1
12
1
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6fd22b2aa4aa037e7ffa01ca4989cd13.pdf
e68daca02ce78ece3e492822f9835b01
PDF Text
Text
The Feeling which Remains When the Concept Fails
Pentecost Sunday
Isaiah 6: 1-8; Mark 1: 9-15
Richard A. Rhem
Spring Lake Country Club
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 23, 2010
Prepared text of sermon
Another Pentecost – The Festival of the Holy Spirit – fifty days after Easter. And
next Sunday – Trinity Sunday – the Lord’s Day which brings the annual church
year to its culmination after completing the cycle once again of the story of Jesus
from birth to death-resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost.
We are gathered on this Sunday not accidentally – I chose it in consultation with
Mr. Bryson because this is Pentecost and next Sunday is the celebration of the
Trinity. Consequently it allows us to mine the deep riches of the Christian
tradition – its themes, liturgy and music. But even beyond the rich traditional
sources for worship, is the focus of the theme itself – this evening Pentecost and
Trinity.
The last time we gathered as a community of friends it was at Christmas. The
time before that it was All Saint’s Day. You see the pattern. I confess I love to
celebrate these Holy seasons; it gives me a reason to dig once more into the story,
the story of Jesus, the church’s story and relive again the moments of rich
celebration and the message and meaning of these markers, these high points of
our shared faith tradition. This is the shared story that has formed and shaped us,
inspired us and given us hope and courage, comfort and consolation.
I do love it. I love going back to the old story, the ancient celebrations, seeking to
grasp the depths of truth that came to expression in the story and then reflect on
how to bring to fresh expression from our historical moment what was seeking to
come to expression in the ancient story and in the early Church Fathers.
In fact, I have had half a notion to propose we form a church and we call it The
Church of the Holy Seasons. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? We could set up an
annual calendar – Christmas, Ash Wednesday/Lent/Holy Week, Easter,
Pentecost/Trinity. I think I could handle four or five sermons a year. As for Mr.
Bryson, he is still engaged about fifty-three Lord’s Days a year, so it would be no
problem for him.
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The Church of the Holy Seasons – I like that! Not bothered by buildings or
budgets or staff – well, just a few tired ministers and a few wonderful volunteers
gathering a community of old friends with many rich memories and shared story
who still find meaning, guidance, hope and joy in the Story of Jesus and challenge
in the Way of Jesus.
The Church of the Holy Seasons with the service beginning at 6:00 and the bar
opening at 7:00.
Well, I play with you a bit about the Church of the Holy Seasons, but as for the
Holy Seasons, I am serious. I love them and am still moved as we celebrate them
together. The Seasons, the High Holy Days, tell a story. The story is obviously
told in the cosmic, historical thinking of an ancient age. The world, the cosmos,
the evolutionary unfolding of being as we know it, even with its deep mysteries
still hidden, was not at all in their knowledge or understanding, but that does not
mean they did not wonder about and wrestle with ultimate questions of life. They
were conscious, self conscious, conscious of the other. They experienced birth
and death, nature in its beauty and terror. And as far back as we have knowledge,
they were religious in the sense of coming to terms with the Mystery of Being,
with the meaning of human existence.
Our own Christian tradition flows out of the Hebrew religious tradition and that
tradition came to full expression in the Axial Age, the period usually dated from
800–200 before the Common Era. In China, India, the Middle East and Greece,
without any interplay between them, there was an awakening of the human spirit
and a new self-consciousness.
I don’t mean to go into this in depth but only to say that there was a profound
wrestling with the Mystery of Being, the meaning of life, and the cosmic reality.
The great eighth-century prophets of Israel are part of this landscape and it is out
of this historical nexus that our Christian story arose. This is a huge subject and I
am not pursuing it any further except to say that our ancient story, which in many
respects appears to be naïve, even child-like, was not that at all. With what
knowledge was available to Isaiah and Jeremiah and the rest of the Hebrew
prophets and temple priesthood, they probed the ultimate questions of the
human situation and sought to find a meaning and pattern in history’s unfolding,
observing the temple rites, offerings and prayers.
It was out of the womb of Israel that Jesus was born in the time of the Roman
imperial domination of Israel and Judah. And the life, ministry and crucifixion of
Jesus occurred in an ancient time but a time in which history was recorded. And
the early Jesus movement, sensing still the presence of the crucified Jesus,
declared his resurrection and were convinced Jesus whom they understood to be
the Messiah or Anointed One was pouring out his spirit – that was the Spirit of
God – on them, empowering them to tell his story and invite the world to believe
in him whom they believed to be one with God. And they believed as well that
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
they were living on the edge of history whose curtain would soon fall and time
would be no more.
