linked its particular revelation with a
universal mandate to make everybody like we are. Eventually it gained great
power in its association with the state, with the Roman Empire. And over the
centuries, for 2000 years, it has grown, it has become powerful, and in its wake
we have a tragic history that I think as a Church we've never fully owned up to the Crusades and its brutal intolerance; the Inquisition with its burning of
heretics and forced baptisms; pogroms, anti-Semitism, creating the soil for the
horror of the Holocaust. Why? Because a movement became dominant, powerful.
It had this wonderful vision of God, the God of life; it had this vision to share with
all, but rather than remaining a witnessing community, it became a domineering
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
community, coercively using its power to enforce conformity to its particularity as
though that particularity was to be of universal application rather than simply a
universal witness, an invitation.
And now, after almost 2000 years, the Christian Church, which has been so
dominant, is tired. The Church is sick at soul today. Its shrill rhetoric only betrays
its lack of confidence. In those early centuries, it was a movement of joy, it had
power, it was soulful, it was exuberant, it was strong, it was empowered, it was
open, it was excited, it swept the world! But, it's not a movement anymore, not
really. It's an institution. It still has a lot of resources, it still has a lot of wealth, it
still has a lot of numbers, and it can linger perhaps for a long time. But, it's not a
movement; it's not strong, it's not vibrant, it doesn't have soul, it doesn't have
passion, it doesn't have joy unspeakable, full of glory! It is a skeleton of itself. Its
life is a denial of its message and a betrayal of the one who is its founder, who
reached out in compassionate embrace to all.
But, I think we're on the threshold of something new that's breaking. I think
there's going to be a groundswell in this old world of ours. It's breaking out
because good news cannot, finally, be kept under. And the good news is that the
dream is bigger, that the cosmos is one and that all people belong together. There
is underfoot something that will transform the face of the earth. And God knows
if it doesn't happen, we'll destroy each other. Witness our history of divisiveness,
violence, war and devastation. But, we're learning. Here and there, there's a straw
in the wind.
Last Sunday evening we finally made ABC News. Perhaps you've heard. We were
linked with Mohammed Ali, this noble human being who can no longer articulate
for himself. But there he sat, his wife next to him, who said for him, "Muslim,
Jew, Christian - they're all God's children." And then we came on, 9 ½ seconds!
We, too, articulating that the eternal embrace is inclusive. That it is arrogance to
proclaim otherwise. Then later in the evening I caught the last half of the film,
"Gandhi," and I was deeply moved again as that man of India who was so
impressed with Jesus said, "I am Hindu, I am Muslim, I am Christian." And
single-handedly, through a spiritual power, changing the landscape of that nation
with all of the chaos and all of the death that ensued, nonetheless, affecting a
transformation through a kind of spiritual vision and methodology that he
learned from Jesus, among others. And, of course, Gandhi influenced Martin
Luther King and there was in this nation a significant address of the evil of
racism. And, as the second millennium is coming to its end, after 2000 years, this
dynamic movement of Jesus People which has become a tired institution,
wondering if it can survive, will yield up its arrogant exclusivity and there will be
a joining of heart and hand, of all people of good faith who believe in God the
Creator of all, Whose intention for all is life and not death, love and not hate, light
and not darkness. Now, there's good news! It is news of cosmic dimension and
eternal significance. And when we catch it again, the passion will return, the
© Grand Valley State University
�Good News of Cosmic Dimension Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
confidence will return, the joy will return, the power will return, and the world
will be changed! Alleluia!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/72d150ea76bf119172e7c096ee95f092.mp3
a9e6a71dcac5909f8b355f5377d5bf80
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
Eastertide II
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19
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-0-19970406
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-04-06
Title
A name given to the resource
Good News of Cosmic Dimension
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
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 April 6, 1997 entitled "Good News of Cosmic Dimension", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:22, Matthew 28:19.
Eastertide
Global Community
Inclusive
Universal Grace
-
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a81d611d739cd5c2c7648a2ad9794c60
PDF Text
Text
Credo: I Believe
Text: Acts 17:24; John 14:1,9
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide II, April 10, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Credo, that is a Latin word and in the Latin the verb takes its subject to itself.
Credo means “I believe.” Not, I believe something. Or not even, I believe
someone, but I believe in someone. That’s the sense of that word as it has come
down to us in the Christian tradition. It is that personal affirmation of faith in
God, which in our Christian tradition is the consequence of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead. If you read the Gospels, the story of Jesus’ life, the
experience of the disciples with Jesus, it must be very obvious that if it had not
been for the resurrection we would not have heard anything of Jesus. They didn’t
understand. They were dull of understanding, dull of mind and heart. Jesus,
certainly for them, was a remarkable teacher, a rabbi. But they scattered at the
point of his death. He was abandoned, not only by God, but by those who
followed him to that point. It was only in the wake of Easter, it was only in the
encounter with the Living Lord, that the Jesus movement took flight. And the
flame of faith spread through that ancient world and has come down to us these
nearly two thousand years later. People have been able to say, Credo, I believe in
God, because they have been encountered by the risen Christ in the Spirit, the
sign of the presence and the grace and the love of God that upholds all things, and
embraces us in that love and grace.
Credo, I believe. It is a statement of faith. It is a statement of faith as experience,
faith more than intellectual assent. More than conceptual understanding, it is
experience. It is the encounter with that One beyond ourselves who overwhelms,
who encounters us in grace, who reaches us, leaving us stammering and
stumbling to give expression to what happened. Faith is the consequence of an
encounter with the reality of God, with the reality of Love, with the reality of
Grace. Faith is the transformation of a person through an experience with that
which is beyond the person and which the person is never able to get his or her
arms around, or head around, never able to give adequate expression to. Faith in
that sense is that deep life-changing, life-transforming experience that is the
result of meeting God.
Faith. Credo. I believe. Let me distinguish that from a set of beliefs. I want this
Eastertide season to make some reference to the Apostle’s Creed. The Apostle’s
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Creed in its final form, coming from maybe the fifth century is perhaps the most
familiar and the best loved of the Christian creedal statements. I am not going to
give a careful exposition of every exposition of that creed. It is a valuable tool. I
want to distinguish the faith about which I just spoke from the knowledge of that
creed, because the faith of which I would speak this morning and to which I
would invite you is more than a set of beliefs.
A set of beliefs is the consequence of the experience to which I point. The
experience of faith—the experience of God—is that which causes us then to step
back and to reflect on the experience and out of that reflection on experience
comes a set of beliefs. Our creeds are the condensation of the articulation of what
happened in the experience, even though the experience itself is beyond
articulation. God’s inexpressible gift, Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord encountering
us leaves us speechless, but not for long. We will soon be trying to give some kind
of witness to that experience as we always do. But a set of beliefs, as important as
they may be, are not the same as the experience of faith. Do you hear me? Do you
recognize that we might, all of us might witness to the experience of God and
come up with a variety of sets of beliefs? Do you see that the experience of God is
such that it cannot be reduced to a set of statements? A set of beliefs, a creed, that
is inevitable and is necessary. It will always happen, but it is always a step
removed from the experience. It is always after the fact, and it is always an
inadequate expression of the thing to which it points.
In fact, when a movement begins to write creeds, the faith is dampened and the
vision is dimmed. You don’t write creeds in the midst of the fire of experience.
You don’t define your faith when it is simply so overwhelming that it permeates
every pore of your being and flows out of you in every word you speak. It is only
later when the fires of faith have dampened and the vision of faith is dimmed that
we try to give some expression to this and we come up with our creeds and our
sets of beliefs. It is important to do that because somehow or other we have to say
something, and it is important to do that because we have to have something to
tell our children. We pass on the faith. There is a certain content of faith out of
the experience we need to pass on, and if we are going to pass it on we have to do
it in some kind of reasonable fashion so we write creeds and confessions. But, it is
always a sign of the deterioration of faith and the dimming of vision, and it is
always a sign that a movement has become an institution.
How unfortunate that a movement has to become an institution. A movement of
the Spirit cannot stay a movement of Spirit because Spirit seeks form, and Spirit
will come to institutional form and become articulated in structures and creedal
statements. But, do you see that that is a degeneration? Do you see that that is a
movement away from the fresh experience of faith? The experience that draws
out of one Credo. I believe. Ah, it’s necessary. It is inevitable.
But now hear this too. Our creedal statements are negotiable. They are all
historically conditioned. You show me a creed out of the two thousand year
© Grand Valley State University
�Credo: I Believe
Richard A. Rhem
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history of the church and I’ll tell you when it was written, because it will have
been shaped by a certain historical context and determined by a certain cultural
understanding, because it will be a human expression of the inexpressible and it
will take the stamp of the moment of its arising. It is relative, it is historically
conditioned, it can never be absolutized. It must always be provisional and
should always be open-ended. Do you see, the experience of faith is not
something that I will argue about, or debate about sets of beliefs. My goodness,
the history of the Church is replete with theological discussion and debate and
division over sets of beliefs. Sets of beliefs arise when faith is dampened and
vision is dimmed. They are a necessary and unfortunate consequence of the
experience. The experience is one thing, and in reflection on experience we write
creeds. We may start the creed, Credo. I believe in God the Father Almighty , but
that statement in itself is a pale shadow of the reality of the experience of the
Living God.
Paul, for example, believed from his youth up. He was trained in the rabbinical
school. He was a devout and zealous follower of Israel. Then he met Jesus and his
life was transformed, and he became open to something entirely different. There
was new insight, new understanding, new faith vision. Paul was a changed
person. He didn’t find a new God; He was still the God of Israel, but now the God
of Israel he had met in the intimacy of encounter through Jesus Christ, the Risen
Lord. And he went everywhere babbling this Good News. He came to Athens and
talked about the God of Israel who was the Creator God, the only God. And he
acknowledged that even the idolatry of the Athenian and Greek religion was an
idolatry that, nevertheless, pointed beyond itself to this one God. Even the
religion of Athens, with all of the idols and statues that provoked and disgusted
him, nonetheless spoke to him of that religious yearning within the human heart
for the one God. And he acknowledged, as some of the Greek poets had said, that
God is God alone in whom we live and move and have our being. We are God’s
offspring, said Paul. So in building bridges through that Greek religion, he
pointed to the one true God, the God of Israel, the God of his fathers and
mothers, the God who had encountered him through Jesus Christ and changed
his life.
Well, I know that it’s a good trick of preachers to point to someone like Paul and
then say, “Go thou and do likewise,” or make you feel a little inadequate because
you don’t have a Pauline experience. But, how about something a little more
modest? Listen to this statement by a contemporary saint.
“I don’t know who or what put the question. I don’t know when it was put.
I don’t even remember answering. But at that moment I did answer, ‘Yes’
to someone or something. From that hour I was certain that existence is
meaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-surrender has had a goal.”
That’s from Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United
Nations, now dead, but a beautiful statement. Modest. “…someone or something.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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. . .” just when or where or how I don’t know, except I know that from me was
drawn a “Yes,” and from that moment my life has been life in self-surrender with
meaning because in that moment I was convinced that existence is meaningful.
Jesus was that kind of person.
Marcus Borg, in his latest book Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time, talks
about Jesus as a Spirit person, and says that, rather than being an article of belief,
God becomes an experiential reality. You see, instead of God being an article of
belief, God becomes an experiential reality. Creeds are necessary and they are
important. They represent a dampening of faith and a dimming of vision. They
are an unfortunate necessity, an inevitability. But, the downside of creeds is that
they can become a substitute for the real thing.
George Gallup will tell us that some 90+% of the population believe in God.
Believe in God, as an article, as a belief. But, what about an experiential reality?
Borg goes on to say that Jewish tradition in which Jesus stood speaks of persons
who know God, “know” God. The Hebrew word for “know” is the same word used
for sexual intercourse. God can be known in that direct and intimate way, not
merely believed in. The experience of spirit persons in general, and of Jesus in
particular, suggests that God is not to be thought of as a remote and transcendent
Creator, far removed from his world, but imaged as all around us, as the one in
whom we live and move and have our being as the Book of Acts puts it in words
attributed to St. Paul.
Within this framework, the pre-Easter Jesus becomes the powerful testimony to
the reality and the knowability of God. That’s what they experienced when they
were encountered by the Risen Christ. They came to know God in experience.
They had never probably had a day in their life when they doubted the existence
of God, but faith as experience is something other than a set of beliefs, as
inevitable as those are. Ah, but don’t you see, don’t you see then, that faith means
something other than a set of beliefs, makes those beliefs in themselves relative,
negotiable, and that the thing that we need to strive for, open our lives to, is that
experience of faith beyond all of the trappings of the institution. I get concerned
about how much weight we place on our sets of beliefs. They are not absolute.
They are not final. They are not to be held up as means by which people can
determine whether they are in or out. Sets of beliefs, creeds, special statements—
dear friends, they aren’t important. They can be instruments. They can prepare
us for the experience. But it is, after all, the experience. It is the Living God, so
that life is transformed. That’s the thing for which we must be yearning and
striving.
You say, “How do I get it?” I don’t know! I can’t do it for you. The Psalmist said,
“Be still and know that I am God.” The mystics of all generations have spoken
about awareness. Being still long enough to be aware of this moment, of myself,
of my body, of my breathing in, of my breathing out, of the sunshine, of the
budding tree, of the tulip pressing upward, of springtime, of sunset, of loving
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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relationships, pausing long enough to become aware. Another word that is often
used is attention. Good grief, we get in a treadmill existence, we grind on our way,
we go lickety split. Do we ever stop long enough? Someone has said you have to
actually shut down the brain —shut down the brain. Because, you know what?
God isn’t available to the brain. God is not for intellectual pursuit. I should say
that? (Laughter) I mean, it’s causing me great despair now. It’s the culmination of
my great career. Everything I’ve tried to do all my life, to no avail. You can’t do it
that way. I talk to you about the experience of God, doing it reasonably, doing it
rationally. I can’t lead you into that experience because you can’t think your way
into God.
In fact, it helps if you stop thinking for a moment and let the mind be infiltrated,
and let one’s being be encountered and embraced and submerged in the God who
is closer than our breath, the God in whom we live and move and have our being.
If we only had eyes to see that faith vision, that to which I point you this morning,
not to make you feel guilty if you haven’t had it like Paul, or even if you haven’t
had it like Hammarskjöld. God embraces you in grace whether you’ve had it or
not. I give you the invitation to open your life to what could be transforming and
wonderful.
During the Lenten pilgrimage I twice brought to this stool Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
Letters and Papers from Prison, and I got a call yesterday that there was going to
be a special on Dietrich Bonhoeffer last night. It was wonderful! Union Seminary
is establishing a chair in theology in his name and yesterday marked fifty years
since he was hung by the Gestapo. There was this marvelous concert with
instrumentalists from around the world, from leading orchestras from around the
world, over one hundred sixty pieces in Riverside Church in New York City, with
narration by Bill Moyers telling the story of Bonhoeffer’s life and reading from his
writing. Some of the reading I have read here to you. Powerful!
Starting out with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, moving into Schomberg’s
Survival of the Warsaw Ghetto, telling the story then of Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom
with the orchestra and chorus breaking out into Brahm’s German Requiem, “How
lovely are Thy Dwelling Places, O Lord God of hosts,” Bonhoeffer living his faith,
and the Brahm’s Requiem giving witness to the conviction that there was life after
life so that the praise of God here issues in the praise of God there. The director of
the orchestra, Christof VanDallier, the son of Hans VanDallier, the brother-in-law
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed for his faith. The
son of a martyr, Bonhoeffer being his uncle, leading this great orchestra in “How
Lovely Are They Dwelling Places, O Lord God of Hosts,” as a witness to the
conviction that his life could be ended, but it could not be ended and the truth
and the cause for which he lived and gave his life goes on.
