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Transfigured: Face-to-Face in Freedom
From the sermon series: Until We Take the Shape of Christ
Text: II Corinthians 3:17-18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Trinity Sunday, June 14, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Have you ever had an absolutely marvelous vacation in an idyllic spot, and come
back and tried to tell people about it and found them to smile and say, "Oh, that's
nice." Have you ever been to a retreat or to a seminar where you were just
energized and turned on and inspired and came home and tried to tell your
colleagues about it and have them say, "Oh, that's interesting." Have you ever
been in love hopelessly, wonderfully in love, and tried to put it into words, in
rational discourse that could be conveyed to someone, communicated to
someone? Of course you can't do that. And if you have had an experience like
that, then you can identify with the Early Church, with the Apostles. If Paul
sometimes seems scrambled in his New Testament writing, just remember he
was trying to express the inexpressible, and if the Early Church Fathers
formulated their doctrinal understanding in philosophical language that seems
rather arid and awkward and doesn't move you, then understand the problem
with which they were dealing. They were trying to say what cannot be said, to
make comprehensible that which is incomprehensible, to lay out the mystery that
transcends our human understanding.
On Trinity Sunday, I am not going to attempt to give you definitions of God. I'm
not going to attempt to give you some doctrinal dissertation on our
understanding of God, because to do that is an exercise in futility. But what I do
want to do is take you to the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, where you
have the intertwining of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit
without any attempt to formulate philosophically the relationship. We really are
better off with God if we stick to biblical expression.
In this chapter we have an interesting discussion of God Who is the Creator and
the Redeemer understood by us as our Parent, our Father. We have that God
Who has revealed Himself in the face of Jesus, Jesus, the Word made Flesh; and
we have the ministry of the Spirit of Christ, or the Spirit of the Lord, or the Spirit
of God, or the Holy Spirit. And Paul weaves all of these together without any kind
of systematic formulation.
© Grand Valley State University
�Transfigured: Face-to-Face in Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
It was inevitable for the Church to try to give some kind of systematic form to this
data, to try to articulate this experience, but that articulation always falls far short
of the reality of experience which is given witness to in the Scriptures.
Paul's apostleship being under attack, he says to them, "Look, I don't have to
authenticate myself. You are my authentication. You are a letter from Christ,
written not with ink on tablets of stone, but written rather by the Spirit of the
Living God." In the opening paragraph of the third chapter we have reference to a
letter of Christ written by the Spirit of the Living God, and so you have the action
of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but in a way that is very
practical, in the way in which God has revealed Himself and made Himself known
and impacts our human experience. Paul looked at the congregation of folks like
you and he said to them, "You are really the authentication of my apostolic
ministry because, to the extent that your lives have been transformed, it is a
witness to a work of God wrought through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit. The
transformation of your lives, your move from darkness to light, your move from
brokenness and the darkness of superstition and fear and guilt to the joy and the
liberty of the Children of God is the indication that my ministry has been
authentic. I'm not sufficient for these things, and I haven't 'written' you, but
Christ has written you. You are a letter from Christ written by the Spirit of the
Living God."
That reminds him of that whole ministry which is his in the wake of Jesus' death,
resurrection, ascension and the gift of the Spirit, and he begins to contrast that
with the old Covenant, the time of Israel through the ministry of Moses. He goes
back to that old Exodus story where Moses, having been in the presence of God,
returns to the people and his face is aglow, and the people are afraid. And
interestingly, in Paul's use of that passage, Paul says that Moses put a veil over
his face so that the people would not see the glory fade. It was like the glow would
wash off eventually, and Moses, not wanting to have them see the departure of
the glory, veiled his face.
