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The Ground of Hope
Article by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
The Church Herald
The Magazine of the Reformed Church in America
December 20, 1985, pp. 6-7
Our hope for the future is grounded in what God has done in the past
We have kept Advent, the time of waiting, of expectation. We have rehearsed
faith's vision in the midst of the puzzle of history. In this time between the times
we live by the vision, trusting that the King will come and we will understand.
The King will surely come; that is faith's vision, a vision grounded in the fact that
the King has come. If Advent is the time of expectation, Christmas is the time of
fulfillment. Into the puzzle of our history a child was born, and in that fully
human existence a light penetrated our darkness, and the darkness has never
overcome it. Our hope for the future is grounded in what God has done in the
past.
To celebrate Christmas is to discover the ground of our hope as we grope through
the darkness which is the puzzle of history. The King who is coming is the King
who has come. We are a people of hope, a hope grounded in the past enabling us
already to appropriate the future that still lies before us, living in the assurance of
things hoped for.
Christian hope is hope in God. Stating what may seem obvious is an attempt to
distinguish the Christian hope from today's cheapened hope, a worldly term for
wishful thinking regarding a thousand matters from the ridiculous to the
sublime: Will you win the game? I hope so. Will you have more sales in 1986 than
in 1985? I hope so. Will your health improve? I hope so.
Hope has become a catch-all word for all sorts of situations and conditions that
we would like to see happen or become realized. Hope in this sense refers to an
uncertain outcome. We do not know; we cannot tell; we “hope so.” That is not
Christian hope. Christian hope is hope in God. It is certain.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Ground of Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
There is another distinction. We use hope in its cheapened sense to express our
wish that something happens but about which we are uncertain. We also are then
using it to refer to a favorable outcome which lies within our capacity to bring
about: Will you win the game? I hope so—but the outcome is uncertain. Yet, I do
have it in my capacity to win the game if I play well, if I practice and am ready, if I
do not make the big mistake. Will you have more sales in 1986 than 1985? I hope
so—but I am not certain. Yet it is very possible, if I work hard; if I make sufficient
calls; if production is there. Will your health improve? I hope so—but I cannot be
sure. We enter a gray area because my health is not wholly within my power. Yet,
if I eat properly, get proper rest, exercise, and avoid stress, I can certainly
influence the outcome. Thus, in the cheapened sense of hope in contemporary
usage, hope refers to that which is uncertain, but is within my power to effect.
Biblical hope is something quite other. Biblical hope is in God; it is the present
certainty of what will be a future possession; it is certain of that which is
impossible in terms of human capacity.
As far as the quality of certainty is concerned, I simply refer you to the testimony
of Scripture. Biblical religion is a religion of certainty. I am not speaking now of
dogmatism. Surely there has been far too much dogmatism and far too many
dogmatic people in the history of the church. There is a lust for certainty in the
human heart and certainty about things that remain veiled in mystery. The Bible
is no answer book for all the questions of the less than serious curious ones. Too
many religious people “know” too much.
The Bible is, however, a book of certainty about the matters of ultimate concern:
That God is. That God is gracious. That God's kingdom will fully come. Biblical
religion in those ultimate matters is serious and certain. It is hope-full, not “hope
so.” It is the present certainty of what will be a future possession.
Further, it is certain of what is impossible in terms of human capacity. Let me
raise some questions to demonstrate that biblical hope is fastened on that which
lies beyond human capacity to effect.
Will there be a new creation as spoken of by Isaiah and in the Revelation to John?
Our Advent affirmation was yes. Will it come through human planning and
ingenuity? Will it come through human goodwill and harmony? Will some
president, king, or dictator arise who will effect it? Will it come through the
progressive education of the race, some evolutionary development?
Only the naive, the simple, the one ignorant of the human story could answer
affirmatively or even “I hope so.” Will there be life after life? The biblical faith
says yes. Will it come through medical research and the development of new
technology? Will death be defeated by future breakthroughs in science?
I need not go on. What all that conjured up is not only scarcely thinkable, it is not
desirable. It is apparent that biblical hope is certitude about a future reality which
© Grand Valley State University
�The Ground of Hope
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
lies beyond human capacity to achieve. Hope reaches beyond what is possible.
Hope claims a future that can come only as the result of an act of God.
Living in hope means living in the tension between now and then. There is a great
difference between present experience and the future for which we hope. This gap
between the vision and reality, between the ideal and the real, becomes
understandable in terms of the hope of which Scripture teaches. That hope is
grounded in the Christmas event.
Life is difficult. Human experience is thoroughly laced with suffering. Many have
had their faith in God shattered on the rocks of human suffering and evil in the
world. Such people have never been taught the true biblical faith because biblical
faith will not be eviscerated by suffering but is rather the means for
understanding precisely the hard reality of human experience. Our life is caught
in the tension. The darkness is not denied, but the darkness is not ultimate; the
Light has come and the light shines in our darkness. Therefore we endure; we live
in hope.
Hope is grounded in the faithfulness of God which came to expression at
Christmas. God has acted. Hope has been vindicated. God has visited his people;
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
We have seen the heart of God in the face of Jesus. Generations waited through
long centuries and then—Mary had a baby. Jesus was the fulfillment of God's
promise and in him redemption was accomplished—we have been saved. There is
a history to look back upon and a dramatic intervention in the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus to remember and in which to trust. God did move in
faithfulness to his promises, and that move at history’s midpoint proved the
ground of a new promise, a new expectation, a new hope.
God's redemptive plan has touched down. He has connected with our history. He
has shown himself faithful in our past. Therefore our hope is grounded in history
and we have an anchor to which to hold as we wait in expectation. As we
celebrate another Christmas we acknowledge that we see only puzzling reflections
in a mirror, but our hope is renewed as we remember his coming and we wait in
hope for the day we will see him face to face.
© 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
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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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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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RA-4-19851220
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1985-12-20
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Text
Title
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The Ground of Hope
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The Church School Herald Journal
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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eng
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Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 20, 1985 entitled "The Ground of Hope", it appeared in The Church Herald, pp. 6-7. Tags: Advent, Hope, God of Grace, Faithful.
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Advent
Faithful
God of Grace
Hope
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8c04def5fafd4b7f8d495d2306dfb205
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The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Text: John 4:21-24; Acts 10:34-35
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Trinity Sunday, June 6, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
“The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain
nor in Jerusalem….The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true
worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, for the Father seeks
such as these to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must
worship in Spirit and Truth.” John 4:21-24
“…I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone
who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” Acts 10:34-35
We have traversed the Christian year once again. We have gone through the cycle.
Last Sunday was Pentecost, and the Sunday after Pentecost in the calendar of the
Church is Trinity Sunday, a time when we focus on the God for whom our hearts
long. The one true and eternal God, creator of all, whose heart we have seen in
the face of Jesus, and whose presence is with us in the Spirit. As we celebrate
Trinity Sunday this year, let me suggest that it is time for us to begin to think
about that Trinitarian formulation in terms of our present world, the state of that
world, and the relationship of the religions in the world.
The trinity was the formulation in the third and fourth and fifth centuries of the
Christian Church, trying to make some sense out of the experience - the
experience of the one true God who obviously was there revealed in Jesus and
was present in a powerful way in Spirit, the Spirit that Jesus promised would be
given to empower them and to send them out into the world, telling the good
news that he had brought, the good news of God. The God who was near. The
God who was gracious. The God who was inclusive of all, and who could be
trusted. The God of all grace and mercy. The formulation of the doctrine of the
trinity in subsequent centuries was an attempt to make some sense of that.
Last week I suggested that maybe the whole development of the Christian Church
was an unfortunate mistake, that maybe it was contrary even to the intention of
Jesus himself. The formulation of the Christian Church that set up a competing
religious institution over against Judaism – Jesus, I think, had no intention of
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
that. There is nothing in his ministry that would seem to indicate that what he
was about was the founding of another religious institution. What he was about
was mediating the presence of the only God, the one true God, the creator of the
heavens and the earth, and promising that God was ready now to move broadly
across the face of the earth in a spiritual presence and power. That’s the promise
of Pentecost. Jesus was pushing out the walls. He was removing the barriers.
They killed him for that.
There’s something about us. We want to have the last word. We want to have the
only truth, all of the truth, and nothing but the truth. We get an idea; then we
build an institution; then we set it up as an idol and we worship it. We claim that
somehow or other this is the truth, and it becomes a truth that divides. What
Jesus was trying to say, I think, was that there is only one God who is the God of
all humankind, a God who would gather all humankind into one world
community. Now we are at the point, Jesus was saying, where that Spirit of God
will move us out into the world. “Go tell the whole world. Start in Jerusalem. Go
to Judea and to Samaria, and the ends of the earth and tell them about the God of
grace whose presence I have mediated.” It didn’t take very long, however, and
that Christian movement, and the power of the Holy Spirit began to be
constituted into a competing religious institution. Now down through the
centuries we’ve had Judaism and Christianity claiming to serve and worship the
same God, and yet claiming to be the way of truth to that God over against the
other.
On this Trinity Sunday, 1993, let me suggest a modest proposal. That is that
Christ Community become a catalyst for the undoing of the absoluteness of the
Christian Church, advocating the undoing of the absoluteness of all of the
competing religions, taking down the wall, breaking down the barriers in order
that we might realize the intention of Jesus and the promise of Pentecost, that the
Spirit of God would be poured out on all flesh. It seems to me that this is what
Jesus was about.
The reason I am concerned about it more and more, is because religion is such a
potent, powerful force. It is the most powerful force in the world. The force of
religion in our world in the various divided camps has placed our world in peril.
It is time for us to stand up and confess that we have absolutized our own partial
vision over against other partial visions, and thus denied the very thing for which
Jesus lived, and for which he died, which was for us to see the universal calling of
all the children of God into that one world community.
Hans Küng, the Catholic theologian, has said that without peace among the
religions there will be no peace in the world. He’s right! And then he goes on to
say that without peace among the churches there will be no peace among the
religions. So there’s a sense in which talking about a dialogue among the religions
is already a step removed from where we are. But over twenty years ago, right
about this time of year, this congregation changed its name from The First
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Reformed Church of Spring Lake to Christ Community Church. That was done
intentionally in order to create a new image, in order to establish the fact that
here we would have an ecumenical community that reflected the whole spectrum
of the body of Christ. Here we would honor all of the faith traditions. Here we
would blend the traditions into a new mix and a new mold that would be
reflective of the breadth of the Christian church. And it has happened. You are a
broad spectrum of Christian traditions in your various backgrounds. If this
community were a dog it might be considered a healthy mongrel. Nothing pure
about this place. It is all mixed up and that’s healthy.
But it’s not enough! We have got to take the next step. Somebody has to stand up
and say,
“For God’s sake, for peace in the world the respective human religions are
human constructions that need to be transcended in order to realize the
Spirit of Pentecost, because the Spirit of God is beyond any of the
particular concretizations of the respective human religions.”
It seems to me that this is what Jesus was about. But too soon after the day of
Pentecost, as the Christian movement began to sweep across the face of the earth,
things went awry. A Christian Church was born. I am not saying that we have to
undo two thousand years of history. Nor am I so naive as to believe that the Spirit
of God does not work through all of the stuff of history, even through our
blindness and our obstinacy; even through our absolutizing of our partial views,
the Spirit of God works. Paradoxically, the God of Israel was brought to the
nations by the God of the Christian Church. But I am suggesting to you today that
the respective absolutizing of human religious institutions must come to an end.