You see, faith as experience leads us back into life. Playing in the orchestra was a
man named Bethke. Everard Bethke was the biographer of Bonhoeffer and his
closest friend. Bethke’s son was godson to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. On the day of his
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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baptism, Bonhoeffer wrote him a letter telling him of the dark days through
which he was living and how he was praying that there would be brighter days
when this child, this infant at the baptismal font, could once again plan his life.
But Bonhoeffer saying to his godson, from prison in jeopardy of his life, “I would
choose to live this time.”
You see, faith as experience enables you to go through hell. Faith as experience.
The Psalmist said, “The Lord is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” Faith as
experience. Don ‘t worry about dotting i’s and crossing t’s, creeds come and go,
but the experience of God, the Living God, if you have that the rest doesn’t
matter. And if you don’t have that, the rest won’t help you.
I don’t know what more to say except, let us be open . . .God, God, come to us . . . .
come to us.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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.)
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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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Event
Eastertide II
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Credo: A Series for Eastertide
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Acts 17:24, John 14:1, 9
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1994-04-10
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I Believe
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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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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 10, 1994 entitled "I Believe", as part of the series "Credo: A Series for Eastertide", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 17:24, John 14:1, 9.
Awareness
Eastertide
Experience of Faith
Transforming Love
-
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bef8019aaa16c21b20e0fa9ae13842c2.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
It Is an Easter World!
Text: I Corinthians 15: 20
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide III, April 13, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is an Easter world!
I stress the positive affirmation. That is the meaning of the text. Paul had been
dealing with an idea that would have denied the reality of the resurrection of
Jesus. He showed the consequences of denying the resurrection and then he
made the bold, simple claim of the text:
But the Truth is, Christ was raised to life…
That is the center of the Gospel, the basis of all we claim in our Christian faith.
We believe it is true; Jesus is the living Lord and because he is the living Lord, we
are bold to say,
It is an Easter world!
It is an Easter world despite all appearances and we must be quite candid about
that. Our affirmation of faith is made in the face of a mountain of data that seems
to contradict it. There is trouble in our world. We teeter on the edge of armed
intervention in Libya. We tremble with every news report wondering where
terrorists will strike next.
And we carry a good deal of personal baggage with us – personal pain, broken
relationships, vocational anxiety, and disappointments. Some of our neighbors
succumb to the weight of it: Then we have the tragedy of a soul poisoned with
cynicism and bitterness. Some, deeply wounded, wall themselves in, making
themselves invulnerable to being hurt again, and, at the same time, invulnerable
to love and grace – the walking dead.
But this is the First Day of the Week; this is the celebration of the resurrection.
This is the day that the Lord has made. We are here to rejoice and be glad
because beneath the appearance is a deeper reality. Christ has been raised to life!
It is an Easter World after all!
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
We are going to listen to St. Paul as he lifts up the reality of the resurrection of
Jesus. We will reverse his manner of treatment but in so doing we will discover
the positive ramifications of the resurrection of Jesus. For his statement, "If
Christ be not risen...," after which he spells out what the consequence would be,
we will substitute the positive affirmation, "Because Christ is risen ..."
The Corinthian congregation failed to understand or refused to believe that there
was yet a future consummation coming, an aspect of which would be the
resurrection of the dead. They did believe Jesus arose and they believed they
were already alive in him, but they denied that there was still more to come. They
considered that they were already "resurrected" – spiritually they had been made
alive – and that was true. But for them, the rest of history did not matter and the
final summing up of all things – the new creation – had no reality. They
"spiritualized" the truth of resurrection. In typical Greek fashion they understood
salvation as deliverance from the body, from entanglement in the material world.
They had no conception of the new heaven and earth and the "spiritual body," the
resurrection body of which Paul speaks in the chapter.
That is the problem Paul addresses. He does so by saying that to deny our future
resurrection is to deny the resurrection of Christ. Obviously, Paul argues thus
because he sees the vital linkage between Christ's resurrection and our
resurrection. Thus he argues backward. To deny our resurrection is really to deny
Christ's resurrection. But such denial is limiting. He began the chapter with the
broad witness to the resurrection of Jesus. And then in our text he moves to the
offensive with the straightforward declaration,
But the truth is, Christ was raised to life – the first fruits of the harvest of
the dead.
I will say no more about the Corinthian problem with resurrection. Rather, I want
simply to set forth what Paul says would be the consequence if Christ were not
raised, or, stated positively, I want to set forth what is, in fact, the case because
Christ is risen.
First of all, Paul claims, if Christ be not risen, the Gospel is null and void and so
is your faith.
Later he writes, "... your faith has nothing in it." If we reverse Paul's treatment
from the negative:
If Christ was not raised...
to:
Now is Christ risen,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
then we can state positively, the Gospel is true; your faith grips the truth, reality.
This is of supreme importance.
We want to know the truth; we do not want to live under delusion. We say
sometimes "the Truth hurts." Sometimes we do block ourselves off from the
Truth; we fear the Truth or we stubbornly refuse to recognize the Truth. Yet, most
of us, most of the time, really want to know the Truth.
Freud claimed religion was an illusion. He and Karl Marx and Ludwig Feuerbach
and Friedrich Nietzsche created the foundation of modern atheism. There may
not be large numbers of atheists in the world, but there is much practical atheism
– people living without any essential reference to God or acknowledgement of
Him. The foundations of the Christian Gospel have been penetratingly examined
in the past two centuries and there is a great mass of agnosticism. The Church
has been on the defensive and not always with the calm confidence in the Truth
which is the most persuasive witness.
We must always want to know the Truth. We must not duck the issues; we must
look at the data, search the evidence and deal with integrity as we bear witness to
our faith.
What is our claim? Paul sets it out clearly:
If Christ is not risen, the Gospel is false, our faith grasps an illusion.
What, then, is the positive side? What do we believe to be true if we believe Christ
is risen?
We believe that God, the Creator and sustainer of the world, is the living
God Whose power raises the dead. We believe He is the Sovereign Lord of
the world and that beyond the machinations of governments and all forms
of organization and human planning, scheming and conspiring, there is at
work in history's unraveling a purpose, a purpose of love, a purpose that is
moving all things toward re-creation.
Christ is risen. He is a sign in the midst of history that God will redeem history.
He is a sign in our world that life is stronger than death, that when the power of
darkness utilizing the forms and structures of human government and religions
have done their best – rather, their worst! – God is still God. His power is not
limited, His love is all-embracing, His grace abounding.
The Gospel is not null and void. The Gospel is good news pointing to an event, an
act of God by which He "signed" the world for final Redemption.
Christ is risen; the Gospel is true; our faith grasps reality.
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
History looks anything but redeemed, does it not? The American Fleet clusters in
the Mediterranean. Terrorists plot to destroy, to maim and to kill. Wherever we
look, violence and war threaten to burst forth.
What do we conclude? What are the options? No God, no meaning, just human
potential - both for evil and for good, and an endless nightmare? That is one
possible conclusion. Then, one might despair and give up. Or, one might seek to
maintain the upper hand and through power and cleverness avoid disaster but
never find peace.
Or do we acknowledge the continuing obstinacy of the old world, the continuing
state of the world unredeemed with all the hell that that entails, but refuse to see
the present state of things as the final state? Do we live by another vision and in
the community of faith form an alternative community? And do we look for signs
of resurrection in the old world?
I happened to catch the NBC interview with Corazon Aquino this week. I was
deeply impressed with the sincerity and simplicity of her faith. She was asked
about the danger to her life. She responded that she was aware of it, but also that
she believed God would enable her to fulfill her mission. And if my mission is
fulfilled, she said, then it is all right.
Well, what about her husband who returned to the Philippines to engage in a
mission, but was gunned down? That did not refute her faith; rather it confirmed
her faith. Her husband's death accomplished what it is unlikely his life could have
accomplished. He sacrificed his life for the Philippine people and a remarkable,
relatively peaceful revolution ensued.
Corry Aquino lives in an exceedingly dangerous, corrupt, violent world, but
rather than being paralyzed by it, she is set free by faith in God to live and lead
with a measure of freedom and peace.
When asked if she had a model she admired, she responded that Mother Teresa
was a great inspiration to her. And we are bombarded daily with the world's bad
news, but we must not forget that Mother Teresa is bringing love and life and
healing to the poor and dying in this world.
At the Maui Conference I met a psychiatrist named Jerry Jampolsky. This week
we received a letter from him saying he was ready to take fifty children to Russia
where he is involved in a national TV special on children titled, "A Child Shall
Lead Them." He has forty centers around the world for terminally ill children
where love and gentleness effect some amazing healings.
On what basis does one move from possible paralysis of fear, despair, even
cynicism and bitterness to loving service, meaningful involvement in the healing
of the wounds of persons and society?
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Are we not freed for loving service on the basis of the truth that this is not all
there is? There is more coming and the "more" will be "the more of God." Do we
not seek peace, pray for shalom, bring healing because we believe that we are the
instruments of the living God Who is bringing in His Kingdom, creating
newness?
If Christ be not risen, says Paul, then we are operating on an illusion. Then dead
is dead. Then history is a tale told by an idiot. Then life ends with a whimper.
Then weariness and despair will finally prevail.
But Christ is risen - therefore, Paul concludes the great discourse, "Be steadfast,
immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord inasmuch as you know that
your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
There is a second consequence of the resurrection. Again, Paul states the
negative:
…if Christ was not raised,… you are still in your old state of sin.
The positive affirmation we derive from that claim is that because Christ is risen
our sin has been removed.
This brings us back to the mystery of the Cross. It is perhaps best simply to bow
there wondering at what is revealed – the suffering of Jesus for the sin of the
world, the love of God demonstrated in that sacrificial death, the total obedience
of Jesus to the Father’s will, enduring the hostility of humankind and entering
the darkness of forsakenness.
Paul says God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
Peter wrote, He bore our sins in his body on the Tree.
Paul wrote, God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin…
I do not pretend to understand the crucifixion, but I do see how the fate of Jesus
is a parable of what happens once again in our history. Certainly it is more than
that and the life and ministry of Jesus stands by itself. Yet the suffering of the
righteous, the triumph of evil and wrong is rejected in every generation.
There, in a once-for-all event, we see One-for-all enduring the suffering of the
world’s sin, the world represented in Israel.
In that sense, we were there when they crucified our Lord. If we can see that
much, then we are prepared to hear the amazing news of Easter, the good news
that God made His move after "it was finished."
History crucified him. Nature's verdict was, he is dead.
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
God's action reversed the flow of history and nature. God raised him up. God
gave him life from the dead.
Now in the light of that dramatic reversal, the Good News is that Sin was put
away. The Gospel is that now God accepts us in Christ; we are received through
Jesus Christ our Lord. His life is our life, His obedience is our obedience, His
righteousness our righteousness.
Thus the Apostolic mission is one of reconciliation We are ambassadors of Christ – be reconciled to God.
There is no longer a barrier of alienation; now we can simply come home.
Again, I do not pretend to understand the mystery of Good and Evil, or what
great cosmic transformation was effected through the crucifixion of Jesus. But I
do believe the truth of the Gospel invitation - Come; come to the Father through
Jesus, the Son.
There was an ontological shift in Reality through the Cross and Resurrection. The
Good News of the Gospel proclaims that it is ontologically impossible to stand as
a sinner before God.
Do you hear that? Does that make sense?
That has not been much understood in the Church. We have kept sin very much
alive and most of us crawl around with a pretty good load of guilt on our back. We
have been conditioned in the Church to keep our sin ever before us and to guard
against the pride of self-righteousness.
Well and good. I think the peacock is a magnificent bird but I am put off by its
human imitator. A consciousness of sin is a healthy possession, which keeps us
mindful of our vulnerability to temptation and our frequent failure to live in love
with God and our neighbor.
What we have not made clear, however, what has not really filtered down to the
inner recesses of our consciousness is that all our sin and all our guilt has already
been removed, taken away, put out of the mind and consciousness of God. We
have not reckoned with the ontological shift in reality effected by the death and
resurrection of Jesus.
Thus we never really find the freedom to break loose from our past. We never get
unshackled from our failure. We are too introspective, too introverted, too selfpreoccupied. We take ourselves too seriously. There are Christian churches that
place so much stress on inward experience, groaning under sin and
unworthiness, despairing over proneness to sin that they never get their eyes off
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
their own soul's navel to be able to look to God Who has a smile on His face
saying, "Why don’t you just come here and let me love you?"
Too much fascination with our own sinfulness and unworthiness is not a virtue,
but a vice; it is not to be deeply spiritual, but unwholesomely self-centered and it
becomes a strange form of human pride. Further, it is a denigration of the Gospel
and an affront to the mercy of God as though no power on earth or in heaven
could possibly forgive my sins!
Hear the Gospel:
It is ontologically impossible to stand before God as a sinner. He has
removed sin and guilt from the world, from His presence, from existence.
I am sure that raises all kinds of questions.
There was a very acute thinker who was a member of this congregation who used
to argue with me that there was no place for the Prayer of Confession in Christian
worship. All that was possible, he maintained, is a prayer of thanksgiving that our
sin has been handled. He had a point.
I carefully phrase the Prayer of Confession that it not become a wallowing in how
awful we are, but a consciousness of our failure in the presence of the greater
reality of God's grace. Robert Schuller does not use the Prayer of Confession
because he believes it reinforces the sin-guilt-negative self-image. He has a point.
For the traditional Church and deeply conditioned Christian people, that
reinforcement may keep us from grasping the radical message of God's grace –
Sin is gone!
If Christ be not raised - you are still in your old state of sin,
but now is Christ risen; you are free of your sin.
Forgiveness, freedom, is an amazing reality. Forgiveness - you are forgiven; does
that sink in? Does that not make you want to dance and shout and sing? Say it
three times, emphasizing a different word each time:
I am forgiven!
I am forgiven!
I am forgiven!
Believe it; live in the freedom of that gracious forgiveness. Trust the ontological
shift in Reality. Live in the Ontology of Grace.
There is a third consequence of Jesus’ resurrection. If Christ be not risen,
© Grand Valley State University
�It Is an Easter World!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
it follows also that those who have died within Christ's fellowship are ultimately
lost.
The positive statement of Paul's argument is that Christ being risen, those who
die move through death to fullness of life. Here we have to do with the matter of
Christian hope and the comfort of those who bury loved ones. Jesus said,
Because I live, you too shall live…
Again, he said,
I am the resurrection and the life. If a person has faith in me, even though
he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith shall
ever died. John 11: 25-26
Paul counseled concerned believers in Thessalonians about the death of loved
ones. He wrote with great sensitivity:
I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who
have fallen asleep, that you sorrow not as those who have no hope...
That is the critical point. Death separates. Death creates loss. Death leaves us
with deep grief when one long and dearly loved is taken away. Sorrow is only
natural. But it is not sorrow without hope. Hope enables us to transcend the loss
in the conviction that those we love have moved into life in a greater dimension
than we can conceive of and, furthermore, that we will one day be reunited with
all those we love in the brightness of God's Eternal Presence. Death is a
conquered foe!
That is the verdict in light of Jesus' resurrection. Hope is grounded in Jesus'
resurrection. That hope fastens on a future in which death, the grave, disease,
pain and tears will be no more.
Again this is a consequence of the Ontological Shift in Reality. Paul says if we
have hope in Christ for this life only we are of all people most to be pitied. Hope
in this life is critical, but it is not enough. We need a hope anchored beyond
history in the Eternal God. Only then are we free to engage in history's struggle
with good courage and sure confidence, only then can we relax and revel in the
reality of forgiveness, only then can we bury our dead in the confidence that those
we love have fallen asleep in Jesus.