Paul uses that as an analogy, as an illustration of the contrast between the old
Covenant and the new, and he says the old Covenant, the religion of Israel, which
was preparatory, which was authentic and genuine, but which was not complete,
was a ministry whose glory faded. It was a ministry of the letter; it was a kind of
religion that was imposed from the outside. It involved Law. Law can point to life,
but cannot empower life. Law can show the way, but cannot motivate one to walk
the way. The old Covenant was a covenant of rules and rituals, of religious
observance. Paul says the new Covenant is a covenant of the Spirit. It is a
covenant of the Spirit Who creates freedom in the individual so that inwardly
there is a motivation to become all that God has created one to become. In
contrasting the old and the new – the ministry of Moses and the ministry of
Christ, the ministry of the Letter and the ministry of the Spirit – Paul presents to
us the tremendous promise of human transformation. Through the ministry of
the Eternal God Who has come to us in Jesus and dwells with us by His Holy
© Grand Valley State University
�Transfigured: Face-to-Face in Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Spirit, we, His people, are being transformed, and that transformation has as its
goal our conformity to Jesus.
We saw that in the previous message. We have been predestined to be conformed
to the image of Christ. That is God's goal for us. With all of the diversity, with all
of the multiplicity of our human experience, there is yet a commonality, which is
a reflection of Jesus Christ from the core of our being because we belong to him
and have been transformed by him. So, the thing that God is about, this Triune
God, the thing that He has been about from the beginning and will finally finish
in the end, is the shaping of His children to be the brothers and sisters of Jesus,
and that is being effected by the Spirit of God. In the marvelous 18th verse, he
says,
…because for us there is no veil over the face, we all reflect as in a mirror
the splendor of the Lord; (that is, Christ) thus we are transfigured into his
likeness from splendor to splendor. Such is the influence of the Lord Who
is Spirit.
We, gazing at Jesus, are changed into the likeness of Jesus. The calling of the
Christian is the contemplation and the reflection of Jesus Christ, the imbibing
and the reflecting of the reality of Jesus Christ. It is our calling as people to be
transfigured, face-to-face in the wonderful freedom that the Spirit creates. Not
with cramped, heavy, onerous religion, but with the life-giving Spirit.
Have you ever painted by number? If you have painted by number and enjoy it,
keep at it. It's great! It's a lot better than biting your fingernails. But, on occasion
I have seen a painting that was painted by number. I can paint by number. I'd
probably go out of the lines, because I'm not a person who easily lives within the
lines, and I probably would grow impatient and blue here and here. But, I could
paint by number. In fact, that's the only way I could paint, being color-blind and
without artistic skill. I would number the paints and I would read the number
and it would not take a great deal of creativity, a great deal of skill or artistry to
paint by number. It's not a bad pastime. But you never mistake a painting by
number with a painting of an artist.
The last time that I was in New York, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
because there was a special display of French Impressionism, a private collection
that was about to be shipped off to England and probably would never be seen
publically again. Some Renoirs, some Monets, and others of that movement.
Now, that was a revolutionary movement in art, in painting. When you look
closely you see they put the paint on heavily, and they dabbed it on. It's a very
rough surface. And there is not a line that is straight. There's not a human form
that is carefully formed. There's not a tree that is like any tree I was ever taught to
make in elementary art! Nothing looks like anything in terms of an exact
facsimile. But, when you see the painting, it jumps off the canvas! There is a use
of light which causes, for example, the sun dancing on the ripples of a lake, to
seem as though they are shimmering and moving. The Impressionists really
© Grand Valley State University
�Transfigured: Face-to-Face in Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
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revolutionized painting. One of my favorite artists (not at all because he's Dutch)
is Vincent Van Gogh, who wasn't accepted at all in his day and died in terrible
poverty. One of his paintings was sold recently for millions of dollars! I hope God
is making it right for him in heaven. His figures are grotesque! If you really study
it closely and just focus on a figure, it's grotesque! But, stand away and you see
that somehow or other the freedom of the artist created a reality far beyond what
any photograph could reproduce!
What we are called to, through the God Who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, in
the power of the Holy Spirit, is not to live our lives painting by number with the
scrupulosity that makes religion a heavy burden, that binds the human spirit and
makes it all an onerous duty. No, the God we celebrate on Trinity Sunday is the
God Who would set us free! Set us free to live as artists in this grand universe of
His in order that the full potential of our humanity could be exploded and we
could become all that He has intended us to be. He, the Divine Artist, Who has
created us in His image, is calling us to become like Jesus. So, Paul says not in a
crimped and cramped, heavy religion, but face to face with Jesus we are being
transformed by the working of His Spirit within us and we are beginning to take
on the shape and the measure of Jesus Christ in the fullness of our human
experience.