It is time for someone to speak for God and for the Spirit of God, and for the
promise of Pentecost, bringing all of those who would serve and worship and
adore and hunger after the one true God into one community of faith no matter
how many faces it might have.
It seems to me that the Trinitarian formulations of the Church, which came four
hundred, five hundred years after Jesus in their final form, are a block to the
dialogue among the religions. It is very interesting that in the year 312 A.D. the
Emperor Constantine, the Roman emperor, established the Christian Church.
What a tremendous victory that was. What a triumph. From a ragtag bunch of
nondescript people with a vision and a passion, a persecuted people, in less than
312 years, the Christian Church becomes the established religion of the empire. Is
it a coincidence that the same emperor called a church council nine years later,
the Council of Nicea in 321 A.D., the council that formulated the exalted
Christology of our creeds and our liturgies, our prayers and our hymns? On page
12 of your hymn book there is the Nicean Creed.
The exalted Christology that exalted the conception of Jesus, which is stated there
in Greek philosophical concepts, is a far cry from the Gospels. “God of God, Light
of Lights. Begotten and not made . . . before all worlds.” And the formulation that
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
came out of that? The Trinitarian God. One God, but three in one, God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal, blessed forever. A
far cry from the Gospels. As a matter of fact, practically meaningless to us in our
everyday experience. We don’t talk that way. That conceptuality is something that
we only brush against in church, in a traditional way, without it really penetrating
to the depths of our being. The God for whom we long is a far cry from the
formulations of Trinitarian Christian doctrine. The God we really long for is a
God who embraces all . . . the God heralded by Jesus.
Take the story of Jesus in which Jesus has a very engaging conversation with a
woman at the well. And the very fact that Jesus was there, in Samaria, is a sign of
what he would later call the disciples to do – to go to all nations. The Jews and
the Samaritans had nothing to do with each other. They hated each other. Why,
they hated each other almost as much as the Reformed Church and the Christian
Reformed Church. (Laughter) The closer you are, you see, the greater the rivalry.
Jews and Samaritans were cousins, but they couldn’t stand each other. Jesus goes
through Samaria because he doesn’t happen to think that the Samaritans are a
godless, off scouring of the earth.
He talks to a woman. To a woman! Unbelievable! Incredible! No man, no decent
man would do that. There he is engaging her in conversation. Then he gets
personal and she wants to change the conversation, so she moves to theology.
(You can talk a lot of theology without ever getting personal.) She said, “Ah, I see
you are a prophet. Now tell me,” (Mount Gerizim looming up before them) We
worship here.” (A temple is there.) “You a Jew, you say we must worship in
Jerusalem. Who is right?”
Jesus, this Jew from Jerusalem, says to this woman from Samaria, “I’ll tell you
what, the hour is coming and now is when neither here nor there, neither in the
concretization of religious devotion as it came to expression in Samaria, nor the
concretization of religious expression as it came to full flower in Jerusalem –
neither here nor there, but in Spirit, God’s Spirit, the Spirit of the one true God
who was creator in Spirit and in Truth. For such God desires you to worship.”
Those who will worship will worship in Spirit and in Truth.
Jesus is breaking down barriers against Samaritans. Breaking down the barriers
against women. Breaking down the division between Samaritan worship and
Jerusalem worship. It seems to me he was trying to say that all of that
particularization of religion that came through Israel in which God was involved,
dealing with a few in order to reach the many, concentrating on Israel because he
loved the world, all of that particularization now needs to be universalized. We
have got to break out of Gerizim. We have got to break out of Jerusalem. And
ultimately, of course, such talk resulted in his death.
So maybe what I would propose sounds radical, but there’s nothing new in it. It is
what God has had to do throughout history. Smash the idols. Break down the
forms. Smash our structures. Loosen our heads. Open our hearts. Peter, who
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
always suffered from ‘foot in mouth disease,’ hardheaded Peter has a vision on a
housetop about noon time and he sees this sheep coming down with a grand
smorgasbord and he hears the voice, “Rise and eat.”
“Not so Lord. I’ve never touched most of that stuff. Pure kosher diet for me.”
Then there comes a voice from heaven, “Peter, don’t call common and unclean
what I call clean and pure and right.” Then there was a knock on the door and
someone from Cornelius’ house – Cornelius, the Roman officer, a god-eater, a
non-Jew, a Gentile – stands there asking Peter to accompany him. Peter was
compelled by the Spirit to go, but goes apologizing all the way for walking over
the threshold of a Gentile’s house, which flew in the face of everything he had
ever been taught.
Cornelius says, “I’ve had this vision, tell me about Jesus.”
Peter says, “Well, okay. I’ll tell you the story about Jesus.” And as he is telling the
story about Jesus, low and behold the Spirit of God came down (Whoosh) and
these people break out into ecstatic worship. The circumcised with Peter, that is
the good Jewish people who accompanied Peter, were amazed, because it
happened to these Gentiles like it happened to them on the day of Pentecost.
Peter says, “Oh my goodness, this thing is a lot bigger than I ever thought. Maybe
God doesn’t show partiality. Who could withhold water for baptizing these who
have received the Spirit just as we did?” This experience scrambled his whole
theology, shot to pieces all of the religious prejudices and biases. Shot all of the
things that he operated on as the basis of his life.
Tough stuff, the Spirit of God! Dis-comforter. “Nudging discomforter,” that will
never allow us simply to sit in our comfortable ruts absolutizing our partial views,
absolutizing our very human flawed institutions. When will someone stand to
say, “Enough?” When will we hear Jesus saying, “Not through Judaism, not
through Islam, not through Christianity, not through Catholicism, or Orthodoxy
or Protestantism, but those who would worship God must worship in Spirit and
in Truth. The Spirit that transcends is the Spirit that is beyond all human
religions.
There is a wonderful parable that was loved by Carl Jüng, the psychiatrist. It went
something like this: The water of life, wishing to making itself known on the face
of the earth, bubbled up in an artesian well and flowed without effort or limit.
People came to drink of the magic water and were nourished by it since it was so
clean and pure and invigorating. But humankind was not content to leave things
in this endemic state. Gradually they began to fence the well. Charge admission.
Claim ownership of the property around it. Make elaborate laws about who could
come to the well. Put locks on the gates. Soon the well was the property of the
powerful and the elite.
© Grand Valley State University
�Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
The water was angry and offended. It stopped flowing and began to bubble up in
another place. The people who owned the property around the first well were so
engrossed in their power systems and ownership that they did not notice that the
water had vanished. They continued selling the nonexistent water and the people
noticed that the true power was gone, but some dissatisfied people searched with
great courage and found the new artesian well. Soon that well was under the
control of the property owners and the same fate overtook it. The spring took
itself to yet another place. This has been going on since recorded history.
On Trinity Sunday 1993, let me suggest that, way back there a couple of thousand
years ago, there was one who came as a finger, pointing to God, inviting people to
see through him to the one true God. The people got obsessed with the one who
was calling them to look beyond him.
I think I saw this reality happen last night! I was watching television. Did you
ever see those wonderful ads where they have beautiful dogs, full-faced on the
screen? Well, we have a dog. I don’t mention her as much as I used to mention
Midnight. Midnight was emotionally dysfunctional and gave me a lot of sermon
material. (Laughter) Hersey is more normal. I saw this heavy-jowled, droopyeared old basset hound come on the screen. I wanted Hersey to see that dog. So I
said, “Hersey, look, look, look. Look!”
Dumb dog didn’t look. (Laughter) He licked my finger. (Laughter) He missed the
picture because he fastened on the pointer.
My point is this. I don’t believe Jesus came to start a Christian church, a church
established in the Roman Empire, so the empire could identify with this King of
kings and Lord of lords and find its power and identification with this exalted
one. Jesus came and said, “For God’s sake. Not here. Not there, but in Spirit and
Truth.”
God is waiting for the religions to give up in order that God may bless the earth
and bring Shalom. At least that’s how it seems to me.
I told Nancy when I was leaving what I was going to preach this morning. She
said, “Oh, no!” I said, “It’s true!” She said, “It may be true, but you don’t have to
say it.” (Laughter) But I just did.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/229dad42613f9e848325572bcb18b787.mp3
743dc091edc2b9fb67eadde3695637b9
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
Trinity Sunday
Scripture Text
John 4: 21-24, Acts 10:34-35
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1993-06-06
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The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on June 6, 1993 entitled "The Spirit Beyond All Human Religion", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 4: 21-24, Acts 10:34-35.
Community of Faith
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God of Grace
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By What Authority…or Who Says So?
From the series: The Faith Of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Text: Jeremiah 7:1; Mark 11:27-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent IV, March 21, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord… Jeremiah 7:1
The Chief Priest, Scribes, and the Elders came to him and said, “By what authority are you
doing these things?” Mark 11:27-28
Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. And he lived the
way he lived because of what he believed essentially, at his heart, what he
believed about God. These Lenten weeks we are trying to determine the faith of
Jesus. I have suggested that right at the heart of that faith was the conviction that
God was gracious. That God was near. That one could trust God to be gracious
and near, never to let one go. That seems rather harmless. Why in the world
would Jesus get into trouble for believing that? But you see, he acted on that
conviction.
He acted on the conviction that God’s grace embraced all. And so in his table
fellowship he sat down with all sorts of people and became very threatening to
those who had drawn lines and circles to include some and exclude others. He
reached out, touched the leper, and healed the leper, contrary to the whole social
structure of the day, which ostracized the leper and placed the leper outside of
community. He took on his religious establishment in terms of its ritual and its
perfunctory performance. He didn’t fast with his disciples. He didn’t keep the
fast. And in terms of the Sabbath, although he observed Sabbath as a gift of God,
he did not keep it legalistically, so that it became inhumane. He realized that all
religion, all religious ritual, all religious observance ought to be for the
enhancement of our humane existence and not a burden on it. And so in all of
that he was threatening to the religious establishment.
Religion sets down codes and pathways, and observances and performances, and
obligations and demands, and then it says to us, “Fulfill those and all will be
well.” But Jesus said, “No.” In order to be well, do only those things that will
enhance your spiritual life and your sense of the presence of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�By What Authority, or Who Says So?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Finally, after his ministry in Galilee – which was no bucolic backwater as it is so
often pictured but, rather, Galilee of the Gentiles, Galilee where the international
trade routes crisscrossed. Galilee included Nazareth and, within four miles,
Sepphoris, which was the capital of the Galilean territory of Herod Antipas, the
son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas made Sepphoris a great city with theatre
and temple and civic works. It was called the Ornament of Galilee – Jesus, after
carrying on his ministry there, provocative as it was, knew nonetheless, that
finally he had to bring his message to Jerusalem.
In the Synoptic Gospels we have Jesus going to Jerusalem just once. In John’s
Gospel, he seems to go back and forth, observing the feasts there on more than
one occasion. We can’t know which is more correct, but in any case, the Synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, give us the sense that Jesus finally headed to
Jerusalem in order to bring things to a head. Jesus knew that he would have to
confront the religious establishment at its central shrine. It was one thing to carry
on that ministry and to make his claims in Galilee; it was another to come to the
very precincts of the temple and make his claim.