Christ is risen!
This is an Easter world!
Thanks be to God Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Alleluia! Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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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
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Eastertide III
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 15:20
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19860413
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1986-04-13
Title
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It is an Easter World
Creator
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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
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
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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 April 13, 1986 entitled "It is an Easter World", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 15:20.
Community of Faith
Eastertide
Eschatology
Forgiveness
Freedom
Hope
Resurrection
Shalom
Sin
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b60c18b4fd73062347a2b9b542453598.pdf
1261aae62c595ab5d4f02dae52eccc36
PDF Text
Text
Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
From Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Text: Acts 2:32, 36; Mark 10:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 17, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This Jesus, God raised up..." Acts 2:32
"... God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Acts 2:36
"Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good?' No one is good but God alone." Mark 10:18
"Credo," "I believe." It is a Latin word, which takes to itself its subject and gives
expression to the experience of faith, faith not in a proposition or even a person,
but rather faith as trust in someone. That is the nature of faith as it has come to
expression in the Christian tradition, as it has been experienced in the Christian
tradition, I believe.
Last week I tried to distinguish between a set of beliefs, such as we have in a
creedal formulation, and the experience of faith. I felt that many of you said,
"yes" to what was said last week and felt that distinction was meaningful. While
the content of our faith is not unimportant, for it is that upon which we reflect
and it gives us that which we can teach and pass along, what we really long for is
the experience of faith.
This week I picked up a little volume by a New Testament scholar whom I have
mentioned from time to time. His name is Marcus Borg. He is a part of the Jesus
Seminar, which is getting so much publicity these days in news reports,
magazines, and newspapers. Borg had written an earlier book, Jesus, A New
Vision, which was very helpful to me and to some of our thinking a year or two
ago during the Eastertide season or Lenten season. But in this more recent book
entitled Meeting Jesus Again For The First Time, he tells his own spiritual
autobiography. It is often easier to get our heads around a story than it is a series
of propositions, and Marcus Borg tells about his own story growing up in the
church in the Midwest, a good Lutheran boy. He speaks of the hymns, Sunday
school, all of those things. Then adolescence, some doubts, college, and a little
time off from church. But then seminary, and the critical studies of the gospel. In
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
those studies comes the recognition that the gospels did not simply give us a news
journalist's account of Jesus. They didn't give us a photograph; rather they gave
us a portrait, or in his word," a sketch," of Jesus.
Borg came to see that the gospels were faith documents. They were theological
documents, which not only remembered the historical Jesus but also reflected
upon the transformation of the community's understanding of Jesus after Easter.
That experience of the Christian community after Easter was the transforming
experience where the crucified one was experienced as living. That experience of
the crucified one living caused them to look back on the life they remembered,
and the life they remembered became colored through the experience of Easter.
His account of his own history is preferred when he was asked by an Episcopal
men's Bible study group to talk to them about Jesus and the word was "make it
personal". Sounds like what some of you might say to me when you say, preach to
me and make it personal. Borg tells about making a little note to himself," me and
Jesus". It causes him to reflect on his own pilgrimage.
The thing he began to see is that there was a moment in his life when he moved
out of faith, as it were. There was a time when he intellectually could not believe
anymore even though he kept studying all the stuff. But then there was a time in
his life when he came to a kind of spiritual experience, a mystical experience
almost, a sense of awe, of wonder – the kind of spiritual experience that is
described by not only Christian people, but Jewish people, and really crossculturally, and even across the generations. The kind of "aha" moment, when it is
as though the heavens open and one is encountered by, well let us say, God.
After that experience, that encounter, that kind of mystical experience, he
returned to his study of the gospels and he began to see a new image of Jesus.
What he had learned to that point in his critical studies of the gospels, the things
that we talk about here all the time, the fact that there was a pre-Easter Jesus,
that very human individual who lived and walked and ate with his disciples and
talked to multitudes, and a very concrete, historical person, the Jesus that the
church remembered the Jesus that is spoken about in the gospels. But he had
come to see also that post-Easter Jesus or the Christ of faith, the Jesus who, after
Easter, in the reflection of the community, took on more and more awesome
character – a process after Easter that moved this Nazarine Jew, Jesus, through
the lens of Easter into Jesus Christ. This Jesus, eventually in the fourth century,
is spoken of as true God, true man, of one nature with God. This post-Easter
process eventuated in the understanding of the Trinitarian God: God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Borg’s new image of Jesus was a man who was filled with the spirit, who was a
bearer of the spirit, a mediator of the spirit, one of those persons who seems so
transparent to God that his very being and presence seems to radiate God, God's
Spirit.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Marcus Borg, who had believed naively in the Jesus of, "Jesus loves me this I
know for the Bible tells me so,” Marcus Borg, who had gone through the critical
fires of examinations, scholarly study and had been impressed with Jesus as a
social, political figure but who couldn't do anything with all of the Jesus/God
talk, suddenly through his own spiritual experience came to see Jesus as a person
who was a bearer of the spirit, a spirit person, as he says. And as he speaks about
Jesus at this point in his scholarly and professional life, it's obvious that there's
another layer. This man has also encountered Jesus as the One who is the bearer
of the spirit of God and who points to God, God who is spirit.
I tell you that story because it's rather interesting to me that last week we spoke
about that distinction between having a set of beliefs, and the experience of
belief; then I come across this Jesus Seminar scholar who likewise has all of the
scholarly understanding of the critical study of the gospel, but now points also to
an experience, an awakening, a new awareness, and sees Jesus as one of those
people who was filled with God's spirit and mediated God's spirit, to those who
followed him, and who continued to be present to them. And that, Borg says, is
what Easter is all about.
Easter is about the fact that the One who is crucified was found by his followers
yet to be with them, still to be powerfully with them, or as Dominic Crossan says:
(I don't know if this is true or not but it makes a lot of sense to me.) You know
there were followers of the kingdom movement, followers of Jesus up in Galilee
who didn't know what happened down in Jerusalem. I mean you take the
transportation, the communications, and that kind of thing – it wasn't like you
could tune into CNN and find out that at three o'clock in the afternoon Jesus of
Nazarus was crucified outside of the city. Crossan said, No, these followers of the
Jesus movement were talking about Jesus, and God, and doing the miracles, and
the healings, and all of these things. The movement was still moving. And
suddenly they realized when someone came up north and told them, "Jesus is
dead." "Well, when did he die?" "A month ago." Oh, no, they respond. It can't be,
because nothing happened on that day. We kept on moving. The movement kept
moving. Jesus the power, the spirit, everything is the same. It didn't end.
And Dominic Crossan said Easter, was simply the realization of Jesus' followers
that he could not be dead but must somehow be present with them. Because the
very same spiritual power and presence of God that he seemed to mediate in his
life was still being mediated to them. They knew Jesus, they knew spirit, they
knew God in the same way they had known and experienced God and Spirit when
they were breaking bread with Jesus in the flesh.
"So what!" you say to me. Well, I'll just tell you how it helps me, It helps me to
make some sense of the gospels themselves. In the gospels, just take the gospel
according to Mark for example, three specific times Jesus says to his disciples, he
was going to go to Jerusalem, he was going to die, and was going to rise on the
third day. I think there are three times in the gospel of Mark where it says that.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Well you read that and you say, "Well, obviously Jesus was God, Jesus knew
everything, Jesus knew what was going to happen." Now you come to
Gethsemane, and there you have Jesus pleading with God to take the cup from
him. And then you go to the cross and you have Jesus saying, "My God, My God,
Why?" And you have the disciples full of fear, hightailing it for Galilee. Now I
mean, they may have been dull, but can you tell me if this impressive teacher sat
you down on three different occasions and said to you, "Look, we're going to
Jerusalem. I'm going to die. I'm going to rise again the third day", would you have
been acting as though what happened was devastating and made no sense to you?
You see, those kinds of things cause those who really study in depth to say,
"Something doesn't fit."
Or for example, the text of the morning: A young ruler comes to Jesus and he
says, "What must I do to have eternal life, good Master?" Jesus said, "Why do you
call me good?" Now it might seem Jesus was calling him up short saying, "Come
on, get off it, get real." But as a matter of fact Jesus is really saying "There's only
one good and that is God."
I hear that as saying Jesus distanced himself from God in his human nature and
his human consciousness. I think it clearly means Jesus never presumed to be
God. "Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me
good? There is only one good, that's God." How does such a saying still remain in
Mark?
Matthew's got a story, Mark a story, Luke a story, John a story, and sometimes
there's some stuff that was so much a part of the tradition that it got into the
written record even though it really seems to be at war with some other things
that were in the written record.
Now Mark is the earliest gospel written, we believe. And so he is probably
recording close to the actual words just like it was there. Only one is good, that's
God. But that created a real problem for Matthew. Matthew's dependent upon
Mark's written record and he's got the same story. But listen to Matthew's
version, written after Mark. In Matthew, someone came to Jesus and said,
'Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" And he said to him,
"Why do you ask me about what is good?" No problem in Matthew's gospel. The
guy says, "What good thing must I do?" Jesus said, "Why do you ask me about
what is good?"
Now the original story in Mark is Jesus saying, "Why do you call me good, God is
good." Matthew doesn't want to communicate that. Now here Matthew garbles
Mark's story because Matthew knows that that little story is going to cause some
confusion. Someone's going to say, "what do you mean?" Jesus, Son of God
saying here only one is good, that is God. We have to face honestly what is
happening here.
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
When I really study these things, there is all kinds of stuff like that. So when I see
someone like Borg working through, distinguishing between the pre-Easter Jesus
and the post-Easter Jesus and acknowledging or understanding that through the
event of Easter, the pre-Easter Jesus took on a different coloring, that helps me.
Now I can understand. I can see the process. Example: In the book of Acts, on the
day of Pentecost (that we read a moment ago), Peter's sermon concludes with the
thirty-sixth verse: “Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty
that God is made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
God has made this crucified Jesus Lord and Christ or Messiah.
It would seem that through the crucifixion and the resurrection Jesus became by
God's designation, Lord,(the honoristic title of the Hellenistic Greek world) and
Christ, the one the Jews were looking for. But if you go to the next chapter, the
New Testament scholar, J.AT. Robinson, points out that after the healing of the
lame man at the temple, Peter's speech there seems to reflect a little different
conception.
In the third chapter, the nineteenth verse: “Repent, therefore, and turn to God so
that your sins may be wiped out so that times of refreshing may come from the
presence of the Lord and that he may send the Messiah, appointed for you. That
is Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that
God announced long ago through the holy prophets.”
Here it would seem that Jesus has been appointed by God to be the Messiah but
he has not yet come as the Messiah. He cannot come as Messiah until Israel
repents. And so the call, the appeal, here in this speech of Peter is repent. If you'll
repent this Jesus whom God has appointed Christ will come and there will be the
universal restoration of all things. There will be Shalom on earth.
Well, why wouldn't that be a natural kind of understanding? That's probably
reflective of what they sensed from Jesus himself. Jesus didn't go around
spouting the fact that he was the Messiah. Jesus was preparing the way for the
coming of the Kingdom of God, which he believed, along with all of his
contemporaries, was just around the comer.
Now I say it helps me to make sense of this stuff. I can see the process at work. I
can see that they were struggling as much then as I struggle now to make sense of
all this business. And so what I see as I approach the story of Jesus after Easter is
that I have in the New Testament a memory of the historical Jesus, the Nazarene,
the man reflected through the lens of Easter.
I call the sermon, "Jesus In A Reverse Angle Lens." It's the wrong season. It
should be pro-football season, particularly when they do the instant replay. I
don't know the technology of a reverse angle lens but you know how it goes. The
quarterback throws the ball and the tight end goes down, and he catches the ball,
and his foot comes down. Is it on the line, or over the line? Are both feet in or
only one? In the replay they're able to show the ball caught. And then you see the
© Grand Valley State University
�Jesus in a Reverse Angle Lens
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
ball going back, eventually, to the quarterback whose arm starts here and
eventually goes back here. And if you follow the reverse angle long enough you
get to where he's taking the ball from the center. I don't understand that
technology but it is looking at the end event and trying to understand it by going
back and watching the process. Now that's what we have in the gospel records of
Jesus. There is a memory of the historical Jesus plus the experience of the postEaster community of the presence of the risen Christ.
Finally, what difference does that make? That enables me still to believe in Jesus.
I can see him now as my brother who was filled with the Spirit of God, who was a
bearer of the Spirit, who was so potently the bearer of the Spirit that those who
met him experienced God. And following his death they continued to experience
him alive as the bearer of God to them. Therefore, they began to speak of him
with grand titles and to exalt him higher, and higher, and higher, into the whole
creedal tradition of the church. As a matter of fact, he was God's man in whose
face I see God and meet the Spirit.
I was thinking about the day last Tuesday in Muskegon where Rabbi Hartman
and Martin Marty dialogued for the day about "Religion That Heals, and Religion
That Kills". If you are with David Hartman, the Jewish rabbi for long, you know
you are with a man in whom the Spirit dwells. It struck me that when the rich
young ruler came to Jesus to say, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" what
Jesus told him is exactly what Hartman would tell someone today, "Keep the
Torah."
Jesus was a good Jewish Rabbi, in whom God's spirit was so regnant that those
who met him knew that they were in the presence of God. The whole creedal
tradition of the church is trying to say precisely that, and if you dare come back
one more week, I will approach that high Christology of John's gospel, which was
John's attempt to say simply that in the human existence of this man God was
present, and this man said the God that was present in him was available to us
all.
Jesus was a Spirit person and the New Testament is the consequence of those
who encountered God as spirit in Jesus, giving witness to the fact that there was
life in his name, that God is available to us as Spirit. Thank God for that.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ba9e0b525f9648e7edee115e66420a53.mp3
c5a1126020ddde8d21cec0d990163592
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>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Eastertide III
Series
Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Scripture Text
Acts 2:32, 36, Mark 10: 18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19940417
Date
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1994-04-17
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Jesus in A Reverse Angle Lens
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
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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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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 17, 1994 entitled "Jesus in A Reverse Angle Lens", as part of the series "Credo: A Series For Eastertide", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 2:32, 36, Mark 10: 18.
Eastertide
Historical Jesus
Presence of God
Spirit
Trinitarian
Trust
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/56ed6b2a8332a3b5ccbf339a59936e5a.mp3
db107890f08abc01f98bed836b8500d0
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f724a64f5b4935b8bfb291985ce7f53d.pdf
5b1d8cdf28978dc432392adffbabb3c7
PDF Text
Text
Letting Go – Reaching Out
From the Eastertide sermon series: Easter People
Scripture: Mark 3:19b-21, 31-35; John 19: 25-27; Acts 1:12-14
Richard A. Rhem and Collette Volkema DeNooyer
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Ascension Day Sunday, May 12, 1991
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Text:
“Whoever
does
the
will
of
God
is
my
brother,
my
sister,
my
mother.”
Mark
3:35
On Thursday last, the Christian Church celebrated the Festival of the Ascension,
although this significant event in our calendar gets hardly a notice. Its truth is
that the risen Christ lives in the very presence of God, that he is our reigning Lord
and our friend at the throne of the universe, pleading our cause. In the Book of
Acts, we are told that Jesus showed himself alive for forty days and then was seen
by the disciples enveloped in a cloud and “lifted up.” Therefore, the Church
names the 40th day after Easter Ascension Day, the event that completes the
Easter miracle and sets the stage for the miracle of Pentecost, the pouring out of
the Spirit on the Church, to be celebrated next Lord’s Day.
