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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b1bf5f126c11e3592b6b92e2890d14f9.pdf
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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
�Credo: I Believe
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
�Credo: I Believe
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
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
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7fb615bf97ac6f65dcdb10414121981c.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Eastertide II
Series
Credo: A Series for Eastertide
Scripture Text
Acts 17:24, John 14:1, 9
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/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19940410
Date
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1994-04-10
Title
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I Believe
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 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