Of course, they were wrong on that. They had no clue about where they were on
the calendar of history. But regardless of their ignorance of where they were in
history’s calendar as well as their ignorance of history’s other great civilizations
and, indeed, of the cosmic drama of 13 plus billion years of cosmic emergence,
they were not ignorant of the existential reality of being human in the perilous
historical journey.
I go into this because here we are celebrating Pentecost and looking ahead one
week to Trinity Sunday. Were our ancient forbearers simply naïve, unknowing
and not to be taken seriously? If so why celebrate the Holy Seasons that stem
from their story?
The point I am trying to make as we celebrate the Festival of the Holy Spirit and
the Holy Trinity is that those ancient observances were a human response to deep
religious experience – the experience of encounter with the Sacred Mystery of all
being, or, in the shorthand of symbol, the experience of the Presence of God.
The theologian Paul Tillich understood religious observance as “ultimate
concern” and the term God as a symbol for the Ultimate. Tillich’s term was “The
Ground of Being” which was an attempt to move that ultimate mystery from a,
perhaps too familiar, personal category. Yet, if our being at its highest is the
personal, it is unlikely that some aspect of the personal will be denied to the
sacred mystery. Whatever!
I stammer and stumble because I am trying to bring to expression an
inexpressible reality. The most orthodox of Christian theology spoke of God’s
incomprehensibility. Yet it has been a universal experience of humanity that
God’s presence is known – in silence, vision or voice and responded to in the rich
diversity of patterns of religious observances. And one such pattern of response
has been the celebrating of the story of Jesus in the respective festivals of the
Christian Year.
My title for this meditation is perhaps a bit mysterious but that is only to be
expected for a discussion of the experience of God, of the Sacred Mystery of all
Being – “the feeling which remains where the concept fails.” This statement is a
quote from a classic theological text, The Idea of the Holy, authored by Rudolf
Otto described in the New World Encyclopedia as follows:
Rudolf Otto (September 25, 1869 – March 5, 1937) was an eminent
theologian and religious scholar in the German Protestant tradition. He is
particularly remarkable for his contribution to the phenomenology of
religious consciousness and his work in the fields of comparative religion
and the history of religion. Based on his research and observation, Otto
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
developed the notion of the “numinous” to express the reality of the sacred
as the defining element of religious experience. Otto thus stressed the
unique and essentially non-rational nature of religious reality, one that he
saw as irreducible to other elements. This stood in stark contrast to the
commonly accepted view of his time that the real essence of religion lies in
universal ethical teachings that can be rationally justified.
In the late 18th, early 19th century when the Protestant Christian theological
endeavor was trying to come to terms with the Enlightenment that sought to
reduce Christian faith to rational explanation and ethical teaching, Otto raised a
forceful “No!”, claiming religious experience is a human experience that cannot
be reduced to reason or ethics; rather, it is its own reality, a category of human
experience beyond rational categories. In the forward by Otto to the first English
edition (1923) Otto wrote:
This book, recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for
metaphysics, makes a serious attempt to analyze all the more exactly the
feeling which remains where the concept fails and to introduce a
terminology which is not any the more loose or indeterminate for having
necessarily to make use of symbols.
Otto registered a strong statement for the reality of religious experience – the
experience of the “wholly other,” a designation for God which Karl Barth later
picked up and popularized. The German title, Das Heilige, would be translated
“the Sacred” or “the Holy”. The sub-title was “On the irrational element in the
idea of the Divine and its relationship to the rational element.” Thus Otto in
rigorous scholarly fashion was intent on taking into account both the rational and
the irrational elements in the encounter with the Sacred Mystery – or, better, the
rational and the trans-rational. It was his insistence on the trans or supra rational
that set him apart from the climate of opinion of his times. Making a strong
protest against the then current “domestication” of religious experience, his work
made a strong impression and has had a renewal of interest from 1990 to the
present, even though, as might be expected, he was criticized by conservatives
because his insight called in question the exclusive claim of Christian theology,
recognizing as he did, the common nature of religious experience in whatever
tradition. He was criticized also by those who saw religion as simply ethics with a
touch of passion. In spite of criticism from right and left, his work remains a
significant marker for the reality of the religious phenomenon as a non-reducible,
original category in its own right and, obviously, his work is a key element in the
movement toward inter-religious dialogue and the study of comparative religions
and the history of religion.