There is no way in the world that I can make that happen for you, or you can
make it happen for me. I said last week on Pentecost I'm always most acutely
aware at this time of the year of both the promise and the impossibility of
preaching. It is like trying to tell you about a vacation that you didn't experience
and that just turned me on; like trying to tell you about a retreat experience that
energized me and excited me that I can't possibly communicate; like trying to tell
you in rational discourse what it means to be dizzily in love. But, maybe as we
talk about it, as we sense that it is God's purpose for us to have us blossom forth
into beautiful human beings, maybe at least we'll be clearing the ground and
getting rid of that crotchety idea of religion – form and ritual and law and legality
and condemnation – and see that God loves us with an everlasting love, and He's
gone to the depths of the earth, to Hell itself, to set us free and let us be!
It's like healing. You cut your hand, put salve on it and say that that will heal it.
The salve won't heal it. Salve may cleanse it, may keep it soft, may get rid of the
bacteria. Salve may remove the impediment to healing, but healing is the body's
function; healing is a mystery. The ground can be cleared, but only the body can
heal itself, because there is a healing, recuperative power within the body, which
is there by the grace of God Who made us.
So with our human spirit. So with the transformation of our lives. Here and there
it happens. Now and again. It happens most often when we're looking for it, when
we're thirsting for it, when we're in the place where God has promised to meet us.
To be transformed into the likeness of Jesus comes about more readily if we're
gazing into his face. That is, if the portrait of Jesus painted for us by the great
© Grand Valley State University
�Transfigured: Face-to-Face in Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Impressionists, the Gospel writers, is always playing through our being; if we
sense the mastery with which he lived, the devotion, the commitment, the
communion, the compassion, the love, the grace, the beauty of who he was, and
with an openness and a prayer that his Spirit will be effecting that in us. It does
happen, from splendour to splendour, from degree to degree - people moving
toward the realization of God's purpose, which is conformity to Jesus Christ.
Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II, who was not the finest Pope
in Church history. He had a great ego and a desire to have the grandest tomb in
Rome. Michelangelo was commissioned to sculpt some huge, gigantic, heroic
figures that would be a part of his tomb. Michelangelo was his own person as well
as Julius, and they got into an argument. The tomb never happened, and some of
the figures that Michelangelo was working on can be seen in Florence, Italy in the
same place as his statue of David. The huge blocks of granite are still there, and
the figures are beginning to emerge. There's been enough chiseling and sculpting
so that you can see what the figure was going to be. They are heroic figures, and
you can see them as though they are trying to get out of the block! Get free from
the granite! Free to move! Free to be human! They are called "The Prisoners."
Many of us, much of our lives, are prisoners. There are stages in our lives when
we'd like to just kick it all over and find freedom. We'd like to divest ourselves of
every form of human control, every human bondage, every responsibility and
obligation and find freedom. The French Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre spoke
about that kind of freedom, and he was a nihilist. That means one ends up where
nothing means anything. That is a possible end of freedom, understood as
autonomy. Some of us give it a shot once in a while, but it never fulfills its
promise. But the freedom that the Spirit engenders is not a freedom just to do
whatever we want, but freedom to become what we were intended to be. Icons of
Jesus, that's the Greek word, icons of Jesus reflecting his beauty from the inside
out. That's really who we are - the beauty of Jesus, our Elder Brother, shining
through us. Transfixed, face to face in freedom.
Let us pray.
God, our Father, give us a taste for that high purpose for which you have made us
and to which you call us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 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
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
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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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
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Trinity Sunday
Series
Until We Take the Shape of Christ
Scripture Text
II Corinthians 3:17-18
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-0-19870614
Date
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1987-06-14
Title
A name given to the resource
Transfigured: Face to Face in Freedom
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
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eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
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 June 14, 1987 entitled "Transfigured: Face to Face in Freedom", as part of the series "Until We Take the Shape of Christ ", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 3:17-18.
Experience of God
God's Inclusive Love
Spirit
Transformation
Trinity