Those who study these things debate as to whether Jesus was finally calling the
religious establishment to account, or whether perhaps even unconsciously Jesus
was calling God to show God’s self as to whether or not his ministry was indeed a
ministry of God’s Spirit. Do you think he ever wondered about that? Is your Jesus
such that he just plowed through his life and the events to the cross without
wavering, or is there room in your Jesus for questioning and self-doubt? I
wonder. Anyone who made the claims that he made, anyone who caused the
waves that he caused, anyone who went to the root of things – that is, was the
radical that he was – I suspect there were those times all alone when he looked
into the heavens, into the starry night, and wondered. Couldn’t it be possible that
he needed to go to Jerusalem to know indeed whether or not he was right?
In any case, he came, and in that movement into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, a
bold prophetic act itself, he comes finally into the temple precincts. We speak of
“cleansing the temple,” but it wasn’t the cleansing of the temple. It was a
prophetic act. It was a symbolic act. It was like all of the Old Testament prophets
who would do some action to underscore their word.
I don’t think that Jesus was against the temple, or against the priesthood, or
against the sacrificial system. I think Jesus was a Jew - every inch of him a Jew, a
believing Jew. I think it was a matter of his understanding of what it meant to be
a Jew. What it meant to be a person in the covenant of God’s grace. What it
means to be a son of Yahweh. But he went into the very center, the very heart,
into the shrine itself. And in this symbolic act - well, it might have been nothing
more than going into the parlor and turning over a table or two and causing a bit
of a stir in order to get some attention, and make his proclamation. He certainly
didn’t empty the whole thing out. Actually what was going on there was quite
legitimate. It was absolutely necessary for the whole temple to operate. Jesus was
© Grand Valley State University
�By What Authority, or Who Says So?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
not attacking that which was happening. He was rather taking his message and
his claim into the heart and into the center of his own tradition, into its central
shrine and saying, “This is all relativized in the name of the God who is beyond all
of our particular expressions of God.”
Jesus was calling for repentance and renewal - a fresh grasp of what God was
calling his people to be. And in so doing, he challenged the whole established
system of things. That’s really quite amazing isn’t it? What he did there was to act
out what he had been doing as we have seen in these past weeks: sitting at table
with all kinds of people, touching the leper, not observing the fast, keeping the
Sabbath as he understood God intended it to be kept – all of those things
threatening to that carefully prescribed way of doing things. The religious system
- he challenged it. What would we think if we who have been imbibed and
nurtured and saturated with Christian faith, we who have been brought from the
baptismal font, taught that Jesus is the only Saviour of the world and Christian
faith is the final and last revelation of God’s truth, and the only means by which
the world might be saved – what would we do if one came in and challenged
those assumptions? If one started to erase the lines that we have drawn and to
tear down the barriers that we have erected, dismantling the structure that we
have built? Overturning those tables was what Jesus was about, concretely and
symbolically.
He went into the temple itself, and through that symbolic, prophetic action said,
“God doesn’t need this temple. God doesn’t need this priesthood. God doesn’t
need these sacrifices. All of these are means, and quite legitimate means when
used properly for the mediation of the presence of God and the grace of God, but
God needs none of them. And to the extent that you absolutize them, to that
extent you falsify them and you go against God.”
Well, as I asked, “What might we say?” Might we not also come to him, this
destabilizer, and raise the obvious question: “By what authority do you do this?
How dare you! Says who?” That was the issue. You see the assumption is – and I
suppose that it is a natural assumption and probably we all share it – the
assumption is that there is some norm, some standard, there is some kind of
absolute by which things are measured and constructed and by which
observances are carried out. Some kind of absolute norm. There was an
assumption that the whole temple apparatus was not only a true means of access
to God, but it was the one absolute. And that, apart from it, God would be quite
disabled and people totally handicapped. Jesus simply called all of that into
question.
So by what authority? He was being questioned by those who were orthodox. To
be orthodox was to have the correct opinion or the correct understanding or
doctrine. There is a truth. It has been spoken. It has been revealed. It can be
articulated. And it must be embraced and followed and obeyed. That is
characteristic of religion in general. The orthodox line is the correct line. It is the
© Grand Valley State University
�By What Authority, or Who Says So?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
true line. In all of the religions that line is absolutized and eternalized. It is not
seen as a historically conditioned expression of faith in God, and experience of
God at one point or another, but as something above time. And now, once it is
articulated, you may not think about it any more. All you do is hear it, accept it,
and pass it on.
Hans Küng, one of my favorite theologians, can no longer teach those who are
preparing for the priesthood for the Roman Church because he has dared to
challenge the orthodox line of the Roman Church. And so, if you take his courses
now, you don’t get credit for them in your preparation for the priesthood.
Jesus was a destabilizer of the orthodoxy of the Judaism of his day, and they
crucified him. All of the Gospel writers connect the temple incident with his
death. It would seem that was the friction point. That was the climactic moment.
That was the time they said, “He’s got to go.” But in order to make it appear as
though they were reasonable, they came to him and said, “By what authority?”
They weren’t serious, and he knew it. So he said, “I’ll answer you if you will
answer me. What about John the Baptist?” Of course, he had them, because they
didn’t want to acknowledge that John was a prophet of God, operating in the
spirit of God. But if they didn’t acknowledge John, the people would be after
them. So they simply declined to answer, and he declined to answer. And that
question remains unanswered, that burning question, “By what authority?”
Do you ever raise that question to me? Do you ever wonder by what authority I
say what I say, and do what I do? What will I say? Well, if I was in the Greek
Orthodox tradition I would say, “tradition,” that whole blessed tradition back to
the first century. If it is in the tradition, there’s no question. The prayers and the
rituals in that tradition are repeated down through the centuries. That tradition
in all of its glory and all of its splendor. If I were in the Roman Catholic tradition I
would say, “the ecclesiastical authority of the Vatican Office of Teaching.” The
Roman Catholic tradition, in order to steel itself against the acids of modernity
relatively recently in terms of Church history, postulated the infallibility of the
Pope, would you believe? And, of course, being poor Protestants in our
fragmented pitiable state, coming out of the great Roman Church in the sixteenth
century, we needed something upon which to base our claim, and so we’ve
invented a paper pope - this inerrant, infallible Word of God.
All religions need authority. All religions have a lust for certitude. All religions do
their best to absolutize, to get it clear in black and white, i’s dotted, t’s crossed, no
loose ends, and no questions allowed. So they said to Jesus, “How dare you? Who
are you? By what authority?” Do you ever say that to me under your breath?
There are congregations all over the world that would not tolerate what you
tolerate. They would walk out - en masse, because they do not come to struggle in
the presence of God for what is true, but to have reinforced what they already
know. Religions are full of answers, and too often unwilling to ask the questions.
© Grand Valley State University
�By What Authority, or Who Says So?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
What would Jesus do if he came today? A world full of papal infallibility, and
Ayatollah’s, and church bureaucrats and pastors like myself, televangelists, all of
us who know too much. Not always right, but always certain. He would do his
very best, I believe, to destabilize. I think he would try to destabilize Jewish
fundamentalism, and the rabbinical office in Jerusalem that is determining who
can be a Jew and who cannot be a Jew, and imposing the rigid interpretations of
orthodoxy on all of those people. I think he would have a field day in the Vatican.
He would suggest that it is long overdue to take away that statement “outside of
the Church, no salvation,” particularly the Roman Catholic Church. And he would
go to the World Council of Churches, but he wouldn’t know to whom to talk. It’s
just kind of a mess. I think he would say to these three great prophetic religions
that all find their basis somehow or other here, he would say, “Until I can
destabilize you, until I can shatter your foundations and tear down your
structure, you will all be absolutizing yourselves, and cursing each other, and
excommunicating each other. You will be bringing your world, if not through
nuclear holocaust, to a religious war, and a kind of terrorism. You see someone
has said that Jesus, in his interpretation of the Torah, his understanding of that
tradition, would have advocated a politics of compassion.
Politics. Politics, the arrangement of things, the whole structure of things. Jesus
came advocating a politics of compassion, the unbrokered presence of God. The
unmediated presence of the grace of God in this world, and in all of creation. He
opposed the whole temple establishment, which was the politics of holiness,
which was a way to separation - an exclusiveness, separation, dividing of peoples.
Religion has been the great divider of people. Jesus was crucified because he tore
down walls and broke down barriers, because he believed that God would gather
all God’s children into one.
Dominic Crossan's recent book The Historical Jesus is a very careful, methodical,
historical search using the very latest methods of historiography. I think it was a
year ago I shared with you, from an interview with Crossan in the Christian
Century, a conversation that he imagines: Jesus says, “Dominic, you’ve done a
fine job. Congratulations.” And Dominic says, “Thank you, Jesus. You liked my
book, and the method is good, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is Dominic. And, thank you for
being honest and not diluting my claims. Now, I suppose, Dominic, now that you
see that, you are willing to join me in my program. And you’ve been captured as
well by my vision.” Dominic, “No, I don’t have the courage, Jesus. But I’ve put it
out there, haven’t I? Is that enough?” “No, Dominic. It’s not enough.”
I could continue that conversation a bit, “So, Jesus, by what authority?” “It’s what
I’ve got to do. It is the Spirit of God. It is the passion of my life. It is all I know. I
must be true to that which the Spirit of God tells me to do.” “Then you die.”
“Then I’ll die.”
Reference:
© Grand Valley State University
�By What Authority, or Who Says So?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
John Dominic Crossan. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.
HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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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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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Lent IV
Series
The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Scripture Text
Jeremiah 7:1, Mark 11:27-28
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 1991
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KII-01_RA-0-19930321
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1993-03-21
Title
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By What Authority...Or Who Says So?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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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/
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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 March 21, 1993 entitled "By What Authority...Or Who Says So?", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jeremiah 7:1, Mark 11:27-28.
God of Grace
Non-exclusive Nature of Religious Authority
Way of Jesus
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2cfea0bb5ee9b86b72936a28ea1365c7
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e2e49263b553aca6f1d110084155c423
PDF Text
Text
God of the Abandoned
From the series: The Faith Of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Text: Mark 1:41
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent II, March 7, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. Mark 1:41
Religion is powerful stuff! Probably the most powerful phenomena in our human
experience. It has the ability to galvanize whole communities of people into
action. It has the power to solidify someone’s purpose and to lead one to heroic
heights or to horrible deaths. Religion is powerful stuff! And it can be absolutely
divine, or it can be utterly demonic.
It may be too early to call, but the disaster at the World Trade Center may finally
be traced to an Islamic Fundamentalist group. And, if that is to be the case, it is
not a reflection on Islam, it is a reflection on religion in its fundamentalist
manifestations, whether Muslim or Christian or Jewish. It was a week ago today
that federal agents were making a move on the citadel in Waco, Texas, only to be
gunned down and subsequently to have it in siege with an army of agents. An
enclave led by a crazy, mad man, a religious leader, a man who claims for his
authority the direct communication of God, who claims to be a son of God, a
messiah, an anointed one. Religion is powerful stuff.
In the events of the week past we see the manifestation of its power in that
negative form. We are a part of society somewhere in the middle, I suppose,
aren’t we? Christ Community, aren’t we rather decent average types? A little
above average, you say. Decent and good people, reflective I suppose of kind of
the mid-section of society at large. So that it is not difficult for us to look at those
acts of violence and to write them off as dehumanizing, as contradicting
everything that we believe that religion ought to do for one. We are able, in that
extreme manifestation, to recognize it as the utilization of this tremendous power
in a demonic way. But religion is a power phenomena, and those of us in the
middle, able to recognize that, might be troubled and threatened by some other
manifestation of religious leadership – for example, that which was exemplified
by Jesus. How do you distinguish a religious leader who says he speaks in the
name of God? How do you know? How do you judge? How do you discriminate?
