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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f37ad496ed60f41eb0e02cfb0bce650d.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
What It Takes to Make a Heretic
From a sermon series on the Book of Job
Text: Job 6:25-26
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost VII, July 10, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
"Teach
me,
and
I
will
be
silent;
show
me
where
I
am
wrong.
Does
honest
speech
offend
you?
Are
you
shocked
by
what
I
have
said?
"
Job
6:25-‐26;
Translation
by
Stephen
Mitchell
I begin this morning a series of messages on the Book of Job. This is the first time
I've ever tried to preach on Job in a serious fashion in order to handle the content
of the writing itself because, to be honest, I haven't understood it. Oh, a text here
and there—a text torn out of context to make a whale of a sermon on occasion.
But an insight into the composition of the book sometime ago enabled me to
crack open the enigma of the Book of Job. The Book of Job is a part of the
Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures—Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, some of
the Psalms. The Wisdom literature is a particular genre of the Hebrew Scriptures
which has its own characteristic themes. We don't do a lot with it in the Church,
and I haven't done a lot with it in preaching. As I said, the Book of Job has been
for me an enigma, and what I've found is that, in a new understanding of
something of the composition of the book, it becomes a marvelous and powerful
message which deals with the very concrete stuff which makes up our human
experience. So I want to begin this morning in a kind of introductory fashion to
deal with this book. I want to deal with the Book of Job because I think that it
deals with the things that we wrestle with every day in our lives—the unvarnished
stuff of human life. We'll see how far the series goes—four or five, six. Who can
tell once a preacher gets started?
The enigma that has kept me from ever treating the Book of Job as a whole has a
couple of aspects. In the first place Job has become in popular understanding the
"patient Job." We come by that honestly because in James 5:11 we are told, "You
know the patience of Job." So in conventional wisdom, Job became a model of
patience. To be sure, in what I read, in the prologue to the book, he certainly is
patient. But when you read the whole central section of the book, Job is not
patient. He is one of the most impatient people in the Bible. He rails against
heaven. He calls God to account. He damns the day he was born. Job is not
© Grand Valley State University
�What It Takes to Make a Heretic
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
submissive, patient and enduring, but a "rebel with a cause." I could never put
those two things together. If you read not only the prologue that I read a moment
ago, but the epilogue, the last few verses of the last chapter you will find that,
after his terrible suffering and total loss and the experience of God's voice in the
whirlwind, Job gets everything back two-fold. So, it would appear that the
messsage of Job is to suffer, be patient, so that finally you will be vindicated,
rewarded. But that theme contradicts the whole powerful center of this poem.
Well, the insight that helped me to make some sense of this book is that probably
the prologue and epilogue is an ancient legend—probably centuries and
generations old, and that the author of the central poem, if you glance at the Book
of Job you'll see the shift from prose to poetic form sandwiched between a
prologue and epilogue which are reflective of another age and a totally other
philosophy and understanding, a protest. Now you say, "Well, what's the sense of
that?" Why would the poet want to sandwich that between the telling of an
ancient legend? Well maybe, as some have said, because he wanted to set his own
point of view in sharp contrast to the other.
The ancient legend says that God blesses those who are good and God punishes
those who are evil. The ancient legend says if you suffer and endure patiently you
will be rewarded. The poet says, "I don't believe it! It is contrary to everything
that I experience and observe in human life, and I don't believe it." Maybe by
setting that ancient legend at either side of his protest, he sets it off even more
starkly. Or maybe he softened the edges of his protest by encasing it in this
ancient legend just to get in touch. You know, it’s dangerous to swim against the
tide. It’s dangerous to speak a word against conventional wisdom. It can cost you
your life to hold an opinion contrary to that which everybody knows. Do you
know how much we live by what everybody knows? The poet says, "I don't know
that. I don't believe that." But, you had better be careful when you say "no," and
everybody else is saying "yes." It would be an interesting doctoral dissertation to
trace through history the significant written works that were published after an
author's death, purposely, for fear that if they had been published in his or her
life, the author would have lost his or her life, would have died sooner than he or
she did. The poet gives Job the voice of a heretic—Job spoke a word against what
everybody knows, and what nobody thinks about, but everybody believes.
Job was not orthodox. He was heretical. The word orthodox means straight
opinion. The prefix ortho is from the Greek language. When I was a kid I used to
be able to spit through my teeth. And then my mother sent me to an orthodontist.
The orthodontist made my teeth straight because my father had me set apart for
the ministry. Otherwise I don't think they would have straightened my teeth.
(Laughter) If you break your leg and it is at right angles, you go to an orthopedic
surgeon who makes bones straight. If you are orthodox in theology, you hold the
right opinion. You hold the straight, accepted, perceived view of things. This poet
was not orthodox. This poet was a heretic. Heretic also comes from the Greek
language. It means "to choose."
© Grand Valley State University
�What It Takes to Make a Heretic
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
William Safire, the New York Times columnist, has a relatively recent book on
Job. He calls it The First Dissident. Job was the first dissident, which comes from
the Latin, descent, to sit apart. A dissident is one who sits apart, stands apart, and
acts apart. I don't use the word dissident because I'm not thinking as Safire is,
largely of the political and economic realm, but I am thinking more theologically.
So I will use the theological term heretic. The author of Job ran contrary to the
commonly accepted view of things in his day. He stood up and dared to say "no."
He stood up and dared to be alone and have the passion and conviction that
enabled him with courage to say, "I don't believe it." He was a heretic.