Today, then, we are still in the Season of Eastertide - the last of the Great
Sundays of the Season of Easter, waiting now for the day of Pentecost.
Some months ago as I was contemplating the preaching for Eastertide, I decided
on a series of biographical messages on biblical people whose lives were
transformed by encounter with the Risen Lord - Peter and Thomas, Barnabas and
Paul. And then I realized that this Sunday, the one between Ascension and
Pentecost, was also Mother’s Day and I went through my annual struggle with
how to handle Mother’s Day when it falls on a High Holy Day.
For one thing, at CCC we have broadened this day to include the Christian family.
We have recognized that, while for some this day is filled with beauty, for others
its remembrance brings sharp pain, for not only the ideal, the wholeness of family
life, but also the hurt of brokenness is part of our human situation.
And so, how do we celebrate this day that has one meaning on the church
calendar and another on the secular calendar?
© Grand Valley State University
�Letting Go – Reaching Out
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
It occurred to me that there is a narrative from Luke’s Acts of the Apostles that
takes place between the event of ascension and the day of Pentecost. Following
the experience of the ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit, the
disciples were in the upper room together praying, and with them were some
women, among whom was Mary, the mother of our Lord.
And there it was - my Easter person for this Sunday - Mary, mother of Jesus;
Mary, mother of us all. What a rich source of reflection this one provides. Think
of the biblical story of her experience.
As I thought on these things, “pondering them in my heart,” I realized I had never
done a biographical sermon on Mary. And yet I have frequently thought about it.
In my earlier years, I think I simply did not know what to do with this woman full
of grace.
I knew that in the Roman Catholic tradition she was venerated to superhuman
heights. Such dogma as her perpetual virginity, her bodily assumption into
heaven, her role as co-mediatrix with her son raised serious questions in my
narrowly-formed Protestant mind. I was suspect of the “Hail Marys” in the
Catholic piety.
But I also knew our knee-jerk Protestant reaction and rejection resulted in our
failure to give this woman her due and failed to bring into our devotion that soft
feminine dimension which is so important because of our mistaken ascription of
maleness to God Who transcends our sexual differentiation. It has been a great
loss we’ve suffered because we’ve failed to see Mary in the wonder of her faith,
obedience and human transformation.
Mary, peasant girl. Mary, recipient of God’s special call to be mother of our Lord.
Mary, entertainer of angels. Mary, recipient of the Spirit’s creative energy. Mary,
witness of her son’s cruel crucifixion. Mary, in the wake of Easter in prayer for the
Holy Spirit. Who was this woman? How was she transformed?
I’ve never preached on her life, even though over 30 years ago I heard a moving
first person sermon which I still remember. But, I also remember that I felt some
dissonance because Mary’s experience came to expression in a man’s voice.
How can a man possibly bring to expression the experience, the feelings of this
great woman, this mother of us all?
And so, I’ve never dared presume to speak for Mary. Yet, I’m certain her story of
transformation would enrich us all. If only she could tell her own story...
(Mary has been walking down the aisle during these last words; she pauses at
the base of the steps of the chancel. Mr. Rhem notices. No words are exchanged.
He gets up, offers the stool to her, and returns to his seat. Mary begins...)
© Grand Valley State University
�Letting Go – Reaching Out
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
“Have you ever had someone, when they were introducing you, sing your praises?
It can make you squirm a bit. You wonder how long it will take them to know the
real you, the one, you know, who from your perspective falls far short of the one
being described. You wonder whether with all integrity you shouldn’t be the first
to admit what they are certain, eventually, to discover for themselves.
Can you imagine, then, what it has been like for me? You’ve seen the paintings,
and the statues. I am eternally innocent, always delicately beautiful, holier than
most. Always somewhat elevated, above it all, gazing down from stained glass or,
if a statue, just above eye level, perched in a niche carved out of the sanctuary
wall, inevitably cast with an all-knowing look of divine wisdom.
‘All-knowing.’ Let me tell you how it really was - to be Mary, the mother of Jesus.
At first, terrifying. Pregnant. Unwed. I took a deep breath and took on the world,
at the age of 13. I knew scorn and disbelief awaited me when I told them what I
knew - knew beyond all knowing - that the child growing within me was blessed
by God, chosen by God, that somehow God was even in the fathering. I remember
their looks, their whispers. I burned with ... shame? No, it wasn’t really shame. It
was more with the fear and frustration of being unable to prove my integrity, to
prove that, despite outward appearances, I, too, was blessed, loved by God. That I
had been chosen - chosen to bear a child who one day the world would call
Emmanuel – ‘God with us.’
And then the birth. I was frightened. And yet, having the child is the easy part,
isn’t it? Raising them, nurturing them, loving them - that is the art. And it seems
you know how to do it best by the time you bid farewell to the last one. He was
my first, Jesus was. What I lacked in experience, hopefully I made up for in time time to tell the stories, time to teach him the ways, the tradition, the
responsibilities. Our people, Israel, had been blessed by God so that we might be
a blessing. I taught him that - faithfully.
He has been called a child ‘full of grace and truth.’ Ah, he was that. I am, of
course, unabashedly prejudiced. But that did not make him an easy child. He was
bright. And Nazareth was not exactly a bustling center of learning. He was
frustrated, I know, many times - yearning for more. It really shouldn’t have
surprised me, that year in Jerusalem, when he could not pull himself away from
the Temple, that he would love to be there, in the midst of the rabbis and the
elders, asking questions to his heart’s content. Good questions they were, too. At
least the ones I overheard.
Had I really been all-knowing, I would have seen then, that that moment was his
first significant step away from me. He was almost 13, almost a man. It was time
for me to begin letting go. But, all the years of care and love - and now to risk it
all? It can be so hard. I’m sure you know.
© Grand Valley State University
�Letting Go – Reaching Out
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
When he took the pilgrimage out into the desert to encounter John the Baptist,
son of my cousin Elizabeth, that was the next step. He went out to the wilderness
to receive John’s baptism. When he returned, I thought, I hoped, that he would
be content for a time, that he would pick up his carpenter’s tools and be part of
the family again. But, it wasn’t to be. Something had happened to him out in that
desert wilderness. His friends told me that he had experienced God’s Spirit
descending upon him like a dove, that God’s voice had called him. He had come
home to follow that call, to bring the voice he had heard to all who had eyes to see
and ears to hear.
He began preaching and teaching and even healing. He spoke with such authority
- it fascinated people. It made me uneasy. His words, and his actions: associating
openly with sinners, healing on the Sabbath - they flew in the face of our
traditions and mores.
Once I had stood and faced the world, strong in my truth, so I understood the
need to take a stand. I knew he was a grown man, old enough to be responsible
for his own consequences. And yet, when I heard that he had returned home
again from Capernaum, heard that crowds were gathered at his door, heard the
neighbors and scribes saying that he was dangerous, a devil, out of his mind,
primal motherly instincts surged to the surface. His brothers and I went to the
house where he was staying and called for him to come out, come home, come to
his senses.
Do you know what he said? The word came back to us that when they had given
him our message, he looked around at those who sat about him and said, ‘Who
are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever
does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.’
I was stunned! Hurt. But, there was something -a truth - in what he said. Not one
I wanted to hear, really. I tried to get my heart around it. His words spoke of
something larger than the intimate family, even the Jewish family. ‘Whoever does
the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother...’
His ministry was short - barely three years - and then came his fateful
determination to go to Jerusalem. His friends warned him. And I knew. It did not
take divine omniscience to know that there he would most probably meet his end.
He knew it, too, I think. But, to watch them crucify him - there is nothing natural
or normal in watching the life that you birthed, the child you suckled, the
innocent infant you watched blossom into an adult, hang there, screaming in
pain, suffering, dying. Dear God! Why is this what they do to you when you speak
the only truth you know?
I couldn’t bear to watch ... and I couldn’t bear to leave. And then I heard him
speak, barely. He was so weak. ‘Woman, behold your son.’ And then, ‘Son, behold
your mother.’
© Grand Valley State University
�Letting Go – Reaching Out
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
I was aware of arms around me. John, the one they called The Beloved, was there,
with me. Behold. My son. Who was my son? My son, my son was dying. And yet,
the arms of another son surrounded me, supported me. ‘Whoever does the will of
God.’ Even in that dark night of grief, a light was beginning to dawn.
And then a blaze of light - Easter light. Mary, the one called Magdalene, she came
running with the news. The tomb was empty and - she has seen him!
I take a deep breath - and take on the world, once again. Let them gaze at me with
disbelief -He lives! I know it beyond all knowing. And because he lives, I know he
was right. It took time for the truth he spoke to seep through the pain and the
grief. ‘Who are my brothers and my sisters, my mother?’ Who are my sons and
my daughters? ‘Whoever does the will of God.’ That is the realization that
transformed me! He was showing me the way to let go, and receive something
more. Wasn’t that so often at the heart of his message?
Who am I, you ask? I am a mother who had a mother’s hopes and dreams, of
children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A mother who felt she had a
right and a responsibility to demand that her son come home, come to his
senses, be the son she had dreamed he would be – the long-awaited Messiah
king, who would sit on the throne of David forever, and she, perhaps the Queen
Mother? If I am honest...
I’ve let all that go because he was right. The definition of family which is simply
biological or legal can hinder, even obstruct the coming of the Kingdom. I almost
did. But, even beyond that, I needed to recognize such definitions exclude those
who no longer have those ties, and can cause deep pain for those whose family
relations were destructive, or manipulative. He was right – true family
transcends our traditional definitions.
So, I am reaching out now, joining hands with brothers and sisters, sons and
daughters who believe, who strive to live as he taught us to live, who try to love as
he loved. I am waiting with them now, my family in Jerusalem, for the coming of
his spirit which he has promised to send.
You could reach out, too. Whether you are here today with a family or alone, if
you feel comfortable doing so, reach out and take the hand of the one on your
right and your left. Do it now. Know that this one can be your mother, your
father, your sister, or brother, your son, your daughter. Why? Because we all
belong to the One God who was there to hear our borning cry and who has
promised to be there with us when we have breathed our last. Welcome to the
Family of God!”
(This message was begun by Richard A. Rhem, Minister of Preaching. The
message continued in dramatic narrative by Colette V. DeNooyer, Minister for
Children.)
© Grand Valley State University
�Letting Go – Reaching Out
Richard A. Rhem
© Grand Valley State University
Page 6
�
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>
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
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
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
Ascension Sunday
Series
Easter People
Scripture Text
Mark 3:35
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-0-19910512
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-05-12
Title
A name given to the resource
Letting Go - Reaching Out
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 May 12, 1991 entitled "Letting Go - Reaching Out", as part of the series "Easter People", on the occasion of Ascension Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 3:35.
Ascension Day
Community of Faith
Eastertide
Inclusive
Mary
Mothers Day
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e9b97e19fc44d03e2be56e33b287ed2f.pdf
8cb6e629a9ed43783b3493f31c7019da
PDF Text
Text
Communion of Saints–Love, Forgiveness, and Freedom
From the Eastertide series on the Apostles’ Creed: Credo
Text: Genesis 21:9; I John 4:12, 18; Matthew 20:25-26
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Mother’s Day, May 8, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"... Sara saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing with her son Isaac..." Genesis 21:9
".. .if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." I John 4:12
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear..." I John 4:18
"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... It will not be so among you; but
whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant." Matthew 20:25-26
As someone has said, the art of life is to cooperate with the inevitable ... and so let
us talk about mothers. Mother's Day is not a holy feast day in the calendar of the
Christian church, but it has become rock solid in the culture of our society. And
as a matter of fact, it gives us a good occasion to honor our mothers, something
that we have all had, and if we have had it well, then there's no praise too high.
Mother's Day at Christ Community gives us an occasion to focus a bit more
broadly, and to think about the family, and to recognize the critical importance of
the family not only for the nurture of individuals but for the wellbeing of society
itself. And so on this beautiful Lord's day in Eastertide our focus is on the family,
and to offer "Oh, Hail" to our mothers. It is right and proper so to do.
There are a couple of qualifications I think that are always important to make on
a day like this. For though Mother's Day can be a beautiful day with much to
commend it, it is not an unmixed blessing. While it is a beautiful experience for
so many, it is also an occasion for some sadness and pain for others, those who
perhaps longed to find fulfillment in that role but were denied it, or those who
feel that it was not fulfilled with all of its potential. There can be so much hurt
and pain in human relationships. And so a day like this is a day to honor, to give
thanks, to recognize, but also a day in which we are sensitive to the fact that
within the human community there is also brokenness and pain.
A second qualification is this: As we celebrate it here at Christ Community we talk
about the festival of the Christian home. And that's right and proper too, for we
© Grand Valley State University
�The Communion of Saints–Love, Forgiveness, Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
are Christians and therefore we think of the home and the family in the context of
our Christian tradition. But we ought not think of it as though all of the
wonderful potential about the family is uniquely Christian. There are other
cultures, and other societies, and other religious faiths that also have wonderful
values of family. And so when I speak of the Christian family or the Christian
home I want to acknowledge that what we're talking about is something that is a
broader human phenomenon.
The best context perhaps then in which to talk about interpersonal relationships,
community, family, human bonding, human ties is maybe to borrow an article of
faith from the Apostle's Creed, which we have been considering in the season of
Eastertide. "I believe in the communion of saints," states the Creed. The
"communion of saints." That's another designation for the church, and it's really
perhaps the best and the broadest understanding of what we really want to talk
about when we talk about family, to talk about the relationships that bind us
together in communion, in community, the community of the saints, for a really
Christian community is a community that is far more complex than simply the
nuclear family.
There is a lot in the press of the religious right that talks about family values and
about the disintegration of the family. And certainly the family is a concern to us
all. But we ought not to make an idol of the nuclear family consisting of father,
mother, and child. Scott Peck, the psychologist writer, says certainly no one
would argue that the finest situation in which to nurture a child is with a father,
and a mother, and a stable home setting, and yet that is not the only setting in
which there can be genuine family. So I suppose that we could say to Dan Quayle
yes, you certainly have a point, but Murphy Brown has a point too. (In a
presidential campaign, Dan Quayle, incumbent Vice-President, derided the
television character, Murphy Brown, for choosing single parenthood.)
I think it's important for us in the Christian community to affirm the family and
marriage, and affirm that context for the nurture of children, but to avoid any
self-righteousness or any arrogance, and to recognize that by the grace of God,
human community is possible in a variety of forms, and that the grace of God and
the love of God are operative in a diversity of circumstances. So if we talk about
the communion of the saints we can be inclusive of the broader context. We think
about those interpersonal relationships that bond us together with another and
with a community, a bonding that transcends biology and bloodlines, though we
value those and give God thanks for those.
The communion of the saints is a creation of the Holy Spirit. Talk of "the
communion of the saints" comes in the third section of the Apostles’ Creed. And
the third section of the creed begins: I believe in the Holy Spirit. Human
community is not a human possibility. Human community is a miracle. Human
community is a gift. Human community is a gift of the grace of God effected by
© Grand Valley State University
�The Communion of Saints–Love, Forgiveness, Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the Spirit of God. Human community is a living together in love, and love is of
God.
I love the first letter of John I in the fourth chapter. For there so simply and so
clearly it is stated that God is love. And further, that we love because God first
loved us, and that when we love one another we experience the love of God. The
love of God is not some abstract idea, nor is the love of God some mystical,
emotional, spiritual, out-of-the-body experience. The love of God is as radically
concrete as our love for another human being. That is really quite an amazing
claim.