Not so hard over against the Muslim bomber or the Waco Wacko.
© Grand Valley State University
�God of the Abandoned
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
But how do you think Jesus would do? How do you think Jesus would do if he
were a part of our community this morning? You see he made claims not so
different from the man in Waco. And when you get religious leaders making
radical claims on one side or the other, most of us in the middle grow rather
uneasy, don’t we? I don’t suppose Jesus would last a lot longer in our society
today than he did then, because we can never forget that those whom he
threatened were folks like us. They were that kind of middle slice of society. They
were decent, serious, devout and sincere and, in most cases, led by religious
leaders who had vested interests to be sure, who were interested in keeping the
status quo. But the claims of Jesus were as radical as the claims of David Koresh.
How do you judge? How do you discriminate? I suppose the only way you can do
is like Jesus said, “by the fruits.” When a religious leaders’ actions and calls to
action result in violence, domination, dehumanization, coercion, manipulation,
then we in the middle are quite quick to say, “that’s wrong, that’s an abuse of
religion because it is an abuse of people.” But what about the radical claims of
Jesus on the other side? Well, you say, they resulted in quite the opposite. Jesus
went about doing good. Jesus went about healing. Jesus went about lifting up.
Jesus went about setting free, liberating. Jesus’ whole ministry was a ministry of
love and grace, and the consequence of that was quite opposite from what we
have seen in our own time this past week. Jesus said, “Love your enemies. Pray
for those that despitefully use you.” There was a total contrast between this
contemporary expression of religion and the religion of Jesus.
But we have got to remember that in both cases we are talking about individuals
who made radical claims. Jesus, understood more clearly today perhaps than
ever before, was a Jewish believer, rooted in his own culture, his own society, his
own day, reflective of the value systems and the faith systems and structures of
his people. But the point is that the people in the middle were as upset with Jesus
who came at them from one angle as we are with a David Koresh who comes at us
from another. Because, as I said last week, Jesus didn’t die in bed; he was put to
death. And in order to determine why he was put to death, we are looking during
this Lenten period at the faith of Jesus, at Jesus as a believing man: his
conviction about God and the things that were ultimately important to Jesus.
As we examine the faith of Jesus, we are maintaining during this Lenten Season
that, at its core, it was trust in a gracious God. It was a God whose grace was
inclusive rather than exclusive. The God of Jesus was the God of the abandoned,
the God of the outcast, the God of the outsider. The God of Jesus was the God
with whom there was no outsider. And it is all well and good to sing the praise of
Jesus as long as we recognize that we certainly would have been a part of that
middle slice of society, good decent, serious and sincere folk, led by religious
leaders who wanted nothing more than to keep the structure of things, to keep
society somewhat on an even keel, to keep intact orthodox faith structures and
generally accepted moral standards. It was to keep society in a state of reasonable
wellbeing. We cannot think of the Jewish leaders as being irresponsible, as being
© Grand Valley State University
�God of the Abandoned
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
conspirators, as being demonic. They were simply leaders of people who had their
own vested interests, and their own agenda, but also who had the responsibility
for doing the best they could to make things as good as possible for the society of
their time. Jesus was a threat to that because his conviction, the heart of his faith,
was that even in their decent application of religion, they had turned the heart of
God’s upside down.
The story of the leper is the case in point. Mark places it at the early part of the
Gospel on the preaching tour of Galilee. Leprosy was an inconceivably horrible
disease. The name covered a wide variety of diseases actually. But without real
medical knowledge of its cause, recognizing the defilement, the disfigurement,
society had ruled that the leper must be cast out, must be ostracized, must be
isolated. It was a horrible disease that carried its own pain and suffering to a
degree hardly fathomable. But added to that was the isolation from community,
the declaration of being ceremonially unclean, being unfit for the gathering of the
community of God’s people. In the Middle Ages there was actually a practice in
the Roman Church of leading the leper into the sanctuary and the priest reading
over him the burial service. The man was dead...while he was yet alive!
The little vignette of the leper that we read as our lesson– Bishop Lightfoot, one
of the New Testament scholars of a former generation, says that little story is
more packed with emotion than any other story in the Gospels. For the leper
himself displayed an urgency that caused him to break through the barrier that
was erected against him. He had no right to address anyone. He was to go down
the street with his head bared and his clothes wrinkled, calling out, “Unclean,
unclean,” lest anyone should come within distance of him. But, rather than do
that, the leper breaks through, he comes to Jesus, he kneels before him and the
language would tell us with great urgency says, “If you will make me clean....”
Jesus, the text says, “ was moved with pity” – a more accurate text would say,
“was moved with anger,” – and said, “Be clean!” Moved with anger, anger, I
suppose at the hellishness and the horror of what a human being can suffer.
Anger at the disfigurement of the created intentions of God. Anger at the
community of God’s people that excludes and pushes away. Anger at all of that
that is so wrong. Anger. There is a place for anger. There is a place for anger in
society, in our lives. There are some things that should make us angry, that
should move us to compassion which borders on anger, and anger that is filled
with compassion. And then Jesus, likewise breaking through the booths and the
barriers, the constraints of socially accepted behavior, stretches out his hand and
touches God. Because it was Jesus’ conviction that there is no one whom God has
abandoned, that there is no such thing as an outsider, that it is impossible to be
an outcast in the presence of God. Made folks very nervous. Threatened the
structure of their social life and their doctrinal understanding and their moral
behavior. Jesus turned it all on its head, in the name of God, claiming to be a
spokesperson for God. Claiming to act out what he was convinced was true of
God.
© Grand Valley State University
�God of the Abandoned
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
This weekend we have been engaged in a significant concentration on the HIV
virus and the crisis that AIDS has brought to our world. And it has been a good
weekend, full of information, education, alerting us, making us aware. It is
important. We cannot put our head in the sand. It is also a terrible blight on the
human body, and it is that with which we must all be concerned. It is important
that we get behind every effort at education, and every health care movement to
delimit the destructive power of this plague.
But here in worship, what I must say to you as a Christian congregation is that
whatever we do out there, we must do it out of the conviction that we are called to
follow Jesus in disallowing the possibility of anyone being abandoned anywhere,
for any reason, that we are called to be a community of compassion and care and to reach out and to touch, and to heal in the name of Jesus. The faith of Jesus
found expression in the action of Jesus. And we are called as the disciples of
Jesus to let love issue forth in compassionate ministry to bind up wounds, to
embrace and to hold, to be with the suffering and the dying.
That large middle slice of society of which we are a part is able to look at a David
Koresh and say, “That’s wrong. That man is demonic.” But what will we do with
that one who comes to us from the other angle? Who makes as radical a claim
upon us, and as radical a call to us? Religion is so powerful, but it can also be a
power to block the flow of compassion.
Let me sum it all up in this - which is a bit radical and very dangerous. But let me
suggest it anyway. Never let your theology (your doctrine), nor your morality,
come in the way of following the lead of your heart to be compassionate. Never let
your doctrine, or your morality, block the flow of God’s love through you.
Thereby, you’ll follow Jesus.
Someone said to me yesterday, “Somebody somewhere is preparing a cross for
you.” And I said, “That’s O.K. if it is for genuinely, faithfully following Jesus. Then
I’ll be in good company.”
© 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
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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
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>
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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
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Sound
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Lent II
Series
The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Scripture Text
Mark 1:41
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-0-19930307
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1993-03-07
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God of the Abandoned
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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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
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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 March 7, 1993 entitled "God of the Abandoned", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 1:41.
Community of Compassion
God of Grace
Inclusive
Religious Authority
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/82d546ffe23623e073b28d4d37311cfb.mp3
0b0265d430c02cf3c72d8e1cc0147ea3
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PDF Text
Text
Table Fellowship: A Sign of God’s Nearness
From the series: The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Text: Mark 2:15
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent I, February 28, 1993
Transcription of the spoken sermon
When Jesus was at table in his house, many bad characters . . . were seated with
him.” Mark 2:15
We have entered another Lenten season. The advantage of the celebration of the
Christian year is that it brings us annually through those events, and gives us
opportunity to hear those stories that have shaped us as a community of faith and
as the body of Christ. So we come once again into this Lenten cycle and we begin
our Lenten pilgrimage, following the steps of our Lord, as it leads to his death, his
crucifixion.
But it is not as though we simply revisit the old story. It is not as though it has all
been said before. The stories are the same. The events are the same. But we are
not the same. There is the passion and pilgrimage of Jesus, and then there is the
pilgrimage of each one of us. We come as different people. For one thing we are a
year older than last time. Every time we come, we come as those who have had
new experiences. Some of us have been devastated. Some of us have been
exhilarated, and all of us have gone through the kinds of experiences that have
changed us and will make it such that our angle of vision is a bit different this
time as we come through the old familiar cycle once again. I probably am more
aware of that than you, because I have both the privilege and the responsibility to
prepare for this season with greater intensity than would be expected of any one
of you. It has been my custom over many years now to leave you for an extended
time, prior to this season, in order that I might do some new and in-depth
preparation and come back ready for this Holy Season. As I reflect and prepare I
am conscious of new lenses, new insights rising to the surface.
With the capacity of computers today, if someone were to enter in all of the
themes and texts of my Lenten preaching over 22 years, I am sure that you could
see evidence of such shifts of perspective. As a matter of fact, I am aware of a very
significant shift in my own perspective and understanding going back at least
© Grand Valley State University
�Table Fellowship: Sign of God’s Nearness Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
three years now. Back in 1991 I preached on “The Sign of The Cross, The Way of
Jesus.” Rather than looking back from the perspective of Paul, I began to suggest
we walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Paul’s perspective is very much the perspective
of the Church in its theological tradition. Paul, after Good Friday and after Easter,
steps back, and from the perspective of post-Easter looks at that death and tries
to make sense of it. Essentially, Paul raises the question: What was the meaning
of that death?
And I think for many years that was also the question that occupied me, trying to
make sense of that death, trying to understand that whole complex of ideas that
we call atonement. Was it necessary for Jesus to die so that we might be forgiven?
Those questions were really Paul’s questions. Paul was the first Christian
theologian, I suppose, and Paul’s reflection on Jesus, on crucifixion, on
resurrection were the shapers of our Christian tradition. But of late it seems to
me that the significant question for us is not Paul’s question, What was the
meaning of that death?, but rather, following in Jesus’ footsteps, to attempt to
peer through his lenses and then ask, “Why?” More and more I began to ask
myself, “Why? What was there in Jesus that caused the human community of his
day to crucify him?” That question, it seems to me, is significant for us as we seek
to become the disciples of Jesus. The other question, Paul’s question, is more a
theological question.
So this year again, I continue, probing and asking - but this year investigating the
faith of Jesus. In the series title I suggest that the core of that faith was trust in a
gracious God. I want us to think together, “What did Jesus believe?”
We don’t often think of Jesus as a man of faith, do we? Didn’t he know
everything? Didn’t he have a card up his sleeve? Didn’t he just sort of go through
this thing as a charade? No, I don’t think so. A lot of very exciting New Testament
research coming out today is able to pull back some layers and to see Jesus the
Jew, Jesus the believing Jew. While I have been gone I have read several of these
books. One book was entitled, The Marginal Jew. Another, The Historical Jesus:
The Story of a Mediterranean Peasant Jew. And a third one, Jesus, a Life. It was
exciting to see these studies uncover the concrete context of Jesus’ Jewishness
and his historical allure, to see the contours of Jesus: what he believed, how he
lived, how he acted. It is out of that concrete context that, I believe, we must
come to some kind of understanding of why he was crucified.
