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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9df6f451074ee7c74ce0d0a28e86657d.pdf
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Text
Hope
Scripture: Jeremiah 32:1-17; Romans 8:18-31; 35-39
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 25, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Hope is the certainty that God will make good the promise of life. Hope is an
acorn dreaming its future. Hope is the inexplicable longing and expectation that
resides in the depths of the human soul.
Where there is life, there is hope.
So goes the familiar proverb. But, one could turn that around, as well: Where
there is hope, there is life. And one could add, Where hope is gone, life soon will
be gone, as well.
Yet, as someone has said, Hope and History never meet. That is, what our hope
longs for always outruns the reality we live. The same preacher said, "Why do I go
to church? It is longing - longing to see myself, you, this community and nation
and world fulfilled ... My most insistent feeling is, ‘There must be something
more.’"
That is a true reflection of our human situation - the disparity between the
longing of our hearts and the reality of our lives. Yet, hope is not quenched; it is
an inexpungeable quality of the human being and it is imperative to human
wellbeing that hope be fostered and nurtured. On what basis can we genuinely
hope? Certainly not on the basis of human ingenuity, cleverness or dependability.
Let me remind you of something I said last week when we considered
"confidence" or "trust." I pointed to the fact that we trust not on the basis of
experience, but in spite of experience, for our experience undercuts trust as often
as it confirms it. Trust is brought to experience, not derived from it.
So with hope: facing life with a positive, hopeful attitude full of expectation is
what we bring to experience, not what we achieve on the basis of experience.
When you think about it, it is quite remarkable that the human creature is
marked by an indomitable hope. There certainly is enough evidence about that
would seem to snuff it out. This is especially true in a society saturated with more
media coverage than is helpful or healthy.
© Grand Valley State University
�Hope
Richard A. Rhem
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The Pope makes an historic visit to Cuba and gets second billing to the feeding
frenzy at the White House. The news media create a circus of all that devalues
around the lowest exploits of public personalities, playing to and pimping for
public prurience. And I am aware that what the public wants, the public gets, but
I’m not ready to grant that that fulfills the public trust of those who mirror the
happenings of our world. But, as long as money and profit is the sole aim of the
media, that is what we will get.
My point is that it is impossible to base the hope of the human soul on human
experience. Human performance in its worst aspects is focused on and magnified
incessantly and is cause for despair, not hope. Still, granting the presence of
despair and even cynicism, not without good cause, we continue to be people
marked by hope - and what a saving grace that is!
What, then, is its ground? You will not be startled that I claim that hope is
grounded in God.
Grounded in God.
It is easy enough to make that claim, but what does that mean? Certainly you
know me well enough to know that I am making no naive claim that God simply
fixes everything, that God will straighten what is crooked and right what is
wrong. Finding hope in God does not mean a denial of the darkness, a refusal to
acknowledge the hurt and pain of the human story, nor is it to see God as pulling
the strings of human events making it all turn out right. Multitudes have left the
church because their own experience put the lie to such Pollyanna thinking.
Yet, is not that deep longing in our hearts reflective of some profound intuition
that there is something more and we, with the whole cosmic drama, are in
process, on the way? And is it not precisely the constant rebirth of hope that
urges us on and calls us to work at world transformation? The French priestscientist, Teilhard de Chardin, said, "The world will belong tomorrow to those
who brought it the greatest hope."
Hope issues in desire, longing, the conviction that there is something more. And,
I want to say - something more here and now! We have tended in Christianity to
put off that something more to another age, another order. We have too often
given up on this world, spiritualized the promises of God’s words, internalized the
peace promised and abdicated our responsibility for Creation in all its fullness
and history in all its potential.
But that is not biblical hope. Let me tell you the story of Jeremiah as recorded in
the morning lesson. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. His was a difficult
task. He lived in the last days of Judah. He saw the decay of national life, the
doom on the horizon for a society that was unjust and lacking in compassion. He
saw, as well, mighty Babylon on the horizon and the inevitability of the coming
© Grand Valley State University
�Hope
Richard A. Rhem
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conflict. He was called a traitor, one who undercut the morale of the people with
his dire predictions of imminent doom.
But, here is the irony: while he spoke boldly of Judah’s imminent defeat, he was
nonetheless a prophet of hope because he could see beyond the present tragedy
that there was yet a future for this people because God would keep God’s
promises. And this was not just wishful thinking. Chapter 32 tells of a relative
coming to Jeremiah telling him as next of kin that he should buy a piece of land
that had been part of the family heritage.
Were Jeremiah a cynic, one without hope, he might well have said, "No way."
Why should he pay good money for a piece of land that was part of a nation that
would soon be overtaken by the enemy? What good would it be to hold title to
land when chaos was around the corner?
But, Jeremiah had hope for the eventual restoration of Judah. He bought the
land, had the deed witnessed to publicly and instructed that the deed be buried in
an earthen jar to be preserved for the future when he or his family could claim
their inheritance.
This was a parable - a concrete transaction involving economic reality as a sign of
hope. Why Jeremiah? Because nothing bad will happen? Because maybe tragedy
will be averted? No. Jeremiah believed in the future because he believed in God,
he believed God intended a future for this people - in his words, because God was
the creator of the earth,
"Nothing is impossible for thee."
That is hope.