I think, in the church, I can still hear being preached the sermons of all of my
childhood, and my youth, and probably much of my own early ministry where we
talked about the love of God as something that was given to us and that was
obligatory on our part to give back to God. Those sermons stressed (still stress)
something that was a purely vertical kind of thing, an individual kind of
experience. But for the life of me, the older I grow, the more I experience, the
more I fail to know how to love God, in this way.
I'm really helped when I read this passage from John where he says, don't go
looking for it. Love your brother or your sister. Love that significant other in your
life and in that human relationship where love abounds, there God dwells. The
one who abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in that one so that human
community is not a human possibility. It is the creation of the spirit of God who
ushers us into the love of God to be experienced as we love one another.
There is a statement in this context where John says, If God so loved us ..." Now
how would you finish that sentence, if God so loved us ... ? Well, again I'm
thinking in terms of all of my Christian nurture and training and early
experience, I would finish that sentence this way: If God so loved us, then we
ought also to love God, right? No, not according to John. If God loved us then we
ought also to love one another.
That vertical love becomes experienced and expressed in our horizontal human
relationships. So the communion of the Holy Spirit in the Apostle's Creed follows
the article "I believe in the Holy Spirit." For human community is not a human
possibility. It's a miracle. It's a gift. It's a grace. It's grounded in God who is love. I
don't need to go searching for the experience of God. It is as close to me as you
are. In the concreteness of human loving relationships is the possibility of
experiencing the reality of the presence of God in our lives. The love of God is not
other than our love one for another.
You read through that fourth chapter in John I, once again. Human love, divine
love, God's love for us, our love for God, our love for one another, they are all
intertwined. John's very blunt. He doesn't pull any punches. He says, "You tell
me, you love God and hate your brother or sister?" Then he says a hard word. He
says, "You're a liar." Because, says John, it's simply not possible to be in love with
© Grand Valley State University
�The Communion of Saints–Love, Forgiveness, Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
God and to be out of love with our brothers and sisters. And he is not speaking of
simply biological brothers and sisters.
I called my dear aunt, whom I call every Saturday night, and I wished her a happy
Mother's Day. She is eighty-two, never been married, no children, yet she is the
matriarchal center of our Rhem clan. She is the warm heart and center. She is the
pulse beat. She cared for her parents into their old age until she buried them. She
continued to care for two sisters who were invalids until she buried them. And
she came night after night, weekend after weekend, to my parents to nurture
them until she buried, we buried my mother. And then she moved in and took
care of my father until we buried him. She has nieces and nephews, grandnieces
and grandnephews, grand-grand nieces and nephews, and we all know there is no
more giving, loving, caring, nurturing, family-centered, family-rooted, person
than Aunt Florence who has never married. Last night, we had a nice chat about
that. She said, "Dick, I've not missed anything." I said, "Of course, you haven't
because you've given everything."
Salomee was a Jewish mother. Out of the Jewish community come wonderful
stories about Jewish mothers. Like" How many children does it take to change a
light bulb for a Jewish mother?" None. Because she just says, "It's O.K. I'll just sit
here in the dark." But Salomee, the mother of the disciples James and John, had
ambitions for them. She knew there were twelve disciples, but she thought
positions one and two were not too much for her sons. After all, weren't they
cousins of Jesus? Wasn't there a little special break here or a privilege? Couldn't
she cut to the front of the line? " Oh, Lord when you come into your kingdom may
my boys be number one and number two?" she asks. Jesus said, 'That's not mine
to give."
James and John, or Salomee, wherever the blame might lie, were wrongly
ambitious. What she asked for angered the other disciples. The other ten would
just as soon have been one or two as well, and so they were really only angry
because James and John had an ambassador to make their appeal. The
resentment and the anger and the tension within that disciple band is evidence of
what happens when human community is not grounded in humility and service.
And look at the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. This is the first family of
faith, isn't it? Did not God start out with the whole human race and for eleven
chapters of Genesis saw the continual failure to live up to the calling, so in the
eleventh of Genesis, God says, "I will start over. There will be a resurrection, new
life. We'll start with barrenness of Sarah's womb and start something new. We'll
start with one family in order, eventually, to reach all families of the earth."
Remember the story? Abraham and Sarah go out. “And I'll make your family as
many as the stars of the heavens and the sands of the sea.” But Abraham and
Sarah were growing older and becoming less confident of the promise of God.
And so Sarah, thinking to take things in her own hands, said, "Here take Hagar,
© Grand Valley State University
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my slave girl from Egypt and begin the new line with a child from her womb."
Which Abraham did. And Hagar conceived.
And, now you have a situation so characteristic of the human situation. Hagar,
full of Abraham's child, looks at Sarah with contempt. But can't you understand?
The slave girl had the chance to look down her nose, just a little bit, at Sarah the
barren one. And Sarah, of course, responding in kind, treated Hagar harshly.
Hagar flees out into the wilderness. She is ready to die when the angel of the Lord
says, "Hagar, rise up. Go back. Submit. I will make of the child you are carrying a
great nation." Hagar goes back. She has the child. Abraham says to the Lord,
"How about Ishmael. Will Ishmael do?" God says, "No, it's going to be from the
seed of you and Sarah." And so eventually, doddering old fool that he was, at a
hundred, Sarah at ninety, to them is born Isaac, a name that means laughter.
What a joke.
Then one day, little Isaac and Ishmael are playing in the back yard. Sarah
suddenly thinks, " Ishmael just might cut in on my Isaac's promised blessing." No
way. She demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham is
distressed because he loves Ishmael as he loves Isaac.
Do you feel the threat that Sarah felt? Do you sense perhaps that she was
retaliating now for the contempt for which Hagar had held earlier? Do you see
how fraught and fragile we are, how human relationships so easily sour, how hate
creeps in and brokenness becomes the order of the day?
In deep distress Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away into the wilderness
which, to do so, meant to send them both to their death. But again there is the
intervention of the Lord. Hagar has set the child a bit away from her, so as not to
watch the child die of thirst and starvation. An angel of the Lord hears the cry of
the child and says to Hagar, "Rise up. Hold the child in your arms." Hagar opens
the eyes she has closed to shut out the horror of what is happening. She sees a
well! And the promise of before is reiterated to her: This child shall become a
great nation. (Which, by the way, is the Arabic Nation, it is believed.)
What human drama! Aren't we fragile with all of our insecurities, our jealousies,
our proud ambitions, our wounded egos, the anger, and the resentment, and the
hostilities? Friends, we're talking about the first family of faith! Is it any wonder
that the covenant into which God entered with this family and through this
family, all of us, is called a covenant of grace? Is there any hope, apart from
grace? Is there any community possible apart from miracle? Not with the likes of
Salomee, James and John. Not with the likes of Abraham and Sarah. Not with the
likes of you and me.
I couldn't help but think about it when one of Isaac's children went in with a
machine gun and massacred Ishmael's children. Jews and Christians claimed
Abraham through Isaac, but the Muslim world claims Abraham through Ishmael.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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I thought to myself, well, what might have happened if, in the first family of faith
somehow or other, there could have been more love and forgiveness. What if
Sarah could have forgiven Hagar, understanding that within Sarah too were the
same kinds of feelings and emotions that caused Hagar to break community? And
what if Hagar could have forgiven Sarah and understood her sense of threat and
her insecurity? And what if there could have been reconciliation in the first family
of faith maybe, what, thirty-five hundred years ago, thirty-five, thirty-seven
hundred years ago?
We're talking about the dynamics, the brokenness within the family millennia ago
that still manifests itself in the horror of the Hebron massacre, when Isaac's child
shoots Ishmael's children, and Ishmael's children retaliate by blowing up cars
with bombs in the midst of Isaac's children.
For some decades our world was poised on the brink of disaster through great
ideological confrontation between east and west, and then suddenly that
confrontation broke down. There was much rejoicing. And then underneath we
see simmering, breaking out now in terrible violence and bloodshed and human
pain. Bosnia and Herzegovina, and all the places in the world where there are
ancient blood feuds, tribal feuds, and ethnic hostility. Dear God. Do you see what
I mean? Human community is not a human possibility. It is the creation of the
spirit of God by the grace of God.
Is there anything we can do? There is something. I've got to start with me. You've
got to start with you. Sounds like a rather meager beginning when you're thinking
about a world being torn apart and bleeding. But I've got to start with me. I've got
to recognize how my ego gets crushed and what I do in response. I've got to
recognize that terrible need within me to be right and repent of it. I've got to
recognize my tendency to be right by making you wrong. I've got to recognize that
I tend to be loving and giving to you as long as it can be through the patronage of
one in the superior position. I've got to recognize my pride, my jealousy, my
insecurities that cause me to do the things that I despise, and I have to hear the
gospel, that God is love and God loves me. And because God loves me, if it could
ever get through to me, I could love. We could love. And God forgives us, and so
we can forgive. And in that forgiveness we can find freedom, and we can set
others free... In cooperation with the grace of God we can be part of a miracle in
the making.
What are the things that you ought to be letting go of this morning? What kind of
baggage are you hauling around at the great expenditure of energy and emotional
strength? What are you harboring? What are you holding onto? What continues
to fester? What do you have to let go of? Today, here and now, by the miracle of
grace, your life could be changed. That's the promise of the gospel. That's the
possibility of the spirit of God. That's the foundation of the communion of the
saints. People with all the stuff that we carry, flawed and fragile that we are, will
you hear me? God loves you, and in that love we can love one another.
© Grand Valley State University
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cd7298771f0fdcb7950a30568d642c40.mp3
d781405cd4e81e87b8447c4e43dc6792
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
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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
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Mother's Day, Eastertide VI
Series
Credo: A Series For Eastertide
Scripture Text
Genesis 21:9, I John 4: 12, 18, Matt. 20: 25-26
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-19940508
Date
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1994-05-08
Title
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The Communion of Saints - Love, Forgiveness, and Freedom
Creator
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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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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 8, 1994 entitled "The Communion of Saints - Love, Forgiveness, and Freedom", as part of the series "Credo: A Series For Eastertide", on the occasion of Mother's Day, Eastertide VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 21:9, I John 4: 12, 18, Matt. 20: 25-26.
Community of Faith
Eastertide
Grace of God
Inclusive
Mother's Day
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aaa0fe0f9142ece5bfe261eba7642f62.pdf
59f78d775817a05bb92ecbb93d9d96ac
PDF Text
Text
The End Is Life
From the sermon series: I Do Believe
Text: Psalm 16:11, I Corinthians 15:20, John 14:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide, April 14, 1996
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The season of Eastertide is a great time to preach, and the series that begins this
morning is the affirmation, "I Do Believe." When I say I do believe, I don't mean
to exclude you, but I mean to point to the fact that faith, if it is to be anything at
all, needs to be personal and passionate. This is not to deny that there is a
Christian faith, a body of doctrine, a content to the faith, so that one could say or
write a book, "What Christians Believe," "What Jews Believe," and so on.
Certainly that's true. But, the problem with institutional religion, the problem
with routinization, the problem with the regularization, the problem with the
second generation and the third and the fourth and the one-thousandth and so
forth, the problem with that is that I begin to point to a body of truth and say, "I
believe that. I assent to that." But, that's different than when one says, "I do
believe." I believe, that is, it's personal. And I do believe. That is, it's passionate.
In this Eastertide season, I'm going to say some of the great things that I believe
and you believe. They'll be rooted in the tradition; they'll come out of the
scripture. But, they're more than just an overview of what Christians believe.
These are personal, passionate convictions of faith, the first of it being, "The End
Is Life."
"The end is life." This was the great affirmation of Paul, who gives us the first
written documentation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his letter to the
Corinthians, he deals with several problems in the Church, but there is also the
problem of those who deny the resurrection of Jesus, and so, to them, Paul
addressed this rather complicated and tortuous argument that's found in the 15th
chapter of his letter. And in the 20th verse, he makes the strong affirmation,
"Now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that shall rise." For it
was the resurrection of Jesus Christ that was the catalyst for the whole Jesus
Movement that issued ultimately into the Christian Church. It was the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, God raising Jesus from the dead, that gave God's
"Yes" to that life, to that way, to the truth that came embodied in Jesus that
launched the whole movement of which we are a part. And so, this morning we
begin with those things that we believe with conviction and with passion, and it is
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Richard A. Rhem
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that, in the end it is life, and it is life because of the one who said, "Because I live,
you, too, shall live."
Paul fully expected, I believe, along with Jesus and that whole early community of
followers, that they were on the edge of the End. Paul says that Jesus was the first
fruits of them that shall rise. Paul was a good Jew, familiar with the terminology
of Israel, all of the Hebrew scriptures. There was always the offering of the first
fruits, a token of gratitude to God and an acknowledgment that God was the giver
of all and to God all belonged, so Israel would waive the first fruits. But, the first
fruits were literally that. They were the first fruits, the first grapes ripened, the
first wheat that ripened. The first that could be harvested was offered to God. In
the wake of that, all of the rest of it followed. And that's what they believed. It was
widespread in that time. They felt they were on the edge of the End, that Jesus
was God's anointed one who was ushering in those events that would issue in the
Kingdom of God. For a little time heaven received this one who was crucified and
raised by the power of God, but this one would return after subjecting all things,
every opposition to God's rule, and he would render the Kingdom to God and God
would be all in all. That was the scheme of things that filled the mind and heart of
the Apostle.
The only problem is, it didn't happen. Nothing happened. The heavens didn't
open; Jesus didn't return; the Kingdom of God was not established. All they got
was persecution and suffering. In fact, in the second letter of Peter you will find
that there were those skeptics who were saying, "Where is the day of his
appearing? It seems that it's business as usual. Same old death and dying," to
which the writer of that letter says, "Ah, but a thousand years are but as a day
with the Lord, so just be patient." The great crisis for that early movement was
the fact that the king did not appear.
And so, move along about 60 years to the city of Ephesus or maybe Alexandria
where there's a Christian community, or rather a Jewish community of those who
believe that Jesus was the Messiah. That whole early movement was a Jewish
movement of people who believed that Jesus was God's anointed one, crucified
and raised by the power of God, and they were waiting for God to bring in the
fullness of the Kingdom and the Shalom that the prophets had promised. Paul, of
course, was the missionary to the Gentiles and there soon became a Gentile
element in the Church, but the community of the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of
John, was a largely Jewish community that believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
And so, the years had passed, the decades passed, and Jesus didn't come back
and there were those who were beginning to falter in their faith and there were
those who were sifting back into their regular Jewish expression of faith. Not that
they ever gave up the synagogue or the temple. Not that they ever gave up their
Jewishness. But something did happen in 70 A.D. that changed everything.
In 70 A.D. the Roman legions came in and they leveled Jerusalem and burned the
Temple. Mark's Gospel was written on the supposition that this was the sign that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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the End would certainly come now. Now things were beginning to happen. But
nothing did happen, except that this was a time of turmoil in the Jewish Church.
For, what would be the nature of Israel, of Jewish faith, now that the Temple was
gone? Obviously, the priestly party was out of business. There was a widespread
dispersal. There was a very strong Jewish Jesus Movement; there was the
possibility that that Jewish Jesus Movement might emerge as the classic
expression of Judaism in a new key. There was also the Pharisaic Rabbinic
Movement, the teachers of Torah. And, as a matter of fact, what did happen after
70 A.D. is that, in the struggle for power and control and in the attempt to find a
new identity, it was precisely that Rabbinic, Pharisaic model of Jewish faith that
emerged victorious.
Now what's going to happen? Well, there's a struggle for power. There are those
who are part of the strong and vital movement of Jesus Jews. And there is this
other increasingly stronger movement of Rabbinic Judaism that does not believe
that Jesus was the Messiah, and that movement, coming to the ascendency in
those decades immediately following the destruction of the Temple, eventually
muscled out of the synagogue the Jesus people. When you read the Gospel of
John, you'll find that there is a very strong adversarial expression between Jesus
and the Jews. There are passages of the Gospel of John that ought not to be read
in Christian worship without some word of explanation, because they are so
harsh, so condemnatory.