We have the Table set here this morning. We do that in remembrance of Jesus,
for on the night in which he was betrayed we believe he gathered with his
intimate disciples, and he broke bread and he poured the cup and gave them that
tangible sign of his presence. But, beyond that, was he not also saying to those
that were his most intimate associates, his friends, “Be with me while I share this
last cup with you. I need you.” He was looking for human support and succor in
this point of crisis in his life. And as a matter of fact, this is not so out of sync with
the whole of his life. If you go through the gospels with this in mind, you will find
© Grand Valley State University
�Table Fellowship: Sign of God’s Nearness Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
that Jesus was always having supper. Simon the Pharisee invited him to supper.
He was often found eating at Mary and Martha’s home in Bethany. He was always
sitting at table with someone. The four Gospels all record the feeding of the five
thousand. There was something about Jesus that in his table fellowship signaled
the nearness of God, and when the Gospel writers remembered the historical
Jesus, the thing that they remembered and continually brought to expression was
the table fellowship of Jesus. Jesus was a party hound.
The last supper was not something out of line with what had been the hallmark of
his life. He sat down with people. In response to some of his critics in Matthew,
the 11th chapter, he just sort of shakes his head and says, “You know, I can’t win
with you people. John the Baptist came, neither eating nor drinking, and they
said he had a demon. He said, ‘I come both eating and drinking and you call me a
wine bibber and a glutton.’” [And because we want to be like Jesus we have Pete
Theune on Team who is our Minister of Gourmet. (Laughter) We are always
eating here, aren’t we?] But for Jesus this was the way he bonded with people.
With whom do you sit at table? You sit at table with those whom you love.
Somebody says, “Let’s have a meal together.” You say, “Not with you.” Or you say,
“Oh, I’d be delighted.” You don’t just eat with anybody. You don’t eat around do
you? (Laughter) Nancy and I have just returned from Florida, and it always
amazes me. You live with people all weeks and months of the year, and then you
discover that you are going to be within fifty miles for ten days down in Florida of
someone who lives down the block. They say, “Oh, let’s get together.” My
goodness. You can’t believe how tough it is to take a vacation! Everybody that is
with me all year wants to “get together” on vacation – you know, “Come and have
a meal.” Well, it’s because that’s the way we experience community and express
friendship. And it was even more so in that culture of which Jesus was a part.
Hospitality was a prime concern. And to sit down and break bread with someone
was a sign of acceptance, of embrace. The Dutch New Testament scholar, Edward
Schillebeex, said that was the very hallmark of Jesus. The presence of God was
mediated by Jesus while he sat at table.
In the text of this morning, Jesus embraced the wrong people. In the listing of the
text in the bulletin from the New English Bible, it says he was sitting at meal with
“bad characters.” Shame on Jesus. Sitting down with “bad characters,” tax
collectors and sinners. He went through the tollbooth and Matthew, (Levi, as he
was called by his fellow Jews) was there, taking toll. Jesus said, “Follow me.” And
Matthew said, “Not me. You don’t know who I am.” Jesus said, “Follow me.”
Matthew got up and followed him. Matthew was a tax collector, ritually unclean,
excluded from the community of God’s people, an outsider, and Jesus said,
“Follow me.” And Matthew couldn’t believe it. When he found that Jesus was
serious, Matthew said, “Let’s have a party.” Matthew invited his friends. And who
were his friends? Other “bad characters.” The religious right came to Jesus’
disciples and said, “What’s he doing eating with bad characters, tax collectors and
sinners?” That’s why in the end they killed him.
© Grand Valley State University
�Table Fellowship: Sign of God’s Nearness Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
In the table fellowship which was the hallmark of Jesus ministry, he gave witness
to what he really believed, and that is that God is gracious and invites all. That
word is very threatening to a religious institution. A religious institution is strong
to the extent that it can create an over-againstness with all of those who are not
“our kind.” Isn’t it remarkable, really, that the Church has duplicated the very
mentality of the Jewish community of Jesus’ day in its exclusion from this table?
It has said, “Oh, you can’t come,” or “If you ask permission, perhaps you can
come,” or “Is everything right in your life so that you might come here?” or
“Whoa, not you!” But not Jesus. Jesus opened his table of fellowship to all
people. And it was that kind of thinking, that kind of behavior that got Jesus
crucified.
I have said on occasion, “Rather than putting a fence around this table, we should
set it up on Savidge Street and offer bread and wine to those passing by on their
way to skiing up north, saying, “Have bread and wine for the journey, and have a
good Sabbath.” What did Jesus believe? Jesus believed in a gracious God, and he
would sit down with anyone in order to communicate in his action, in his
openness and availability, that God’s embrace was wide enough to include them.
He mediated the Presence of God and the offer of salvation in the table
fellowship, which was the characteristic of his whole life and ministry. What did
Jesus believe? That God was trying to get God’s arms around all sorts and
conditions of humankind. They killed him for that. And the Church has been
excluding people ever since, duplicating the very spirit and attitude that rejected
and crucified Jesus.
It really blows my mind when I think about it. What Jesus wants us to sense
when we come here is that God’s arms are around us. If Jesus were here I believe
he would say to you, “You come.” And you would say, “Ah, but Lord.” And he
would say, “You come.” You would protest and say, “But you don’t know,” and he
would say, “Oh, yes I do. You really need to come.” And then when we come,
there is that sense of our belonging to one another. That was the intuition behind
that old tradition of saying, “If you are not right with your brother or sister, you
don’t come here.” Because this is a table of reconciliation. This is a family meal
and you have got to be right with one another.
This whole congregation, in a few moments, will be on its feet and moving and
flowing, and there will be a sense of our coming together because we are one. We
belong to each other. We embrace one another. We support one another. We care
for one another. We are God’s people, God’s children. We are brothers and
sisters. That’s what Jesus demonstrated concretely in his action and behavior. He
broke bread with all people as a sign that there is grace for all.
And he says to you, “You come. You come. This is for you.”
© 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
Lent I
Series
The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God
Scripture Text
Mark 2:15
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19930228
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-02-28
Title
A name given to the resource
Table Fellowship: A Sign of God's Nearness
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
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 28, 1993 entitled "Table Fellowship: A Sign of God's Nearness", as part of the series "The Faith of Jesus: Trust in a Gracious God", on the occasion of Lent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Mark 2:15.
Faith
God of Grace
Inclusive
Lent
Presence of God
Table Fellowship
-
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PDF Text
Text
All is Grace
From the series: Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Text: Psalm 130:3-4; Luke 18:13-14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Pentecost XIII, September 6, 1992
Transcription of the spoken sermon
If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. Psalm 130:3-4
God, be merciful to me, a sinner! I tell you this man went down to his hour justified …
All who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 18:13-14
I had an interesting week this past week. I received a sweatshirt with a cartoon on
the front that had a dog, a Dalmatian, preaching, saying “Bad, Bad, Dog.” The
dogs (Dalmatians) were lined in the pews and underneath it said, “Hell, Fire and
Dalmatians.” (Laughter) I got a good laugh out of that and some warmth as well!
I received some interesting letters, and notes too, very nice ones about last week’s
sermon. Thank you for those. I received a pew card too. It raised a question about
the mercy of God about which I spoke. The question was about the mercy of God
in regard, for example, to a Hitler or to a Saddam Hussein (to update it a little
bit). That question always arises when you talk about mercy in God, or sin in us. I
would have thought perhaps that the paragraph in the bulletin by Carlyle Marney
might have forestalled such a question. If you remember, he said:
Man is the most dangerous and savage of the beasts: His bite is poisonous;
his hand is a club; his foot is a weapon; knives, clubs, spears are projectiles
to bear his hostility. Nothing in nature is so well equipped for hating or
hurting. Confuse him and he may lash out at everything. Crowd him and
he kills, robs, and destroys, for his crime rate increases in proportion to his
crowding. Deprive him and he retaliates. Impoverish him and he burns
villas in the night. Enslave him and he revolts. Pamper him and he may
poison you. Hire him and he may hate both you and the work. Love him
too possessively and he is never weaned. Deny him too early and he never
learns to love. Put him in cities and all his animal nature comes out with
perversions of every good thing. For greed, acquisitiveness, violence were
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
so long his tools for jungle survival, that it is only by the hardest [effort]
that these can be laid aside as weapons of his continued survival.
Now, if we worry about a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein, our first problem is that we
haven’t scratched ourselves - you see? Because, if you scratch yourself a little bit,
you find most of the stuff there that is operative in Saddam Hussein. That’s a
tough word to hear. But it’s true. Did you happen to catch 20 Minutes last week?
They aired one of the most gripping segments I have ever seen. A Jewish
psychiatrist, 50 years after the Holocaust and the horror of that Nazi Death
March of the Jewish people, brought the children of some of Hitler’s henchmen
together to talk for the first time since the end of the war. The children of the Nazi
leaders, people now in their 60s, 70s were gathered to speak of their feelings and
memories – the son, for example, of Martin Boermann and some other persons
whose names I didn’t recognize. It was very moving. Martin Boermann’s son was
I think a lad of 8 or 9, or maybe 14, when he had to come to terms with the fact
that his father was a monster. Well, not a monster, but a human being who could
sing hymns as well as organize the Death Camps. The son of Boermann converted
to the Catholic faith and became a priest. I suppose he is living out his life as an
atonement. There was a woman, I don’t know her name, who was moved to weep
as she spoke of her fear that there might be something in her own genetic makeup that would emerge of the awful monstrousness that emerged in her father.
Here they were 40-50 years later, human beings like you and me, sensitive
human beings, feeling all the weight of that past.
It is a tough word to receive that God has mercy even for the Hitler’s and Saddam
Hussein’s. Just ask Jonah. Saddam Hussein is not the only person who has
persecuted God’s people. There was the King of Nineveh, that gravely wicked city!
Next to Nineveh, New York City is the jolly Big Apple. God saw the wickedness in
Nineveh. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that there are not terrible, evil deeds
perpetrated by the likes of us and by our brothers and sisters. God doesn’t like it.
So sometimes God sends a preacher. He said to Jonah, “Things are rotten in
Nineveh - go preach. Tell them to repent. Tell them that I, the Judge of all the
earth, demand that they turn around in their tracks.”
Nineveh was east. Jonah hopped a boat west. He didn’t want any of that
preaching to Nineveh, because Nineveh was the enemy. The King of Nineveh the
capital of Assyria, the oppressor of Israel, the decimator of the North Kingdom,
the enemy, the adversary on the horizon. Let Nineveh go to hell! Nineveh
conjuring up judgment for itself. “Ah-h-h, I can hardly wait,” says Jonah. God
says, “Go preach to Nineveh.” Jonah says, “No way. I know you. I’ll preach.
They’ll heed. They’ll repent, and you will forgive. No way!”
So off to Tarshish he goes, in the direction of Spain. A little Mediterranean cruise,
if you please. But, of course, the Lord God was not to be outfoxed by the likes of
Jonah, and so God blew (phew) a little bit of wind. The sea turned. A shipwreck
was imminent. All the sailors began to pray to their gods. The captain found
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Jonah down in the hold of the ship asleep, drugged on his own anger and
hostility. He said, “Hey man, get up and pray, if ever you’ve prayed. The situation
is desperate!” And then they cast lots to see who might be the cause of this storm,
and sure enough it fell to Jonah and Jonah said, “Yup, it’s me. It’s me. I am
running from God.” And they said, “What should we do?” And he said, “Toss me
over.” And they did. And the sea calmed - and all was fine. Jonah, going down
into the depths, got swallowed in the belly of a whale. And there, amidst the
digestion juices of the big fish, he had a little time to contemplate the call of God.