What makes a heretic? Concrete human experience that can't be crammed into
conventional wisdom as an explanation. Burning, passionate, concrete experience
that you just can't shove into a ready-made pigeonhole. A heretic is one whose
experience brings him to a point where he dares to stand up and to say, "No, I
don't believe it. This is what I believe." Job is a heretic, because everyone knew
that suffering was a sign of sin, that the one who was suffering was carrying some
guilt whether known or unknown. In his day the poet ran into the conventional
wisdom, the things that everybody knew, and that is that God blesses those who
are righteous, and God punishes those who are wicked. Everybody knew that
when you run into trouble, when calamity comes, when tragedy strikes there is
either some open or secret sin in your life. So when you come into trouble, the
question you ask is "What have I done wrong? Why me? What have I done? Am I
wrong? Where have I gone wrong?" It was a cruel philosophy or theology, but it
was deeply inbred into the human heart then, and it continues to be to a large
extent even today. I think that's why it is so important to deal with it. The poet of
these poems said, "I don't believe that." He said, "I look about me and I see a
mystery of human suffering that cannot be explained. I see the innocent suffer. I
see the good coming into calamity, and I see sometimes the careless getting off
scot-free." Human experience—what I observe and what I myself experience –
simply cannot be put into a neat formula: God blesses the righteous and punishes
the wicked. Job said, "I see innocent children die. I see cancer strike willy-nilly. I
see fires rage and floods rise, and I see natural calamities which the insurance
companies call 'acts of God', and I see human calamities when there are broken
relationships and betrayals and denials. I see parents who find their daughters
raped and mutilated or throats slit. I find young people blown away in war. I see
good people, decent people struck down by any number of things that bring them
into intense suffering and pain and loss." The poet said it is simply too
simplistic—"I don't believe it. The innocent suffer. That is a mystery. I can't
explain it. Sometimes there is darkness, and there is no word to say."
Job's friends had words. And today, we have pious platitudes, which work for
many people: "God makes no mistakes." "God has a purpose in it." Of course,
when you are back in the age of legends, then God did it, or God's agent whom
God controls did it. You can't have it both ways. You can't say God has a purpose
and apply it only to minor inconveniences. How can you tell someone whose life
has just been ripped apart with tragedy, that God did it. I don't really think we
© Grand Valley State University
�What It Takes to Make a Heretic
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
mean it when we say, "God has a purpose in it," or "God makes no mistakes." Job
stood up and said, "No! I don't believe it for a moment." He said, "I can't explain
the mystery of human suffering. I don't know the whys of human tragedy, but I
am innocent and I am suffering, and I see no good purpose in it."
We have something else we resort to, as I mentioned a moment ago. We take
upon ourselves feelings of guilt for our failures and for the things that go wrong.
Last year I ripped this woodcut of William Blake out of the New York Times. It
was woodcut of Job and underneath it says, "Many Americans in the flooded
Midwest will sit like Job amid the ruins of their lives and ask why God has turned
against them." Nearly one in five Americans told the Gallup Poll that the floods
are God's judgment on the people of the United States for their sinful ways. The
poet-Job says "I won't hear a word of it."
Job was a heretic. He stood up against the received opinion, the common person
on the street idea of things that everybody knows. He stood up alone because it
was contrary to everything he felt in his gut. He knew it was wrong and he dared
to say so, and thereby set himself apart. He paid the price, of course. His three
friends who came to comfort him came and with delicate sensitivity, when they
saw his disaster, they sat with him seven days and seven nights without opening
their mouths. That's a good comforter. Don't say a word. But when Job's voice
was raised against heaven, calling God to account, railing against this injustice,
this mystery, this suffering—then they ran to the defense of God or rather to the
defense of their belief system about God and they denounced Job. He was
rejected by his friends and he felt abandoned by heaven, but he stood up anyway,
and he didn't yield. Thank God for that. Thank God that this poem made it into
the canon of the scripture, because Job gives me the permission to think, to
experience, and then to seek to connect my experience with my faith. When faith
explanation doesn't fit with the facts of my life, I keep probing and struggling
until I bring them again into some kind of meaningful relationship. Thank God
for this heretic-poet. Because, as it is, we are told that one out of five Americans
say the floods are the result of God's punishing the sins of the people. But think
what it would have been if we had never had this protest that said, "No! I don't
believe it." Thank God for Job who called God into account and said to his
friends, "I'm innocent and I'm suffering, and I don't know why." Thank God for
Job, for in his darkness ,which was not penetrated by any ray of light, he wrestled
with God. He wrestled with God and became the forerunner of another who in his
darkness cried out, "My God, my God, why?," which is not a question seeking an
intellectual answer, but a primal scream from a devastated human being, longing
to know that there is someone there. Thank God for our confidence that, while
there is suffering that has no meaning and tragedy that has no explanation when
finally we must be silent, nonetheless we cling to the God of all mercy, who we
believe will never let us go.
If God plays with us like puppets on a string, you have every right to fear such a
God, but you can never love such a God. But if we can trust in the darkness,
© Grand Valley State University
�What It Takes to Make a Heretic
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
believing somehow or other in an infrastructure of mercy, that's a God you can
love. That's a God you can love when everything goes wrong and nothing makes
sense.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5560a1a7ae42bbecd6a16dc54fba8036.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
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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
Pentecost VII
Series
The Job Series
Scripture Text
Job 6: 25-26
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-0-19940710
Date
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1994-07-10
Title
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What It Takes To Make a Heretic
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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
The topic of the resource
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 July 10, 1994 entitled "What It Takes To Make a Heretic", as part of the series "The Job Series", on the occasion of Pentecost VII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Job 6: 25-26.
God of Compassion
Hebrew Scriptures
Nature of God
Wisdom Literature