We've come to see that the reason they're so harsh and condemnatory is that this
little Jewish Jesus Movement was in a struggle for its life over against an
emerging Rabbinic Judaism. About the year 90 A.D., into the liturgy of the
synagogue, there was actually inserted a benediction against heretics. That's the
kind of thing that was going on. When you read John's Gospel and those harsh
statements against the Jews, that's not Christianity against Judaism, that's not
Gentiles against Jews, that's an intra-Jewish squabble and there's nothing that
gets so mean as an intra-family squabble. And this Jewish Jesus Movement,
through this benediction against heretics, was being crowded out of the
synagogue. The emerging, powerful Rabbinic Judaism was drawing the lines and
defining who was in, and this little band of Jews that believed Jesus was the
Messiah and that were waiting for him to return were being crowded out of the
only spiritual home they had ever known.
They had never given up going to synagogue; they had never given up reciting the
Psalter; they had never given up believing in the God of Israel, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David. It's the only God they knew. It was the God
to whom Jesus had pointed them. It was the God of Creation and the God of the
Consummation. Now the stronger party was saying, "Hey you, you believe Jesus
was the Messiah? You're out of here." Well, what happens to a people in a
situation like that? You have to remember how vulnerable they were. They had
been holding their breath for Jesus to come. Nothing was happening. Every day
and every week and every month and every year and every decade was a nail in
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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their coffin. And there were those who were saying maybe we were wrong. Maybe
Jesus was just another pretender to Messianic claims. There were those whose
knees were weak and faith was faltering who simply gave up on Jesus and went
back into their Jewishness.
But there were others. In all of those communities scattered throughout the
empire, there were others who said, "No. No, we know that Jesus was the
Messiah." And probably at Ephesus or at Alexandria somewhere, there was a
person who said, "I do believe. I do believe. I don't know how to put it together; I
don't know about the calendar, this unfolding of this drama of history, but I do
believe this - I do believe that the God of Israel was embodied in the person of
Jesus to an extent that I have never, never before felt the nearness and the mercy
and the love of that God. I do believe." And so this preacher or teacher in this
little minority persecuted community of Jews following Jesus taught and he
preached and they remembered all of the stories, the oral tradition that had been
passed along.
Remember, now, for decades it was not a literate society, it was an oral society.
They told the stories over and over and over again, and they taught and they
preached, and eventually those who studied carefully this Gospel of John, about
five layers - the oral tradition and then the gathering of the teaching and the
preaching and then perhaps the writing of a document and the finessing of a
document and a final literary form that we have in our scripture - it was a very
normal and natural process and it was because there was someone who said, "I
do believe! I believe in spite of the fact that the time is rolling on and nothing
seems to be happening. I don't know about that, but this I know - the Word
became flesh and in Jesus the truth that had come through Moses took on a
splendor, a grace that I had never known before."
So, this preacher this teacher, this passionate believer takes this little community
of people and he writes the story for them. He doesn't write a history for them so
that they'll know what happened back there as an end in itself. He refers back to
what happens there because he wants them to believe now, here and now, to hold
on, to continue to see in the face of Jesus into the heart of God. So, we come to
that 14th chapter and he says, "Let not your hearts be troubled." Were their
hearts troubled? You bet they were. Same old world of death and dying and
darkness and unrighteousness and injustice. Where was the Kingdom of God?
Where was the Shalom promised? This evangelist, this preacher says to this
community, "Let me remind you of Jesus. Jesus said, 'Let not your heart be
troubled.'” That word troubled in Greek is tarasso. It's used three times
previously in the Gospel of John, always to describe Jesus' agitation of spirit. One
time when he's at the grave of Lazarus and he sees Mary weeping and he feels the
power of death in human experience and we read, "Jesus wept. His soul was
troubled." And then there was a time when Phillip brought those Greeks who
wanted to see Jesus and it triggered something in him. He knew the hour. "Now
is the hour," he said. "And now is my soul troubled. What shall I say, 'Father,
© Grand Valley State University
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deliver me from this hour?' But for this hour came I forth. Father, glorify Your
name." And then he gathered his disciples in that last supper and he looked over
at Judas and he thought about all of the darkness in that heart and once again he
was face to face with the power of death and he said, "Now is my soul troubled."
This preacher in Ephesus in the year 90 or 95 A.D. is telling this story now of that
last gathering, and we hear Jesus say, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe
in God. Believe in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it weren't so, I
would have told you. I'm going to prepare a place for you." The whole Gospel of
John has the indwelling of Jesus in God and God in Jesus, and Jesus is saying to
that intimate circle around him now, in these moving moments when he's going
to depart from them, he's saying to them, "You'll be all right. I am going to the
Father and I am preparing a place for you. You know where I am going." Thomas
says, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said,
"I am the way. I'm the truth. I'm the life."
There's an interesting citation from a Palestinian Targum of an earlier time
which uses that same combination of way and life in connection with the Torah.
The first five books of the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, we call the
Torah. The Torah we sometimes call the Law, but that's a bad name for it. Torah
meant way of life. And in this citation in the Palestinian Targum it says that the
study of the Torah bears fruits which show the way to life. That's not incidental.
This was part and parcel of Israel's faith. They believed that God in holy scripture
had shown them the way to life. It was the truth. Now, this preacher-evangelist in
Ephesus to these faltering followers of Jesus, 60-some years after the event, says
to them in the words that he hears echoing from that earlier day, "Let not your
hearts be troubled. Believe. Believe in God. Believe in me. Because the way of life,
the true way of life was embodied in Jesus, in this one, in me, and there is no way
to God, not God in general, but God as Father, God as revealed in Jesus - there's
no way to such a God other than that way of Jesus, that way of Jesus which is a
true way which gives life." And so, the evangelist puts in the mouth of Jesus those
very words which were the expression of that first community and a community
decades later still saying, "Jesus is it!" Something happened in Jesus. I don't why
the End hasn't come. I don't know why the Kingdom hasn't dawned, but I know
this - that in the human flesh of that one was the embodiment of God. I don't
know when the End is coming, but I know when I look in the face of Jesus, I see
into the heart of God. There is no other way. There is no other truth. Believe.
Don't let go. Don't give up. Don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God.
Believe in Jesus, Jesus who is the window into the heart of the Eternal."
Phillip says, " Jesus, could you show us the father?" Jesus said, "How long have I
been with you? You still don't get it? When you've seen me, you've seen the
Father."
That little community, some of whom were drifting back off into their old faith
patterns, and some of whom were still feeling the sting of being ostracized from
© Grand Valley State University
�The End Is Life
Richard A. Rhem
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the synagogue, and all of them wondering when the End would come - they heard
the evangelist, they listened to the preacher, they believed in God, they believed
in Jesus who was the embodiment of God, who was crucified and who was raised
by the power of God and who inexplicably, surprisingly, marvelously was tangibly
present when they gathered together, when they broke bread, poured out a cup,
when they sang praises, and when in the solitude of their own soul they called to
the God of Israel Who had come close to them in Jesus Christ their Lord. How do
I know that happened? Because we're still doing it.
We are the people who look to the risen Jesus and we see the power and grace of
God.
We're the people, 2000 years later, who are still looking through Jesus and with
Thomas saying, "My Lord, and my God."
We are the people who are a people of hope because we follow the One who said
"Because I live, you, too, shall live."
We are the people with personal, passionate conviction and belief that the end is
life!
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0e7622bfc34eaaeb5fde751207cc456d.mp3
596926109aaa082b54f4be90b031e752
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
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
Eastertide II
Series
I Do Believe
Scripture Text
Psalm 16:11, I Cor 15:20, 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
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KII-01_RA-0-19960414
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1996-04-14
Title
A name given to the resource
The End is Life
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
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 April 14, 1996 entitled "The End is Life", as part of the series "I Do Believe", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 16:11, I Cor 15:20, John 14:19.
Belief
Eastertide
Life
Resurrection
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e622183f1e0cd091317afc0bbf39bdf2.mp3
abb62bb54b8c5ad6015d8b2001d3fcdb
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/144bbe34a716e35d9da20af0d9dd2d6f.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Text: II Corinthians 5: 17; 6: 2
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Eastertide II, April 6, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has
gone, and a new order has already begun. II Corinthians 5: 17
…The day of Salvation has dawned. II Corinthians 6: 2
May I teach you a rather difficult word, which for most of you would not be part
of your ordinary conversation?
It is ontology. It is the science of Being. It is a branch of Philosophy, which
studies the essence of being or the structure of Reality. It derives from the Greek
word for “being,” ousia. Ontology refers to what is: the structure of Reality, the
way things are.
Now, what has Ontology to do with the Gospel of Eastertide? Very much, indeed.
Easter changed the Ontological structure of the Cosmos. With the Resurrection of
Jesus, God created a whole new world, a new reality. The Gospel is the
announcement of that new world. To "hear" the Gospel is to be introduced into a
whole new Ontology. To realize this and to grasp it by faith is to experience
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life.
Paul had experienced it. Jesus revealed it to him as the Risen Lord in a vision.
The whole structure of Reality was changed for Paul. In one of his letters he
expressed it this way:
When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has
gone, and a new order has already begun.
For Paul, in Jesus' death and resurrection, the day of salvation has dawned.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Let us begin by listening to what the text is teaching us about the way things
really are - the reality of our world and thus the reality of our situation.
…there is a new world, the old order has gone, and a new order has
already begun.
As we have moved together through Lent, Holy Week and celebrated Easter
Sunday, we have been aware of two worlds, two kingdoms.
We heard Paul's story: A man of impeccable credentials, according to human
standards of judgment, who says,
But all such assets I have written off because of Christ…. I count
everything sheer loss, because all is far outweighed by the gain of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. …all I care for is to know Christ, to
experience the power of his resurrection…
Paul ranked ahead of his fellows when judged by the performance principle. But
that driven, compulsive need to establish and secure himself yielded no peace.
Then he met Jesus. He learned life was not an achievement to be gained, but a
gift to be received. He began to live by grace. It was the first day of the rest of his
life.
We have learned that grace does not free us from responsible commitment, but
frees us to love as we have been loved. That is, to love unconditionally.
That is the way God loves us. He demonstrated His love to us in that while we
were yet enemies Christ died for us. Thus we saw that it is out of the abyss of love
that grace flows, embracing us, melting our defenses, overcoming our weakness
and our fear, our hostility.
But on Palm Sunday we became very much aware that while the Kingdom of God,
the Kingdom of love and grace, has taken root in our old world in Jesus, yet the
old world rages on refusing to let go.
Jesus enters the City defenseless and vulnerable. He is totally free of worldly
entanglement because he is wholly God's man. Because he is wholly God's man,
he moves into the hostile environment where death awaits him with calm
assurance.
Unconditional love clashes with the established powers of this world. The High
Priest announces the death sentence. Jesus is crucified. On Good Friday it would
appear that the way of love is doomed to be crushed out by the way of expediency.
And then dawned the Third Day.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Easter was the first day of the rest of the world. There was an Ontological Shift on
Easter. The Creator raised Jesus and created a new world. He re-created the
world as far as His relationship with the human family is concerned.
The point is, something happened. On Monday morning it was not business as
usual. It was an Easter world - a whole new Reality.
That is why I bother you with that strange word "Ontology." I want to stress that
the world is changed; Reality is changed. The old world continues. We continue
to be part of the old scene. But the old world is gone, in reality! This is an
Ontological Shift, a shift of cosmic proportions.
I have become more aware of this recently. I am aware I have not proclaimed it
strongly enough, confidently enough. That is why the Easter message pointed to
the God Whose power effects that which is beyond all human potential. Too
much of my ministry and my preaching has been within the narrowly prescribed
limits of human possibility. Sometimes I think I am only beginning to glimpse the
gracious power of the God of unconditional love.
We have been too much focused on the human response, not enough on the
objective reality of the new creation. Listen again to the text:
There is a new world, the old has gone, and a new order has already
begun.
Do we believe it? Do we live accordingly? Whether we do or not, the Truth
remains. Whether we believe it and appropriate it is not the measure of its truth.
Our response does not create the new reality and our lack of response does not
detract from the reality. So will you hear the word of proclamation?
The day of salvation has dawned.
I was reading an Easter sermon preached by the great Karl Barth. He went
regularly to the Basle prison to preach to the prisoners. He who could command
any pulpit in the world chose to preach at the local jail because he said if I preach
in the Cathedral, people will come to hear Karl Barth. If I preach at the jail, the
prisoners will come to hear the Gospel. He preached on Jesus' words, "Because I
live you, too, shall live." To these prisoners he spoke of Jesus who lived for them.
In great simplicity he pointed to Jesus living for us and dying for us. And he
spoke of the promise:
You will live also.
And he explained:
Yet the significant fact to remember is precisely not an obligation we are
invited or urged to fulfill, so that we may, or may not, live. We are not
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
merely given a chance; nor is an offer made to us. "You will live also" is a
promise. It is an announcement referring to the future, to our future.
"You will live also" succeeds the present of, and our presence in, the "I
live" like two succeeds one, B succeeds A, the thunder succeeds the
lightning ... You are a people whose future issues from my life and hence
does not lie in your sin and guilt, but in true righteousness and holiness.
Not in sadness, but in joy, not in captivity, but in freedom, not in death,
but in life. From your present participation in my life, you may anticipate
this and no other future. (Deliverance to the Captives, p. 31F)
He goes on to stress that Jesus is not only our future, but also our present.
Not the world with its accusations and we with our counter accusations.
Not even the well deserved divine wrath against us, let alone our
grumbling against God, or our secret thought that there might be no God
after all. Therefore, not we ourselves, as we are today or think we are,
make up our present. He, Jesus Christ, his life is our present: his Divine
life poured out for us, and his human life, our life, lifted up in him. This is
what counts. This is what is true and valid. (p. 32)
He then stresses that no one must think himself excluded, too insignificant, too
sinful, too godless. And then he invites each one there present to join him at the
Lord's Table. There in the Bread and Wine is the sign of what he had been saying
in the message.
Jesus Christ is in our midst, he, the man in whom God himself has poured
out his life for our sake and in whom our life is lifted up to God. Holy
Communion is the sign that Jesus Christ is our beginning and we may rise
up and walk into the future where we shall live. ... My brothers and sisters,
I do not want to oppress or compel any one among you when I add: Shall
we not all here present go to the Lord's Table together? Holy Communion
is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ himself is for all, as
surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers
and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. (p. 33F)
There I see a preacher acting on the Reality of the new world which was born on
Easter. We get so bogged down in checking out the human response that we lose
sight of the Reality. We forget the Ontology of the New Creation.
We wonder if someone has true faith – whether his life is morally pure, whether
one understands the contents of the faith. All the things that come subsequently
we worry about first and instead of a grand invitation to a new Reality to which
we welcome people, we erect all kinds of barriers that discourage and turn away.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Perhaps rather than keeping this Table of our Lord's here in the antiseptic
atmosphere of the sanctuary, we should move it out on the highway and pass out
bread and wine to those traveling past.
What would happen if, with authentic excitement in the face of the Reality Shift
of Easter, we went out and shared the wonderful news of what is really true!
Something has happened. The day of Salvation has dawned.
Of course, we cannot be unconcerned with the response. The new world has
dawned but it is possible to live in the death grip of the old. It is for those who are
in Christ that the new world becomes reality in their experience. Therefore in our
announcement of the new Reality we point to him. We must tell the story of
Jesus, of his life, his death and resurrection. We must invite our neighbors to
receive what has been provided and is fully offered.