Then God, feeling perhaps the prophet had finally gotten the point, God tickled
the belly of the fish and he burped Jonah up on dry land, safe and sound, and
said, “Would you like to go to Nineveh?” (Laughter)
And to Nineveh he went. And he preached. And it was just as he said. They
heeded. They repented. God forgave. And Jonah was so angry. God said, “Do you
do well to be angry, Jonah?” “Yes, I do well! I knew what would happen. You are
so soft. You are just a teddy bear. Just let people give a little inkling that they are
turning to you, and you just open up your arms. Yes. And it makes me very
angry!”
So he went off and found the Pacific Palisades hotel, which overlooked the city.
He thought he would see what was going to happen. Perched on a hillside, he
built himself a little booth for shelter (it was a hot climate). God looked down and
said, “Plant. Grow-big-fast.” The plant towered over the booth with shade. Jonah
was happy as a lark. He thought he was poolside. The next morning God says,
“Worm, eat the plant.” The plant dies. The sun beats down, mercilessly. Jonah
can hardly stand it. God says, “Good morning Jonah. You’re angry. Do you do
well to be angry?” “Yes, I’m angry!” says Jonah. God replies, “Jonah, you’re angry
because a plant that you didn’t plant, didn’t nurture, grew up overnight and
withered in a night. Jonah, how do you think I feel about the hundred and twenty
thousand people in Nineveh, to say nothing of the cattle?”
Now the parable of Jonah was told in the Post Exilic period after Judah came
back from Babylon, came back from its exile experience. It was during this time
that the Pharisaic Movement began - the separated ones who began to gather
their skirts around them in righteousness. They punctiliously followed the law,
the rituals, said their prayers, did everything that they were supposed to do as
recorded in the prayer of the Pharisee of last week’s sermon. The righteous ones.
The good ones. The serious ones. And as that society developed in a kind of
narrow meanness of heart and spirit, somebody told the parable of Jonah. They
told it in order to remind Israel, in its exclusiveness and narrowness, its
nationalism which translated also into a kind of particularism of religion - God is
bigger than that. God has mercy on all people. But Pharisaical particularism had
become a dominant view in Jesus’ day, so it was to that group Jesus had to
constantly defend himself. It was to that group that he had to vindicate the
Gospel he proclaimed, as well as the behavior of his life. It was to the murmurers
and the grumblers that Jesus had to constantly defend the fact that he received
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
all sorts of people. In his home synagogue in Nazareth he gave an inaugural
sermon. They almost killed him because he indicated that the Grace of God was
broader than the limits of Judaism.
Jesus reflects that word of God, as shown in the parable of Jonah. It is in that
context that he tells a story of a man who owned a vineyard, who went at 6 o’clock
in the morning to the labor union office to find who was eligible for the day. He
negotiated a contract with a bunch of workers and sent them out into the field.
Twelve hours a denarius. “Is it a deal?” “It’s a deal.” Such a deal! Full day’s work full day’s pay. Honest wage for honest work. Everything fair and square. At about
9 o’clock in the morning on the way to coffee he saw a few more standing idle
there and he said, “What are you guys doing?” And they said, “Well, we’re
available.” “Well,” he said, “get into the field and I’ll make it right with you.” No
written contract negotiation, no wage established. Just “I’ll do right by you.” At 12
o’clock the same thing. At 3 o’clock the same thing. At about 5 o’clock he was
making his last pass and he saw a few more still standing there and he said,
“Where have you guys been?” They said, “Well, the time before when you came
we were in the ‘john’.” (Laughter) They didn’t say that, but they probably were,
because they really didn’t want to work, they wanted to be able to go home to
their wife and say, “There was no work today.” He said, “Get into the field.”
So they worked for an hour and, when it came time to dole out the pay for the
day, those who worked for an hour got a full day’s wage, and so did those who
came at 3 o’clock, 12 o’clock, 9 o’clock and 6 o’clock. And those who were hired at
6 am and had worked a whole day and had worked under the sweat of the
noontime heat, when they got the same wage as those who came at 5 pm, they
were angry. Wouldn’t you have been angry? Be honest now, wouldn’t you have
been angry? Every normal human instinct in you should rise up and say, “That’s
not fair. That’s not just.” And that’s true. The owner of the vineyard said, “Look.
Did we negotiate? Have I lived up to the contract? “Well, yes but. . .” “Am I not
able to do what I wish with what is mine? Do you begrudge me my generosity?
The anger that you are feeling is the anger that Jonah felt when wicked Nineveh
repented and found Grace.”
What is the image of God in this story of Jesus? Let me suggest this to you, that
God is a promiscuous Lover. Do you know the word promiscuous? I didn’t say are
you? I said do you know the word? (You should have laughed a little bit!)
(Laughter) The word is usually identified with those of somewhat less than moral
scruples. Do you know what the word means? Its root is in Latin. Miscere which
is to mix or mingle. Promiscuous is to mix or mingle indiscriminately. That was
the charge against the vineyard owner. That’s what makes people angry about
God. God does not discriminate. God is indiscriminate. In the bestowal of God’s
gifts, God’s Mercy, God’s Love, God’s Grace flows indiscriminately, mixing and
mingling, with those who have some claim upon it, and those who have no claim
upon it. God does not distinguish in the way we do, between those who are
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
worthy and worthless. Valuable and valueless. Good and evil. Black and white.
With God there aren’t good guys and bad guys. God is promiscuous.
And this made a Jonah angry. It made the religious leaders in Jesus’ day angry.
And it still makes the church today angry.
Listen to an interesting twist on the story told by Jesus. This is a true story
recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud in about the year 350 A.D. Thus it is later than
Jesus’ story, and so probably either working off the same story that perhaps had
general circulation, or maybe an actual twisting of the same story of the vineyard
owner.
A rabbi, aged twenty-eight, died. He died on the day that his son was born. He
was a very worthy rabbi. And so the rabbi’s colleagues gathered for his funeral.
One of his colleagues gave the funeral oration, in which he told this similar story.
Similar but with a twist. He said there was a householder who went out and
engaged laborers for the day. As he observed their labor he saw one man that was
tremendously industrious, competent, capable and fruitful. And after two hours
of work, he went to that man and he said, “Come with me. Let us walk and talk
today.” And so for the rest of the day they carried on conversation, walking and
enjoying one another. It came the end of the day and the time for the pay, and the
man who had walked with the master all day long after working only two hours
got the same pay as those who labored all day. Those who had labored said, “Why
should he get a full day’s pay, he only worked two hours?” And the householder
said, “Because he did more in two hours than the rest of you did all day long.” In
the funeral oration the rabbi said, “God took our young brother early because he
was more fruitful in his short life than many gray-haired scholars who live a
whole lifetime.”
Now do you catch the twist? Do you see how the rabbi turned Jesus’ story on its
head? In Jesus’ story the ones who went to work at 5 o’clock received a full day’s
wage. And there was absolutely no justification for it. It shattered all conception
of reason and justice and fairness. When the rabbi told the story about his
brother, he had said, “Maybe God took him young, but it was because he was so
worthy.”
There are only two options, two worlds described in those two stories. In Jesus’
story, it is a world of promiscuous love, grace and mercy on behalf of a God who
does not seek to justify such promiscuous ways. In the rabbi’s story there is
perfect justification because the reward follows the merit. In the story of Jesus,
God is a God of promiscuous mercy, grace and love who refuses to justify these
ways, who simply says to those who complain, to those who are angry, “Do you
begrudge my generosity?” And if we would be honest we would say, “Yes. Yes,
God we begrudge your generosity. We don’t like that about you, and we don’t like
a world that is run that way.”
© Grand Valley State University
�All is Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Let me twist the knife one more time. Jesus told the story to vindicate the Gospel
over against the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders of the day. But, by the time the
Gospel of Matthew was written, we’ve moved two or three decades down the line,
and those Gospel writers wrote and selected their stories for a reason. What they
wanted to do was not simply tell this story about something that happened back
there. They wanted to speak to the Church to whom they were writing. Now the
story in Matthew’s Gospel is addressed not to the Pharisees; it’s addressed to the
Church.
It’s so easy for us to read our Bibles and say, “Oh those bad Pharisees,” and, “Ah,
give it to them Jesus!” Oh no. Jesus had to tell the Pharisees. Matthew had to tell
the Church. And I have to tell the church. I’ve got to tell you. If you have heard
this story, you don’t like it. If you heard this story you can understand Jonah’s
anger. Because this story says that God does not play fair. And the straighter you
are, the more righteous you are, the more serious you are, the more industrious
you are, the more you will be offended by God’s promiscuity. You simply won’t
take it sitting down.
This matter is so important because it is our image of God that influences our
behavior. It is our image of God that shapes our spirit. And if our image of God is
not the image of Jesus, then we are going to be reflecting something quite foreign
to the Jesus whom we claim to follow.
Shall I make it concrete for you? Let me give a contemporary example. Now I’m
not a politician. I could never make it. But if I were a politician, and if I were a
Republican, I would be extremely nervous about the inroads that the religious
right is making into the Republican Party. Here is a paradox for you. It is
fundamentalist Christian people that are influencing a political party and that are
making a political party mean-spirited and divisive. It is Christian people. If I
were a politician, and if I were a Republican, I would tremble before the prospect
of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan setting the agenda for my party. If I allowed
them to set the agenda, to take over, then the party of Abraham Lincoln would be
no more.
The spirit that they are spewing out is the spirit of Jonah, who gets very angry
with all of the sinners out there and wants to draw nice clean lines between those
who are worthy and those who are not, those who are right and those who are
wrong. They would be terribly offended at a God that could be promiscuously
gracious - across the board.
Now - I’ve said it. Do you do well to be angry?
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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
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Rhem, Richard A.
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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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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XIII
Series
Images of God in the Stories of Jesus
Scripture Text
Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19920906
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1992-09-06
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All is Grace
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 6, 1992 entitled "All is Grace", as part of the series "Images of God in the Stories of Jesus", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Jonah 4:2, 4, 11, Matthew 20: 15-16.
Forgiveness
God of Grace
Jonah
Sin
Unconditional Love
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d85789e244e1d853d811bba7a338c644.mp3
088316d95909dd822e525487a1c985db
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be79f3944321cbedd9552dc892819a98.pdf
1bea416d9e4f826ed30a177be1f8b9df
PDF Text
Text
God, For Whom Humankind is Groping
Text: Acts 17:22-23
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Epiphany III, January 22, 1989
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Men of Athens, I see that in everything that concerns religion you are
uncommonly scrupulous. ... What you worship but do not know - this is what I
now proclaim. Acts 17:22-23
The season is Epiphany, the word is manifestation, the light has dawned. Jesus
said, “I am the Light of the world.” We've just celebrated that the word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and John says, “We beheld His glory, the glory as of
the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth.” Jesus in human flesh. We
look into the face of Jesus and we see into the heart of God, and the great truth of
the season of Epiphany is the fact that the Light has come. The Light has dawned
in our world of darkness; the Light is shining, and the darkness will never
overcome it.