The feeling which remains when the concept fails – I suspect that statement
fascinates me because maybe it defines me – literally from youth trying to
understand rationally what I have experienced beyond reason – the feeling that
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
cannot be denied even when I cannot explain it in terms of the concepts of
rational discourse.
The band of Jesus’ followers no doubt stayed together, no doubt bewildered, no
doubt wondering what was next, no doubt sharing their loss, their grief and yet
their sense that somehow, someway He was with them still. “He lives,” they
exclaimed. They went back to their Scriptures, they tried to make sense of their
experience. And then it was the Jewish Festival of Shavuot, the commemoration
of the giving of the Ten Commandments fifty days after the Exodus. Jews came
from throughout the empire to celebrate the Festival in Jerusalem and it
happened – an overwhelming sense of the Presence of the Spirit of Jesus who was
understood to be the Messiah, the word for anointed in Hebrew – the Spirit of
Jesus which was the Spirit of God. It was an experience of the presence of God
and they knew the ecstasy of being lost in wonder, love and praise.
We have the event recorded in Acts 2. The story as related there must have an
historical core whatever the actual event entailed. I am not really concerned with
precisely what happened except to say as the Jewish Jesus Movement moved out
and eventually became a Jewish/Gentile Jesus movement, indeed, the Christian
Church, this event was looked back to as the birth of the Christian movement.
That there should be an encounter with God was not novel. I read from Isaiah 6,
the familiar record of Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple in the eighth century
B.C.E. wherein he heard his call and responded, “Here am I, send me.”
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord
sitting on a throne, high and lofty…
and the angelic hosts called
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory.
Isaiah writes of his horror before the awesome one, only to be touched, cleansed
and assured by the angel ministering at the altar.
What do you make of that?
I also read from Mark’s Gospel. Before there was Pentecost or Easter or Good
Friday, there was Jesus’ ministry. For Isaiah it was a time of crisis – the king was
dead. For Jesus it was the Roman Imperial domination. John the Baptist was
leading a Jewish renewal movement. Jesus came by and was baptized by John
and as he emerged from the waters
…he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on
him. And a voice came from heaven,
“You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Mark then tells us that the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness for
forty days, tempted by Satan; and then interestingly Mark tells us, after John was
arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying,
The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come
near; repent and believe in the good news.
Then Mark tells us Jesus called his disciples and the preaching tour in Galilee
ensued.
I don’t think I ever juxtaposed the vision of Isaiah and the baptismal epiphany of
Jesus before but it is interesting that both occurred at a time of political/social
crisis. Both were grasped by a calling. Isaiah spoke of a people walking in
darkness seeing a great light, a people to whom a child was born who would be
among other designations the Prince of Peace. He spoke of the birth of a child
who would be named Immanuel, a name signifying “God with us.” And again he
wrote of a shoot from the stump of Jesse upon whom the Spirit of the Lord would
rest.
Don’t hear me attempting as is common in classic orthodoxy to see Isaiah
predicting the birth and ministry of Jesus. What I am really attempting to suggest
is the reality of the encounter with God, the reality of spiritual experience
wherein is sensed a calling to point to an alternative world – a world marked by
justice, compassion and peace. This was Israel’s vision at its finest as it came to
expression through the prophetic word. And the same was true of the ministry of
Jesus – a vision for which he was crucified by the established powers of Temple
and Empire.
So here we are on Pentecost. We have a story, the story of Jesus who emerges
from the story of Israel and, in the wake of his life, death and ongoing presence,
there is an overpowering experience of Jesus’ continuing presence and power
calling those gathered followers to get on with the cause, to proclaim Jesus as the
Way, the Truth and the Life.
And we are here this evening because they did! The Jesus Movement was born
and 2000 years later the story has reached us – the story of the Way of Jesus, the
way of love, the way of peace.
Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday. I’m sure you have been bored to death with
sermons on the Triune God. I remember one I preached a few years ago – “One
plus One plus One = One”. Rather cute I thought.
Some of the finest minds the human family has produced have wrestled in deep
philosophical endeavor to understand, define, describe the doctrine of the
Trinity. Profound human thought has labored at the task. In a sermon from
Riverside Church in New York City, the late great preacher, William Sloan Coffin,
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
referred to the primary author of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, Tertullian,
and then wrote,
I mention Tertullian’s debating because all doctrines really are born in
debate. They are correctives, a way of saying “No, no, it’s this way, not
that!” “God in three persons” is a corrective to a monotheism too narrow
to take in Christ, and a corrective to all forms of dualism that seek to
divide the world between spirit and matter, or appearance and reality, or
the forces of good versus the forces of evil. “Three in One” says “One God,
one world.”