And we must ask ourselves if we who believe in him have really entered into the
newness that he has created.
Again I must confess that too much of my own concentration and too much of the
traditional message of the Church deals with the death and resurrection of Jesus
in terms of forgiveness, dealing with the past and too little emphasis is placed on
the power of God to change our lives – really change our lives. Too much of my
concentration and the concentration of the Church has been on getting the lost
snatched from Hell fire and into the safety net of the Church. We want to get
people saved!!
But what does that mean? For too many of us that has meant out of Hell and into
Heaven - no matter in what state and once we get people in, we can relax a bit.
Whether we consciously operate this way or not, underneath this has been a
powerful motive in the Church's outreach. But it misses the whole point of what
we claim to be trying to do – get people "saved." Salvation's root is the same as
the root of salve. Salvation is healing. It is to bring the person toward wholeness.
God is not interested in making us pious or religious; He would make us human.
That is what He created. That is the intention of recreation.
The Church Father Ireneaus understood that long ago when he wrote,
The Glory of God is a human being fully alive.
What is it, then, to be "in Christ?" - Literally it is to be lifted up to God in the
Anointed One - the one anointed with Spirit, one full of God.
The context of this great text is illuminating. Paul's apostleship was under attack.
He is a man sold out to Jesus Christ – making him known, announcing good
news, calling all people to the new world now open to them.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
We will all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ. Our lives will be laid open an awesome thought. He senses a divine imperative to carry out his apostleship,
his own life an open book. He is simply responding to what has been revealed to
him. In verse 14 Paul writes:
For the love of Christ leaves us no choice, when once we have reached the
conclusion that one man died for all and therefore all mankind has died.
His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease
to live for themselves, and should live for him who for their sake died and
was raised to life.
The purpose of Jesus' death and resurrection is to incorporate us in him in the
death to the old world and the rising to a whole new order of things. He goes on:
With us therefore worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate
of any man; even if once they counted in our understanding of Christ,
they do so no longer.
Why?
The one in Christ is a new creation! The old is gone. The new has come.
Well, how does that fall out? What does that mean in the everyday affairs of an
ordinary human existence? It means a new understanding - a change of mind.
This is the meaning of repentance “Metanoia,” the Greek word, points to a
change of mind. Our thinking needs to be straightened out –
about God:
That we no more resist Him in our weakness and hostility, fearing He will
rob us of life, but rather see Him as He is - the loving One Who comes to
us in our weakness and hostility with total vulnerability in order simply to
embrace us with a mercy that knows no limit, setting us free for the first
time to be fully human.
about what it means to be fully human:
We see it in Jesus, totally open to the Father, totally open to the neighbor,
living out the unconditional love of God in covenant human relationship.
Is not to be "in Christ" to be filled with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God? Is it
not to live in the conscious flow of God's life, His energy, His grace, seeing
ourselves not as buckets to get filled but as channels to let flow through us the
Divine life?
To be "in Christ" is to live consciously in the Kingdom of God, knowing one is no
longer bound to live according to the Kingdom of this world. It is to be done with
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
the old way of doing things - the tit for tat world of vengeance, retaliation and
vindictiveness. It is to be done with the world of selfish indulgence, of selfasserting, of defensiveness and the strenuous compulsion to justify oneself.
It was reported on national news last evening that a millionaire died and left her
two million to a few friends and casual acquaintances. She left this word with her
will. "To my children I leave nothing. I want them to receive in my death what
they gave me in my life."
Think of it! Think of dying with that kind of bitterness. You say maybe the kids
deserved it. Maybe they did. That that is the old world. According to the canons of
the old world, God should leave us in our self-constructed hells. He could write a
similar note: "I leave you in your death what you created in your life - Hell." But
He showed His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
I feel sorry for the poor woman. I'm sorry her children neglected her. Perhaps she
could not change them, but she could have changed her mind, her attitude. She
could have let love fill her, driving out the anger and vindication. How? By
looking to Jesus. By understanding God's love, by receiving it and then letting it
fill her heart.
Think of standing before Jesus when one's last act was an act of retaliation and
bitter resentment. Will Jesus' eyes flash with fire? No, they will be wet with tears.
Will he say, "Go to Hell"? No, he will say, "My child, my child!"
And what will the dear woman respond? "They got theirs! I’m finally happy!"?
No, but rather, "O my God, what have I done?"
Think of it, friend. The day of healing has dawned. This is not just Pollyanna talk.
Christ is risen! There has been an ontological shift in Reality. A new world is here,
the old is done away with. You don't have to live according to the canons of the
old world, filled with brokenness, pain, hate, resentment.
Look to Jesus. Know that God raised him from the dead, thereby creating a whole
new possibility. He died - one for all, once for all. He arose - one for all, once for
all. God's Spirit filled him, the Anointed One, the Christ. Now the Risen Jesus
pours out that same Spirit on all flesh - so we shall celebrate on Pentecost.
Let go. Open up; entrust your life to the Risen Lord who brings you into the
presence of the Father and gives you the Spirit by which you can be freed from
the old, brought into the new. Be healed by the love and grace and power of God
Who needs from you simply the word "Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.
Come in today, come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus."
He will! And it will be the First Day of the Rest of Your Life! Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Richard A. Rhem
Reference:
Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives. First published 1961.
© Grand Valley State University
Page 8
�
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
Eastertide II
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Karl Barth. Deliverance to the Captives, 1961.
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-0-19860406
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986-04-06
Title
A name given to the resource
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
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 6, 1986 entitled "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 5:17, 6:2.
Eastertide
Grace
Inclusive
Resurrection
Salvation
Transformation
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/50168e138cc1508f284362f6ae3bd448.mp3
de7285d250ff91273ba5132e424eff69
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/57d8d4e08dd866182f5ee8f075fcd352.pdf
589c899886aa6c697c6d3eaa184a7e7b
PDF Text
Text
Two Understandings – When Friends Disagree
Eastertide II
Scripture: Galatians 2:11-14; Luke 24:28-43
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 7, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It must be obvious to everyone that this world needs to learn to engage in
conversation and dialogue to be honest with each other and to listen to each
other, in order that we might live in peace. Our world is breaking apart because
we can't speak to each other or hear each other.
I am using this occasion, the week after Easter, to think about the resurrection
from two perspectives, because in May we are having two scholars come our way
who differ on their understanding of the resurrection. And they are coming in
order to stimulate conversation among the faith community of western Michigan,
to be a model for a manner in which such conversation can take place.
Marcus Borg, who has been here a couple of times and is a real friend of this
congregation, will be joined by N. T. Wright, who is an excellent scholar and who
happens to be a very good friend of Marcus. N. T. Wright is the Canon of
Westminster Abbey. If you watch the funeral on Tuesday of the Queen Mum, I
am wondering whether N. T. Wright may be a part of that, since he is the Canon
of that great cathedral in London. They were in school together at Oxford and
became friends, respecting each other, holding each other in high esteem, and yet
differing in their perspectives. They become a good model for a way in which
religious people can differ with one another and yet not break community, and
converse with one another and seek to deepen the understanding one of another
and to enhance that understanding.
N. T. Wright is a rather traditional, evangelical scholar. He is an excellent scholar,
but his position is traditional and evangelical, it is what probably you grew up
with, what I grew up with, the kind of position that I preached for many, many
years. Marcus Borg represents a position, an understanding of the resurrection or
a biblical interpretation which takes into account the developments of modernity
and critical studies of scripture. Anytime you have a difference in your
understanding of the resurrection or any question, you can be sure it goes back to
a difference in understanding of biblical interpretation.
© Grand Valley State University
�Two Understandings: When Friends Disagree
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The book that Marcus and Tom Wright wrote together, The Meaning of Jesus:
Two Visions, has chapters, each of them contributing a chapter, on, for example,
The Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, Is Jesus God?, What Difference Does It
Make?, and so forth. It is a very interesting dialogue they carry on between them.
When I read N. T. Wright, I read my past. When I read Marcus Borg, I read
someone who has taken account of the critical studies of scripture and the whole
drift of the post- Enlightenment world that seeks to understand phenomena apart
from the miraculous or the interventions of some supernatural incursion into this
world.
And so, obviously for me, I understand, I stand with Marcus Borg, but I respect
N. T. Wright as probably as fine a spokesperson as one could have of that
traditional point of view. Just to have them speaking together and expressing
their differing perspectives brings before us a model of conversation and
understanding that I think is very positive, for it is possible to differ with another
without writing the other off or living in alienation and separation. We don't do
that very well in the religious world. God knows we've not done that very well in
the church. Congregations have been split; denominations have been formed over
lesser differences than the differences between N. T. Wright and Marcus Borg on
the resurrection.
To hear them, to watch them, to observe them relating to one another, in this
case, in the pages of this book, becomes a lesson, a model, for how we can engage
one another and respect one another, learn from one another, and continue in
relationship, even though we understand that we differ in our perspectives and in
our interpretations.
As I said, N. T. Wright has a traditional view of the resurrection. If you would
read the chapter in the book, The Meaning of Jesus, that he writes on the
resurrection, you would find him insisting on some kind of bodily physicality as a
sign or as a mark of resurrection. He is a very bright man and he understands the
issues clearly, and he is careful, and so he is careful to indicate that he is not
talking about the resuscitation of a corpse, obviously. Nonetheless, he wants to
insist on the necessity of the empty tomb; for N. T. Wright, if the tomb is not
empty, there is no Easter. There has been no resurrection.
Now, Marcus Borg, on the other hand, says the empty tomb is a matter of
indifference. He doesn't care if it is empty or not. If the bones, the skeletal
remains of Jesus should be found, through DNA tracing sometime, Marcus
wouldn't care, because, for him, the resurrection is not about a corpse coming to
life, but a life in God, a spiritual existence that is still experienced as a presence
among those who knew Jesus and followed him. Marcus loves to go to what is
also my favorite resurrection story, the Emmaus Road, two men journeying from
Jerusalem on Easter. They are sad of heart because of the events of Good Friday,
and they are joined by a stranger whom they do not recognize. As readers, we
know that it is Jesus. He says, "Why are you sad of heart?" They say, "Well, where
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Richard A. Rhem
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have you been?" And then he begins to speak to them about the scriptures, to
interpret the scriptural tradition that what has happened is exactly what would
have been expected in the prophetic books, and so forth. They come to the village
and it is getting toward evening, and he makes as though he would go on, and
they say, "Come in to us," and so he comes into their home, he acts as the host, he
blesses the bread and breaks it and gives it to them, and "poof," he is gone. But in
the breaking of the bread, they recognize him, and they say, "Now that we think
of it, did not our hearts burn within us as he spoke to us along the way?"
It is a beautiful story, reminding us, of course, of the experience of the Eucharist.
Luke is writing this Gospel story some 50 years after the events. There is a
congregation, a community to whom he is writing, a community, obviously, that
shares the Eucharist. What Luke is saying to them is that the presence of the
living Lord is experienced in the community in the breaking of bread. The
sacramental nature of the Church is the medium by which the risen Christ is
experienced in the community. There is no body there. They don't recognize this
person. Obviously, this isn't the corpse coming out of the grave. It is a symbolic
metaphor. It is a beautiful, beautiful story. If only Luke would not have given us
the next paragraph, because now they run back to Jerusalem and meet with the
disciples and a few others on Easter night, and they say, "The Lord was made
known to us," and they learn that Peter also had an experience, and now they are
gathered there and "poof," there he is again. But, now N. T. Wright is smiling all
over the place because now this risen one seems to want to underscore a certain
physicality. Even though he came "poof” into the room, nonetheless, he says,
"Handle me." And then he says, "Do you have anything to eat?" So now we are
dealing with the kind of physicality that is other than that of the Emmaus Road
story.
Well, Marcus Borg would say that is a later edition that indicates a time when
faith was being tested and there was a tendency to speak about a ghost-like
existence, but lacking reality, and so there was a kind of concreteness that was
shadowed forth in this story in order to say, "Look, this thing is real this
substance here."
Well, the biblical scholars can talk back and forth, and some of you are in one
paragraph and some of you are in another, and that is perfectly all right. That is
the way it should be. But, as a matter of fact, both Tom and Marcus would say
that Easter is the originating event of the Church and that Easter, in its summary,
is Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord, that the experience of Jesus post-crucifixion, the
experience, whether it was in some kind of story, some kind of appearance such
as Luke records here in Emmaus, or in Jerusalem, or whether, whatever it is,
there was a community of people that gathered post-crucifixion that said, "Jesus
lives." And believing that Jesus was alive, that Jesus had not simply died and was
gone, they said Jesus was right. This was God's vindication of the way of Jesus, of
the life of Jesus, of that which Jesus embodied, of that which came to expression
in Jesus.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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And so, what difference does it make whether the tomb is filled with the remains
of Jesus, or the tomb is empty, If there is a community of people that are united
in the fact that what was embodied in Jesus is a way of life and grace?
I cited last week that paragraph about how the caterpillar is transformed into the
butterfly. The caterpillar carried with it from the egg certain cells. The zoologist
calls them imaginal cells. Imaginal. I love it. Those are the cells that have the
blueprint of the butterfly. Those cells have the genes for legs and for wings, and
that old caterpillar, scrounging around on the ground, suddenly finds something
happening to its physical being that at first is attacked by the caterpillar's
immune system as something foreign but, eventually the new take over and there
emerges the butterfly, because that caterpillar was not made to crawl, but to fly. It
was not made to be a fuzzy worm, but a multi-colored butterfly in the sky. Now, if
the transformation takes place, what does it matter what the process is? If the
reality is there, then what is the big deal about the historical details that surround
it, for one a literal story of a body coming out of a tomb, for another, a spiritual
transformation, but for both, a transforming presence that is a sign that in this
cosmic journey of ours there is a bias toward life, creativity. If one comes to that
conclusion, then one can allow that another may come by it in another way. Why
start a new church? Why walk out on the sermon? Why begin a new
denomination?
Now I don't mean to say that distinctions are not important and differences
cannot be significant. Paul, for example, a Jew who was convinced that the way of
Jesus was dangerous, was undercutting the traditions of Israel and therefore had
to be stamped out. Paul has an experience, a vision. He is blinded. He
contemplates. He is turned around 180 degrees, and he becomes the apostle to
the Gentiles. Paul who was on the way to stamp out the Way becomes the one
who says in his transforming experience, “This must be God's move to include the
nations, the Gentiles." Paul never became anything else than a Jew and Paul
never rejected his Jewish religious faith. Paul was a Jew; Jesus was a Jew and
they, understood the God of Israel to be the only God there was, but what Paul
saw now was the possibility of all people coming into the relationship and the
covenant community of this people of Israel. As Paul said, "You know what? They
don't have to become Jews. The grace of God is sufficient. They can come directly
to God without coming by way of Moses with circumcision and dietary laws and
all of that. For Paul, that was a transforming experience. That was a total change
of paradigm. It didn't have to be another religion. It was simply the same God of
Israel embracing all by grace.
Well, what about the rest of Jesus' Jewish disciples? What about Peter, for
example? Well, Peter had an experience, too, at the house of Cornelius. He has a
vision, "Go preach in Cornelius’ house, the Roman centurion." He is preaching
and the Holy Spirit falls upon that house and he says, “O my God, now what?"
Now, they got it, too, but Peter was not the man that Paul was, with all due
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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respect to the Roman Catholic Church. Paul saw through. Paul glimpsed grace.
Paul saw something new.