Epiphany, a season of manifestation, and the good news is that, in the face of
Jesus Christ, we have an insight into the very heart of God. That wonderful truth
which we celebrate annually is celebrated in this season as a truth that is to be
shared with the nations, for the Gospel of Jesus Christ that begins with the
Incarnation of the Word concludes with the Resurrection and the Great
Commission which says to the Church, “Go into all the world, to all nations,
preaching the Gospel, telling the story of Jesus.” And Jesus said, “Lo, I am with
you always, even to the end of the age.”
So, the Christian faith has always been a missionary faith. It has always been a
people with a mission. It has always been the calling of the Church to share the
good news because the Church believed that in Jesus Christ, in that particular
and localized revelation of God, there was the manifestation of a worldwide
mission and a universal purpose. In that little, narrow line of Israel's history, and
in that event that is centered in Jesus, the Church always understood that what
God was about was not simply Israel, and not simply events of that localized
community gathered around Jesus, but what God was doing in Israel and in
Jesus was something that had the world in mind, that the purpose of God was to
bring Light to the nations. So, we have that particular story with its universal
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
impact and Epiphany is the season in which we celebrate the fact that Light has
come into the world, and we hear that call to be Light to the nations.
The whole New Testament is really the response of that early Christian
community to its conviction that, in Jesus, the one True God, the Creator of the
whole of Reality, had become clearly focused. Paul is converted, and Paul
becomes the great Apostle to the Gentiles. The major bulk of the New Testament
is simply the story of how Paul took this message of Jesus and the Resurrection
and began to go to the world. In his heart there was a yearning to reach earth's
farthest bounds. He wrote letters to the congregations that he founded,
constituting a large portion of the New Testament, which is the story of the
expansion of this Christian movement flowing out of the wake of the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead.
So, we stand in that great tradition that has found, in the face of Jesus, the heart
of God, the good news that is to be trumpeted to all people everywhere. Today we
find Paul in Athens. Now, if that isn't spectacular! Athens! I've been to Athens.
It's still impressive. The very ruins of Athens speak of another age and another
day. There are few places on earth that can compare with Athens. Maybe Rome,
eventually, and certainly we would say Jerusalem. But, when you say Jerusalem
and Rome and Athens, you've said about all there is to say about Western
civilization. I am parochial in that I don't know much about the great Eastern
civilizations, but I know that Athens was that place where in 500 B.C., in the
Golden Age of Athens, there were philosophic discussions which still today are as
relevant and meaningful as they were then. Someone has said that all of Western
philosophy is but a series of footnotes to the dialogues of Socrates and the
writings of Plato and Aristotle. It was an amazing phenomenon. And there's Paul
in Athens, at the Areopagus, at the very center where the Council met and ruled
the city. There's Paul, 500 years after the Golden Age of Pericles, Plato and
Socrates but, nonetheless, Athens was still the place where they loved to discuss,
to dialogue, to debate.
You don't get a very positive picture from Paul in his account in the 17th chapter
of Acts. With all of the magnificence of the temples and statues and the artwork,
I'm disappointed with Paul, frankly. He looked at it all and got disgusted. I just
wish he could have said, “Wow.” But, he was so fanatically concentrated on Jesus
that he came to that city and he saw it all and he saw it as a manifestation of a
human hunger for God, totally covered with darkness. And so, he went to the
marketplace and up and down the streets and in the synagogue where a few Jews
were gathered, and to everybody to whom he spoke, he spoke of Jesus. Finally
they said, well, why don't you come right up to the Areopagus itself and we'll hear
you out. Athens was always open, looking for a new idea. What a moment. What a
moment. What an audacious person this Paul was! He is at the very center of
civilization, of culture, of education, of enlightenment, and he's not intimidated!
He's not even impressed. He's got something to tell Athens that Athens never
dreamed of.
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
He begins to preach. Thank God he was sensitive in relating positively to his
audience. He commended them. He said, “I see that in things religious you are
uncommonly scrupulous. You folks are serious. Everywhere I see the
manifestations of a religious quest or hunger.” Good preacher that he was, he had
in his introduction something to hook them from which to move on into his
message. He said, “I saw a statue with an inscription to the unknown God.” The
Athenians were uncommonly scrupulous. Just in case there was a god they might
have missed, so that he wouldn't be miffed, they raised a statue to the unknown
god. Paul says (now, this is audacity), “This unknown god whom you worship, I
proclaim!” Wow! Now, there's confidence, there's courage, there's certitude. Do
you get the picture? This is Athens, folks. This is the Areopagus; this is the center
of enlightenment, and here is this Apostle of Jesus daring to stand there and to
say what you are searching for and don't know I proclaim.
He went on to say he was talking about the One true God Who created the
heavens and the earth, the One true God Who couldn't be visualized by
something created with human hands, by human imagination; the God to Whom
we can give nothing, but Who is the giver of all things; the God Who breathes life
into all life, the source of all reality. This God, Paul says, “In whom we live and
move and have our being,” quoting some stoic philosophical thought, “I
proclaim.” Quoting one of their own poets, “We are God's offspring,” he preaches
the God of Jesus. This God Who is the Fountainhead of all Reality, this God I
proclaim to you. This God, Who is responsible for all that is and all life, this God
has now at this critical moment in human history and in the whole cosmic drama,
revealed Himself in the face of Jesus, and this God will now call all peoples to
account. The time of ignorance, the times gone by, God in His forbearance, has
overlooked, but He calls all people now to repent, that is, to change their mind
and change their thinking, to open up to the truth. And He has demonstrated the
certainty of it by raising Jesus from the dead. Paul, starting with the statue to the
unknown god, moving to the Creator of the heavens and earth, ends up preaching
Jesus and the Resurrection.
There was quite a stir. There were those that mocked and laughed, but some
believed. There was a little Christian community that was founded in Athens.
Paul, convinced that the one true and Eternal God had now shown the light of the
revelation of Himself in the face of Jesus, dared to go right into the lion’s den and
proclaim Jesus and the Resurrection. That's really something. It is really a
dramatic moment. I stand in awe of Paul. I would feel my own knees knocking.
But, he did it, and what he did is still our calling to do, because it is our
conviction that the Creator God has given life and light to the world in Jesus
Christ, and this good news needs to be shared with people who are thrashing
about in all sorts of human bondage, darkness, superstition, fear, and guilt.
There is good news to tell; the Light has come. Jesus reflects the very heart of
God, and God is good and God is full of grace, and God has a purpose to redeem
the world. That's why the Church has always been a missionary enterprise,
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
because there is this marvelous message to proclaim. And God knows in our day,
too, this message needs to be proclaimed. Our day of enlightenment, our day of
advanced scientific understanding and amazing technological breakthrough is
still searching for this word.
The moon was out last night, and it shone in all of its brightness. The lake was
absolutely silver, awash with light, the waves dancing in the moonlight. I looked
out of my window and I saw that big silver thing hanging there and it looked like I
could almost touch it. I thought, you know, had I been a part of NASA, I would
have planted my rocket on my bluff and then shot straight for it. How did they
figure out that you can't just go right to the moon? It blows my mind. I'm out of
my realm. It seems like you could just keep steering your rocket right toward that
moon, but I guess it doesn't work that way. This amazing, wonderful, fantastic
world. This age of which we are a part has put a person on the moon. This world
still needs to know about the God revealed in Jesus.
I have made a great discovery that occasionally to the seminary, even to the
seminary, comes a brilliant mind. I had one manifest himself to me, one of my
students whose sermon I will now cite. Preaching on this text, he said,
You may be saying right now, “What does this have to do with Acts 17:1628?” Well, to be honest, it has everything to do with how we read and
understand, and then eventually proclaim, the message of the gospel. We
still operate in a Newtonian world, an ordered world. But our children will
grow up in a Quantum universe, where the underlying principle of reality
is that of randomness and uncertainty.
These principles are not wild, unproven theories. Breakthroughs in
Quantum Physics have led to the development of semi-conductors for your
computer, satellites for your cable system, and of course, the worldwide
nuclear arsenal. What Acts 17:16-28 has to do with this is that Paul's
speech places our view of God where it should be. We are not Stoics, or
Epicureans, but modern Quantum theorists. Our worldview must be
placed within the context of Acts 17. Paul speaks to us now as clearly as he
did to the Athenians of the first century. God must be present in our lives
as a firm reality amidst the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, the
observer-determined reality, and a world teetering on the edge of
destruction.
Our physics has opened up our minds to the awesomeness of creation. In
our theories we can either see a Cosmic Christ, or a cosmic emptiness. Paul
says to the Areopagus, 'God ... is not served by human hands.' God is the
bedrock of our existence. To Bertram Russell and countless other modern
intellectuals, the universe only reveals an UNKNOWN GOD. The secular
physicists search for God in their theories, hoping to find Him conforming
to their preconceived ideas. The Athenians, likewise, sought after God, but
in their endless philosophical debates. We, as modern Athenians, must see
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
God, not as some vague force, but as the fountainhead of all creation, the
necessary being, the one independent being in all of the cosmos. We must,
therefore, listen to Paul's words, not pretending to be first century
Athenians, but remembering that we are twentieth century Quantums....’”
And then he rewrites the text of the morning; he imagines a great seminar
somewhere in some Hilton Hotel with sauna and indoor pool and all, a gathering
of the world's greatest scientists and physicists, and he imagines old Paul coming
on center stage and these are Paul's words to such a twentieth century gathering:
“'Men of science, I perceive that in every way you are very important, very
scientific. For I observed the objects you worship. I saw a telescope, a
particle beam accelerator, a copy of your scriptures, The Scientific
American. I also found a monument to the future and its potential
achievements; it was made of the finest marble and I stood in awe of it.'
The little man coughed and continued, 'Gentlemen and ladies, I will tell
you the future. I will tell you what you seek for, what you hope to find. For,
in this scripture I read of a theory called TOE, or the Theory of Everything.
In it you state that God will be discovered as the source of this TOE. But I
will proclaim to you that this God is here, today, among you. This God
made the world and everything in it, and He needs none of you to explain
or to discover Him. He made the world and set the courses of history in
order that people like yourselves should yearn to seek after Him. You do
seek after Him, but I will end your search. For we are His offspring, and
we must realize that He is not like our theories or our art, but is Spirit. He
is everywhere, but He is also here. His name is Jesus Christ.'
At once there was a loud commotion, scientists were all grumbling at once
and shifting in their chairs. They were saying that God was dead, and that
Jesus was proved to be a hoax in the last AMA Journal, etc. Finally, the
chairperson called for order and forced the man off the stage. They jeered
and mocked the man, but some of the scientists followed him out.”
Well, I sat enthralled with that sermon because that young man, whose name is
F. Scott Petersen, was able to speak Jesus Christ in the context of contemporary
Western civilization with all of the effectiveness of Paul in the Areopagus. Now,
that's what preaching is and that's what the Christian mission is - to say to the
world in all of its wonder and all of its fantastic potential and all of the marvel of
this age of which we are a part, with all of the ingenuity in which we stand in awe,
to the human mind, the imagination - to say to it all, “God is the fountainhead of
Reality and can be known through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
That's only one side of the contemporary scene. The other side is even stranger to
me. The other side is the side of religion. Charles Colson, in his most recent book
Kingdoms in Conflict, writes in the first chapter an imaginary scenario. The
Christian Religious Right walked out of the Republican Convention in 1992
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
because their needs were not being serviced. But in the succeeding years, the gulf
was bridged, the wound was healed and a Christian Right candidate, a marvelous
professor from Baylor University, a good Southern Baptist, was the candidate for
the presidency and was elected. This gentleman no sooner took office than it was
discovered by the CIA that the Likud Party in Israel, the conservative party,
having been unable to find a coalition partner in order to form a government,
finally had found in a radical Right minority group a willingness to join. The
condition of this radical minority party was, however, that the temple of the
Rock, the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim mosque, the most sacred shrine be
bombed and taken over by Israeli troops, commandos specially trained. And this
little party was also training priests who could institute the rituals of the Old
Testament sacrifice because this little group believed that until the Temple
Mount was reclaimed and the temple was rebuilt and the sacrifices restored, the
Messiah wouldn't come!