I’ve provided a paragraph in your liturgy from the theologian Paul Tillich:
The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That
is what the word means, and it is that to which the words ‘Kingdom of
God’ and ‘Divine Providence’ point. And if these words do not have much
meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the
ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without
reservation in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call
this depth ‘hope,’ simply hope. For if you find hope in the ground of
history, you are united with the great prophets who were able to look into
the depth of their times, who tried to escape it, because they could not
stand the horror of their vision, and who yet had the strength to look to an
even deeper level and there to discover hope.
As John A. T. Robinson, who quotes Tillich, remarks,
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Richard A. Rhem
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Hope is so near to the heart of the meaning of God that, like love, it can
stand for it.
I find this same sense of hope as God’s presence with and life-sustaining
intention operative in the whole creation in St. Paul. Paul says we are saved by
hope. From the context, I think Paul means our humanity is saved, rescued,
preserved by the hope that is rooted in the conviction that God is engaged in lifecreating action in the whole cosmos.
Paul operates with the biblical paradigm of Creation-Fall-Redemption. Thus, he
sees Creation, the so-called natural realm, as under a curse due to human sin.
Frankly, I’ve always wondered about that. Did weeds spring up in Eve’s garden
because she ate the apple in disobedience to the divine command? Do animals
and we ourselves die because of sin? I don’t really think so.
But, what if we find another paradigm or model with which to understand the
cosmic drama and the human story? What if for Creation-Fall, we think of
emergent evolution? What if we translate Paul’s hope into such an understanding
of cosmic reality as it appears in the best science of our day? Then is it not
possible to see God as the source, creative energy, enlivening Presence in the
whole scheme of things?
A second reference in your liturgy is from the writer Nikos Kazantazkis from his
Report to Greco. Here is the poet with creative imagination portraying the cosmic
scheme of things.
Blowing through heaven and earth, and in our hearts and the heart of
every living thing, is a gigantic breath—a great Cry—which we call God.
Plant life wished to continue its motionless sleep next to stagnant waters,
but the Cry leaped up within it and violently shook its roots: ‘Away, let go
of the earth, walk!’ Had the tree been able to think and judge, it would
have cried, ‘I don’t want to. What are you urging me to do! You are
demanding the impossible!’ But the Cry, without pity, kept shaking its
roots and shouting, ‘Away, let go of the earth, walk!’
It shouted in this way for thousands of eons; and lo! as a result of desire
and struggle, life escaped the motionless tree and was liberated.
Animals appeared—worms—making themselves at home in water and
mud. ‘We’re just fine,’ they said. ‘We have peace and security; we’re not
budging!’
But the terrible Cry hammered itself pitilessly into their loins. ‘Leave the
mud, stand up, give birth to your betters!’
‘We don’t want to! We can’t!’
© Grand Valley State University
�Hope
Richard A. Rhem
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‘You can’t, but I can. Stand up!’
And lo! After thousands of eons, man emerged, trembling on his still
unsolid legs.
The human being is a centaur; his equine hoofs are planted in the ground,
but his body from breast to head is worked on and tormented by the
merciless Cry. He has been fighting, again for thousands of eons, to draw
himself, like a sword, out of his animalistic scabbard. He is also fighting this is his new struggle - to draw himself out of his human scabbard. Man
calls in despair. ‘Where can I go? I have reached the pinnacle, beyond is
the abyss.’ And the Cry answers, ‘I am beyond.’ All things are centaurs. If
this were not the case, the world would rot into inertness and sterility.
Does not that give you goose bumps! I love Robinson’s comment:
The Cry - it links with what the Bible speaks of as "the call" of God, that
evocative, purposive love, which not only summons men to leave the
securities and satisfactions of life about them, but "calls generations from
the beginning" (Isaiah 41:4) ... But it links also with the cry of creation
itself, the yearning sigh of all being for its goal ...
There you have it; that is what I meant in the beginning when I said hope is
grounded in God. That is the explanation of the mystery as to why it is, how it is,
that the human being keeps on hoping. It is "The Cry," the relentless cry to
transcend all we have yet been and known. And we are driven on by this creative,
purposeful, enlivening life source. I can see no other explanation for the presence
of indomitable hope.
Thus we hope in spite of the news - Will the President be vindicated or will he
resign? Will Saddam Hussein back down, or will we go once more to war? Will we
acknowledge our arrogance and bully nature and open up to Cuba, or not? Will
the stock market steady or plunge? The list goes on; nothing is certain, all is
fragile and perilous. But hope will not be crushed nor defeated because God will
not abandon Creation and God’s purposeful love is for life.
I purchased an old book newly re-issued. I like the author; I like the subject
matter, but to be honest, I bought the book for the title. It is The Lure of Divine
Love. Is that not beautiful? Will you simply take that away with you from this
sermon? Let it seep into the pores of your being, because that is the deepest truth
of Christian faith - the lure of Divine love, pushing, pushing all things to life.
Hope is justified because it is hope in God, by God.
© Grand Valley State University
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3d8d33e2f6519d77ee6fa916d172dcad.mp3
d7f4de03179a1ad8efa7634505669d29
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Epiphany III
Scripture Text
Jeremiah 32: 1-17, Romans 8: 18-31, 35-39
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-0-19980125
Date
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1998-01-25
Title
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Hope
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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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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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 25, 1998 entitled "Hope", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 32: 1-17, Romans 8: 18-31, 35-39.
Divine Intention
Emergent Evolution
Hope
Prophetic Voice