Peter granted it, but it wasn't the passion of his life. And so, now they are out in
the mission field, out in Galatia, in the community that had started as a result of
Paul's preaching, and these are Gentile people now. It is not kosher. The table is
not kosher. That's okay with Peter. Peter intellectually knows the truth. It doesn't
matter. It's a religious thing. Religious things don't matter. They're optional. You
choose them, or they choose you, and you follow them and that is fine. But, they
are not absolutes. It’s not as though a lightning bolt is going to hit you. And so,
Peter has ham and buns in Galatia. But then, somebody comes from Mother
Church in Jerusalem, some of James' people, and Peter sidles past the table with
the ham and buns, and he moves over to the kosher table. Paul says, "Peter,
you’re wrong. You're not wrong to stay kosher. Stay kosher, if that is your choice.
But, don't eat one way one day and another way another day because the food is
there. Have integrity and authenticity in your person.
And so Paul confronts a friend, not about whether he is right or wrong, but about
the consistency of behavior. And so, I believe, in the church, as well. It is not as
though we need to agree on a lot of things, but the thing we need to be able to do
in the community of faith is to talk about it and to move for integrity of
understanding and action, so that where our perspectives differ, fine. That's okay.
But, is there enough that unites us that is common that we can celebrate together
so that we don't break community? If it is to be authentic community, then we
are also able to confront issues and be honest one with another in order that it
may be an authentic community, because you see, the human experience is the
experience of being rooted in history and, therefore, marked by limited
understanding. And that limited understanding means that there are no
absolutes. There may be an absolute, but every human perspective is relative, and
every human understanding is a partial and tentative understanding on the way,
hopefully, to fuller understanding. And so it is in the church. Peter could have
stayed Jewish. Israel is ongoing. Israel lives today. There would not have been
any problem with Peter continuing his Jewish faith. Paul's point to him was don't
equivocate between the two. Don't be hypocritical. Be honest in your faith and in
your behavior.
Friends can differ, and those differences can be argued and can be grounded and
founded and legitimate. There is no one to say it is this way and no other way is
possible. But, when we get an insight, as Paul did, when there is a breakthrough,
we ought to be able to bring it to expression and talk about it. For example,
western values in our world - can we talk about them? What about that which
looms on the horizon, the possibility of civilizational clash? Are we able to
express our values in the most articulate and persuasive way possible, without
having to kill one another?
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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What about in the Church, for example? In the question of sexual orientation, we
begin to understand some things. We understand things about the human
creature. We understand the diversity of creation. We understand that this is not
a matter of choice, but is a given. Then, what is the Church to do? To go on with
its bias and its prejudice? Damning and separating people and cutting them out?
Of course not. And if the Church does that as an institution, it has to be
addressed. The point has to be made so we can be engaged in conversation and
dialogue, not to break community, but in order to make community honest and
authentic and open.
There is no party line here and I value the diversity of understanding and
perspective. Don't expect the pulpit to dot every i and cross every t and be able to
embrace it all. I have a point of view and I have a responsibility to make it as clear
as I can, and I will. But I promise you, as well, that I'll listen and we can continue
to talk about these things together. If you'd like a shot at it, come on Wednesday
night. We can have a good free-for-all about six weeks in a row with differing
perspectives authored by two friends who come at it differently, but in the
exchange, help all of us to come to a clearer understanding of where we are and
why.
God knows the world needs conversation, or we will kill each other.
References:
Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.
HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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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Event
Eastertide I
Scripture Text
Ecclesiastes 3:3-8, Galatians 2:11-14, Luke 24:28-42
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Marcus J. Borg, N.T. Wright. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, 1999.
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2002-04-07
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Two Understanding When Friends Disagree
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Richard A. Rhem
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 7, 2002 entitled "Two Understanding When Friends Disagree", on the occasion of Eastertide I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ecclesiastes 3:3-8, Galatians 2:11-14, Luke 24:28-42.
Eastertide
Inclusivism
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f142ce0c49cf11ec3397789f207754c2.mp3
3e838d2c5ed35dd3e1ae43db9bbb76e1
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/faa2ff819626dc6961d94d97b38d90ac.pdf
38f85dfca1a2eed1b486890f39d2bdd3
PDF Text
Text
Whose Truth Are You Living?
Eastertide V
Scripture: Philippians 3:4-11; 4:10-14; Matthew 28:1-10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
April 28, 2002
Transcription of the spoken sermon
On Easter I gave you the analogy of the caterpillar and the butterfly, the butterfly,
of course, the prime symbol for Easter and for resurrection. I mentioned that the
caterpillar takes from the egg certain cells and those cells have within them the
blueprint for the legs and the wings of the butterfly, and at a certain point in the
development of the caterpillar, those cells begin to create disks within the
creature which are perceived by the immune system of that creature as being
alien and foreign and therefore are attacked, but eventually they overcome. The
zoologist calls those cells imaginal cells, a wonderful name, imaginal cells. They
imagine within themselves what that caterpillar can become, and when they
finally overcome the resistance of the immune system, the caterpillar is
transformed into a butterfly that, in all of its beauty, flies away in freedom. That
analogy, of course, is received on Easter Sunday as an analogy of that
transformation that occurs at the point of our death. Certainly it is a beautiful
analogy for that possibility, that transformation about which I remain agnostic,
because who knows what kind of transformation that might be?
This morning I want to point out what I really intended to point out but probably
didn't have the time or didn't have the presence of mind to do, and that is that as
the Easter message title was "Just Imagine the Real Miracle of Easter," I want to
point out that that analogy is apropos, as well, for the possibility in our present
existence to come to new insight, to come to transforming understanding, to
come to a new way of being, to be given the gift of eyes to see and ears to hear,
and to see the same things we've always seen, only to see them in a new way such
that it is transformative of our life and of our being. So, I raise the question this
morning in order to get at that - "Whose Truth Are You Living?"
An intentional question - whose truth are you living? Not "Whose Truth Do You
Believe?" but whose truth are you living? In other words, what is the vision that
has informed your life? What is at the center of your passion, what creates the life
map, the sense of orientation for your ordinary days and for those crisis periods
that come now and again? What is that at the center, the core of your being?
Whose truth are you living?
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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That question is a question intended to illicit an answer from you which, if I were
so lucky, would be "my truth." Whose truth are you living? Tell me you're living
your truth. Perhaps that seems a bit presumptuous. Maybe that even feels
arrogant to you. Live my truth? My truth? Who am I, after all? My truth? I'm a
part of a long tradition.
Perhaps in answer to my question, rather than saying, "My truth," you might say,
"I'm Christian," or "I'm Muslim." Or you might get more particular, you might
say, "As a Christian, I'm Protestant." If you're really picky, you might say, "I'm a
Lutheran or a Methodist or a Presbyterian." In other words, we define ourselves
often in terms of a group with which we are affiliated. We gain our identity
through that group-think which has formed and shaped us, the community of
which we are a part, and if you would say to me this morning some answer like
that, not "My truth," but "The Christian tradition," then I think you would be in
good company, most likely with the vast majority of folk who would so define
themselves in terms of some such community affiliation. I must say that is not all
bad because if you would have answered me, "I live by my truth," you would only
have come to your truth through one of the great traditions.
Our truth does not emerge in a vacuum. We are shaped and formed, and that is
why, in a community like this, we nurture our children and we shape our youth.
We have a responsibility to pass on a tradition which has been a positive
tradition, a positive power and shaping force in our lives. It has given us order. It
has given us some sense of the meaning of life, of the direction of life. It has
spoken to us of God and of humankind and of history and culture, and it has
helped us to find our way in the passages of life. So, don't hear me denigrate the
tradition and the respective traditions, and even the narrowing down of those
traditions into creedal forms and confessional groups, for all of us, finally, will
have to come in that way if we would come to our own personal place to stand to
say, "I stand in my truth. This is my vision. I have seen something and I live by it
and its illumination floods my life."
Nonetheless, it is possible to move beyond that group identity to a personal vision
which can be absolutely transforming and liberating, and maybe if I said it
against its opposite, it will make some sense. Recently someone put in my hands
a magazine called Islam, and this very nice glossy magazine had on the cover,
"Discovering the Truth: What Islam Stands For," and when I went to the lead
article, it gives some of the history of Mohammed. It was during one of those
times in a cave that God sent his first revelation to Mohammed. Mohammed was
now the final messenger of God and would be used to deliver the universal
message to all humankind. The Archangel Gabriel came to Mohammed and
commanded, "Read." Mohammed, terrified, replied, "I'm not a reader," for he
could neither read nor write, as literacy where he lived was rare. The angel took
hold of him, squeezed him with incredible force, released him and repeated the
command, "Read." Mohammed repeated himself and once again the angel
squeezed him until Mohammed thought he could bear it no longer. After the
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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third time, Mohammed felt the intense ringing of bells and heard Gabriel recite
the literal word of God, words so powerful that it felt like they were inscribed on
his heart, "Read, in the name of your Lord who created you." He ran from the
cave in terror, trying to escape the intense and frightening experience, but
everywhere he looked on the horizon, he saw Gabriel. He could not escape, but he
had already been chosen. Over a period of twenty-three years, the revelation
continued to come.
It is a magazine like Christianity Today or a house organ like The Banner of the
Christian Reformed Church or The Church Herald of the Reformed Church. It is
very nicely done and it presents the truth of Islam while it says "Discover the
Truth: What Islam Stands For." And then it gives accounts like this and I was
reminded as I read it of much Christian literature that assumes again, quite
naturally, this is the truth. Gabriel did visit Mary, the virgin Mary. Do you believe
that? If you believe that, do you believe this? If you believe this, then there is a
revelation beyond what is here, a final revelation, a final testament. The
respective religions claim to have the truth and so I say, "I'm a Muslim," or "I'm a
Christian," then my truth is defined for me. There is a dogma, there is a teaching.
It is all there in creedal expression and confessional statement, in ritual form. All
of the accoutrements of the religious experience of the respective traditions, all of
them assume a kind of literality about their truthfulness and its congruence with
reality as it is. So, if you belong to such a group, you don't have to have your own
truth. You could have group-think.
Now, once again to set this over against what I want to get at this morning. I
often have people say to me, "We don't believe that!" Oh, don't we? Who is we?
We don't believe that, or we believe so and so. We do? As a group, as a
community. Have we all thought it through? Have we all come to a personal
appropriation of that community expression? Hardly. We find our identity in that
group connection, just like we find our identity in the U.S. of A. or the Red Wings
who won again last night. We get our identity out of that kind of group affiliation
and we simply become a part of it, and I want to suggest to you this morning that
there is the possibility of a transformation when one can move beyond that
group-think, beyond that traditional statement, to one's own truth, to one's own
vision. There is the possibility of finding one's being transformed here and now,
coming to that epiphany saying, "Oh, I see!" To have eyes to see and ears to hear
the same old thing in a brand new way, which can be transformative.
Paul was such a person. You may say, "Oh, yes, Paul. Thank you very much, I'm
not Paul. I'm never going to be knocked off my horse by a blinding light from
heaven. I'm just ordinary. Don't push me too much."
But, think of Paul. Of course, Paul was a religious genius. I think Paul was one of
those special vessels, one whose epiphany becomes epiphanic for a whole
community of people who probably more than Jesus is responsible for the shape
of the Christian faith and Christian tradition. Paul, and I read his little
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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autobiographical piece, was deeply traditioned. He had the right connections, the
right parents, the right bloodlines, the right sacramental ritual discipline, the
right affiliation in terms of Pharisee concern for the serious observance of the
law, engaged and zealous, so he confesses, "I persecuted the Church." In terms of
being responsible to that tradition that he had embraced, blameless. He sets all
that forth because he says, "I set it all to the side, because of this transforming
vision that I had."
I simply lift Paul up as one who was so deeply traditioned, but by the grace of God
was able to move out of the hedgerows and the binding narrowness of a strong
tradition into a grand and glorious freedom that enabled him to soar. Paul
experienced the transformation such that it knocked his socks off, and perhaps
that is rare, but I hold him up as an example of what can happen and to make the
point that all of that tradition, all of that structure, all of that ritual, all of those
creedal statements and confessional expressions - all of it is the scaffolding
through which and by which the building is erected. And all of it is good and all of
it is valuable and all of it is of worth, because you can't erect the building from
ground up without all of that paraphernalia, and neither can you come to your
truth, to your personal vision, to that which you'd die for because it enables you
to live. You cannot come to that, either, without the help and the aid of all of the
agencies of the religious experience. All of those things are simply the means to
the end of the vision of God that sets you free. That is the transforming thing of
Paul. It was not a matter of Paul, the Jew, becoming a Christian. There wasn't
even Christianity at the time. Paul was born a Jew and died a Jew as Jesus was
born a Jew and died a Jew.
This was not a conversion from one religion to another. This was a conversion
about the understanding of religion, that religion is not a burden to be borne, not
a routine to be followed, an obligation to be executed, but religion, all of it, is to
be entered into and practiced in order that we might be set free from religion, in
order that we might play fast and loose with it, in order that we might live lightly
with it, valuing it for what it is and continuing to make it available in order that it
might continue to be the agent of nurture and formation, but then, to recognize
that it can be shuck off in order that one can have wings to soar.
A pastor is crazy to tell his people that. The philosopher George Santayana wrote
this marvelous statement:
Ultimate insights (now, that's what we are talking about) have a tendency
to undermine the orthodox approaches by which they have been reached.
Wow! Did you get that? Ultimate insights have a tendency to undermine the
orthodox approaches by which they have been reached. The saint pulls his ladder
up with him into his private heaven. I get the vision. I see it. I'm thankful for all of
the accoutrements of that structure, the community that has brought me to the
point where I can fly, and then I pull my ladder up into my private heaven and I
don't tell you about it, because otherwise you might think you don't need me
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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anymore. The community of the faithful on whose sturdy, dogmatic shoulders he
has climbed must not be deprived of the means of following his example. In other
words, I have to be very careful to talk to you about my truth and to suggest for
you your truth, because it is the sturdy shoulders of the dogmatic formulas upon
which I have climbed to my vision, and if I undermine the sturdy shoulders of the
dogmatic tradition, how will you join me in your private heaven?
Now, of course, I only do this because I can trust you with it. I only do this
because you are a mature community. I only do this because somewhere there
has to be a community that is honest about the fact that all religious practice is
valuable and relative, important and non- essential, and all of it is for the end and
the aim of a vision of God that transforms human life and allows community to
be a community of peace and reconciliation.
Some years ago, The Economist magazine had a special edition on God, and there
was a statement in it which I never forgot. It went like this:
The trouble with the world is that there are people who believe they
understand God perfectly and they meet other people who think the same
way, only differently.
Is that a picture of our world today? While it is necessary, in the nurture and the
formation of children and youth, and adults, to create the possibility for the
probing of reality, of God, of grace, of meaning through structures that have
stood the test of time, it is also high time that as a Church we get honest. I
suppose part of it is all of this terrible struggle in the Catholic Church right now,
and all of this language about the Holy Father and all of the folderol about the
robes and braids and miters, and I see all of that and I think, "Religion
institutionalized is a sickness."
But, I don't know how else to create the possibility of you coming to your own
truth unless we continue to think, probe, worship, engage in our ritual, and then
trust that now and again, here and there, someone will say, "Ah, I see! I see! I
see!" And one or two a year makes it all worthwhile
© 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
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
Eastertide IV
Scripture Text
Philippians 3:4-11, 4:10-14, Matthew 28:1-10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-20020428
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-04-28
Title
A name given to the resource
Whose Truth Are You Living?
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 28, 2002 entitled "Whose Truth Are You Living?", on the occasion of Eastertide IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Philippians 3:4-11, 4:10-14, Matthew 28:1-10.
Eastertide
Transformation