The theological struggle to bring clarity to the nature of God has had its place and
in no way do I denigrate the theological endeavor of the centuries of the Christian
tradition. As I said above, that task has engaged the finest minds of the human
family over the centuries. I do think however we can perhaps see the whole
religious phenomenon, including the Christian faith, more simply from where we
are in the unfolding human story.
All genuine religion is trinitarian. There is the mystery, the holy source, ground
and goal of Being. There is the breakthrough of that Holy One, whether to Moses,
Isaiah or Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed. And out of the respective encounters and
callings there emerges a vision, a light, a teaching, a way. And the visionary
responds to the encounter and call and gathers a community which adopts the
vision and follows the way, creating rites and rituals, prayers, observances and
sacraments, by which to keep the story alive and to be reminded of the way, and
by means of which to teach the convert and the rising generation. The
observances form the rhythm, the liturgy of life as it were, and shape the
community, giving it form and identity.
That’s why I, admittedly playfully, suggest we form the Church of the Holy
Seasons. It is in the annual observance of the flashpoints of the Christian story
that we remember the Story, that we are moved in our depths by that which has
formed us, that we are touched anew with the Grace we first knew as we
embraced the story and sensed we are embraced by the good and gracious God
toward which it all points.
The Holy Trinity?
Simple: The Creative Mystery, our Source, Ground and Goal, has become
human – has a face and breathes on us the breath/wind of life, so we know
beyond knowing, for where the concept fails there is a feeling that remains
and it is love and grace and peace.
The Church of the Holy Seasons – we need a name because Christ Community
Church is a name no more. In an E-zine, Ian articulated very well why it was time
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
– I would say overtime – that the name be changed. The logic of names and the
reason for the change are expressed very well. I agree totally.
Sometimes one understands oneself best by realizing what one is not. Ian and his
leadership people have named themselves by that they are becoming and have
become. Only one statement with which I disagree in Ian’s piece – saying they
had many names submitted that expressed the need to “move from a narrow
Christian name to something more universal and inclusive.”
I suggest Christ Community was not a “narrow Christian name;” quite the
contrary, it defined our movement to becoming a truly ecumenical community.
Furthermore we put into practice the insight of Rudolf Otto that there is a
common element in all religious experience – the revealing of the hidden mystery
that is God beyond all human conceptions. Interfaith experience was a marvelous
dimension of our community life. What that did, however, was, in understanding
the other, help us to understand ourselves at a deeper level. I would suggest we
became more Christian, that is, more reflective of the Spirit of Jesus even as we
affirmed the truth and beauty of other ways.
I bring this up because it is a teaching moment – maybe to create clarity as to
why you are here and not there. One makes a choice to experience the Universal
in the particular or to seek a Universal without particular definition.
It is possible our brothers and sisters will be proven right over time. Perhaps the
particular traditions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and all
other traditions will fade and die in their particularity. If so some new
vision/way/tradition will rise and fulfill the hunger of the human heart for the
experience of God.
To be honest, I’m not interested in that. I have no need or even curiosity about
such a possible spiritual future. Bless those who do but as for me it is the Church
of the Holy Seasons – it is the Holy Mystery that has a human face by whose
grace the Spirit mantles my whole being. I would be so blessed if my children’s
children’s children were marked with baptismal water in the sign of the cross. If
our future generation were familiar with a table set with bread and wine, if they
got goose bumps singing “Silent Night, Holy Night,” “O, Sacred Head, Now
Wounded;” if they thrilled to the first organ chords of “Christ, the Lord, is risen
today” and stood with moistened eyes as the choir sang “The Hallelujah Chorus,”
if they sang “Spirit of the Living God, Fall afresh on me” and if they experienced
moments so freighted with eternity that they could but sing
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
Heaven and Earth are full of your glory!
Want to join me in the Church of the Holy Seasons?
© Grand Valley State University
�Feeling Which Remains when Concept Fails
Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
Reference:
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). The Idea of the Holy. First published in 1918; Second
edition, Oxford University Press, 1958.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost
Scripture Text
Isaiah 6:1-8, Mark 1:9-15
Location
The location of the interview
Spring Lake Country Club
References
Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy. 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1958
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-0-20100523
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-05-23
Title
A name given to the resource
The Feeling Which Remains When the Concept Fails
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
Text
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 23, 2010 entitled "The Feeling Which Remains When the Concept Fails", on the occasion of Pentecost, at Spring Lake Country Club. Scripture references: Isaiah 6:1-8, Mark 1:9-15.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Genuine religion as trinitarian
Pentecost