Well, the scenario, as Colson puts it together, has this president hearing this and
thinking, “This is it! Russia will come from the north; the troops will meet in the
valley of Armageddon, and I will be the president at this cosmic point in human
history.” So, rather than acting like a president should act, and doing what a
president has to do in order to forestall that kind of internal maneuvering within
Israel itself, he waits and waffles until it actually happens. The commandos of this
little minority party blow up the Dome of the Rock and then, of course, the
chapter ends. Colson says, in the footnote, “I've made this up, but the statements
that I've quoted I quote from public figures out of the press.” And I wouldn't even
be so impressed by that opening shot of Colson had I not recently heard Martin
Marty, the person par excellence with his finger on the culture and religious
development and history of America, say recently, that World War III will erupt
and be ignited by the fanaticism of religion in our world today. Colson says not
since the Crusades have religious passions and prejudices posed such a
worldwide threat. If not through a religious zealot or confused idealist whose
finger is on the nuclear trigger, then certainly by destroying the tolerance and
trust essential for maintaining peace and concord among people.
Friends, this world is a world that can land a person on the moon, and has a
space vehicle going out to Mars. This world in which we live is a world so
fantastic that our forefathers would not have believed it. And it is a world that is
so screwed up spiritually, that it is falling for every kind of superstitious myth and
cult, and even satanic worship. This is a world where the great religions in a
worldwide resurgence are standing toe to toe and where there is a fanaticism that
has groups in all religions ready to go to war, whether Christian Fundamentalists,
or Islam Fundamentalists, or some other.
This world in which we live is a world that needs to know that the one God Whom
all people are searching for and groping after has indeed come to us in Jesus
Christ. Does it matter whether we tell the story? Does it matter whether or not we
© Grand Valley State University
�God, for Whom Humankind is Groping
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
share the good news? Is there anything incumbent upon us who stand in the
great tradition of Light and Life? I would say there is. The world is at stake.
We believe that, in the face of Jesus, we've seen into the heart of God, and we
believe it's true. It doesn't mean that we believe that God has no concern for all of
the rest of humankind. It doesn't mean that we should be so narrow and closed
and dogmatic that we do not think that God has made God's self-known beyond
the limits of Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that we cannot have our own insights
deepened and our viewpoint broadened as we enter into genuine dialogue and
encounter with those who are also seriously groping after God in their own way.
It doesn't mean that we will not be willing to enter into genuine dialogue, which
means a willingness to change and to adopt and to adapt and to deepen and to
broaden; all of that is true. But, it does mean that we have something very
important to bring to the party. We have Jesus in whom we believe God has most
fully revealed God's self. So, I wish somehow we could reclaim the fire and the
passion and the fervency, the urgency and the certainty, the assurance of Paul in
Athens.
It is a different world, but that same kind of rootedness in Jesus we have. In
confidence, not fear; with openness, not defensiveness, we can bring Jesus, the
Light of the World, to the discussion, perhaps ourselves coming to see, in the
dialogue, dimensions of Jesus we've never even seen before, therefore, being
transformed ourselves, we will but share with this wonderful, crazy world, our
conviction that God, the source of all, is the goal of all, and that in Jesus Christ
our Lord, God is about reconciling all things to God's self.
What a message!
What a task!
© 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
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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
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
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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
Epiphany III
Scripture Text
Acts 17:22-23
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-0-19890122
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1989-01-22
Title
A name given to the resource
God, For Whom Humankind is Groping
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
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 January 22, 1989 entitled "God, For Whom Humankind is Groping", on the occasion of Epiphany III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Acts 17:22-23.
Apostle Paul
Epiphany
God of Grace
Interfaith
Nature of God
Religious Quest
Revelation
-
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PDF Text
Text
One Covenant – One World in Christ
From the series: The One Covenant of Grace – The Salvation of the World
Text: Genesis 17:7; Ephesians 1:1-10; 4: 4-6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
World Wide Communion Sunday, October 4, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The story of human salvation begins in the barren womb of a ninety-year-old
woman. Hidden in the closing paragraph of Genesis 11 just prior to the call of
Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 is the seemingly insignificant piece of trivia. There we
read, "Sarai was barren; she had no child." The biblical writer did not by accident
add that little piece of information. The barrenness of Sarah's womb was an
eloquent sign of the barrenness of the human situation - a situation of alienation,
guilt, fear and hopelessness - indeed, a situation whose remedy alone could be
the intervention of God, Creator, new to become Redeemer, Saviour. Now the
story of salvation begins, a story of grace embracing the aged couple, entering
into a covenant relationship with Abraham to whom would be born the miracle
child, Isaac, the gift of the God Who promised, "Your descendants shall be as
numerous as the stars in the sky."
Today around the world Christians will gather around the Table of our Lord
witnessing to their faith in God through Jesus Christ and, whether in the
awesome beauty of St. Peter's in Rome or a gathering in someone's family room,
they will be witnessing to their unity in Christ and will thereby be counted as
Abraham's seed.
As we celebrate Holy Communion with the whole Church throughout the world, I
want to introduce a theme we will be discussing for the next few weeks - the
theme of "The One Covenant of Grace - The Salvation of the World." It is my
purpose to unfold the historical track of God's saving action – from the
inauguration of the Covenant of Grace with Abraham through the history of
Israel, the event of Jesus Christ to the continuation of that Covenant in the
Christian Church – indeed, to the present experience which is ours as Christ
Community.
There is only one story of the Bible; it is the story of the gracious God working
within the stream of history for the salvation of the human family and the
realization of His eternal plan and purpose in the realization of God's Kingdom.
© Grand Valley State University
�One Covenant – One World in Christ
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Paul witnessed to that eternal plan and purpose in that beautiful statement of
God's cosmic purpose in Ephesians 1:9-10. Paul was amazed that he should have
been given insight into God's hidden purpose now revealed in Jesus Christ. What
was God's long-held secret?
The secret was a purpose which He formed in His own mind before time began so
that the periods of time should be controlled and administered until they reached
their full development, a development in which all things, in heaven and upon
earth, are gathered into one in Jesus Christ.
That is an amazing claim; there one has a statement of eternal dimension and
cosmic scope. Paul understood in the revelation given him by Jesus Christ what
God intended eternally and what God was working out historically - a salvation of
cosmic scope.
How was that eternal plan being effected within history? The answer is the one
Covenant of Grace. Beginning in barrenness, God called Abraham to inaugurate
the process. Now God would choose one to reach many; now God would make a
particular choice with a universal intent. God gave Himself to Abraham in a
binding covenantal relationship to which God pledged His faithfulness and
steadfastness. The formal covenant statement appears in Genesis 17:7.
I will fulfill my covenant between myself and you and your descendants
after you, generation after generation, an everlasting covenant, to be
your God, yours and your descendants’ after you.
That was God's strategy: Covenant relationship, a Covenant of Grace. God began
small; one man, one woman, one family. From Abraham and Sarah came Isaac
and then Jacob and then the twelve sons of Jacob whose name was changed to
Israel. The twelve sons became the twelve tribes, the nation, and from the people
of Israel issued Jesus in the wake of whose resurrection and ascension the Spirit
of Jesus was given in full measure creating the Church. It is one line, the
unfolding of the one Covenant of Grace.
Covenant is a rich biblical word. The Hebrew word is berith. The Greek word
used to translate it in the Greek Old Testament translation is diatheke. There is a
long, much debated discussion on the origin and meaning of these terms, but it is
clear that the meaning of berith must be determined by its scriptural usage. That
being the case, we are faced with the fact that the Greek and English translations
do not in themselves adequately convey the Hebrew usage. Thus to translate
berith by covenant is not enough, for this is no ordinary human agreement or
contract involving mutuality and reciprocity. As John Milton writes in God’s
Covenant of Blessing:
The religious berith is in one sense unilateral: it is God alone who initiates
the covenant always. It is intended to become a mutual agreement, and
© Grand Valley State University
�One Covenant – One World in Christ
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
does so become, by the response of man to it; but in its origin the berith is
unilateral: it is God's covenant with man. (p. 5)
He adds,
The direction of the covenant is from God to man. The covenant originates
with Him; He speaks the words: He lays down the conditions; it is His
covenant, which takes on the aspect of mutuality when the people respond
by accepting the terms and by promising to be obedient. (p. 6)
God takes the initiative; the Covenant is God's binding of Himself to the human
person, the human family. It is not a necessary arrangement; it is a gracious
arrangement initiated, ratified and guaranteed by the faithfulness of God. The
human person is called to respond, to trust, to obey, to act faithfully toward the
Covenant God. But God is the ground and guarantor of the relationship.
That, then, is God's strategy - to enter into a gracious, personal relationship with
a person, a family, a nation, a people, having thereby an instrument by which to
reach the whole world.
That God makes a covenant with men, whether it be with an individual or
with a community of individuals, is the same as to say that he acts in
relation to them with gracious purpose; that he seeks fellowship with them
and offers fellowship to them; and not least, that he calls them into a holy
partnership of service in relation to other men. The covenant is a way of
interpreting history which recognizes the presence and activity of God in
the historical process; which believes that God has set a goal for human
history, and has given to men whom he has called a divine mission
relevant to that goal ... God reveals himself in the making and keeping of
covenant; the covenant which from the beginning had as its gracious
purpose and goal the salvation of the world, a redeemed humanity, a
people for God's own possession, a holy nation, (p. 15F)
Thus, in the strategy of calling a particular people, God has always had as a goal
the salvation of the whole world.
Today the Christian Church which through Jesus Christ (Abraham's Seed) has
entered into the Covenant Community witnesses to its recognition that it is
essentially one body. Paul had no doubt about the oneness of the Church and in
his Ephesian letter gives a moving call to
Spare no effort to make fast with bonds of peace the unity which the
Spirit gives.
For, he goes on,
© Grand Valley State University
�One Covenant – One World in Christ
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
There is one body and one Spirit, as there is also one hope held out in
God’s call to you; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father
of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:3-6)
From the one gracious God issues the one covenant of grace, which creates one
redeemed people, called to witness to the whole world until God's eternal purpose
of salvation is realized.
Let me set four fundamental biblical words before you as you gather before this
Table of our one Lord.
The first is predestination. How many specters does not that heavily freighted
word conjure up! But, reflect for a moment; is not that precisely what Paul is
pointing to in Ephesians 1:9-10?
The secret was a purpose which he formed in his own mind before time
began…in which all things, in heaven and upon earth, are gathered into
one in Jesus Christ.
That is a "Wow!" statement. Predestination points to God's eternal intention to
effect salvation on a cosmic scale - a renewed heaven, a renewed earth, a renewed
humanity.
The second word is election. That word, too, has been so disastrously abused, the
source of religious pride and arrogant self-righteousness. But to what does it
refer? To God's choice and call of a family, a nation, a people to be His special
community for the bringing of light and salvation to all people. Election is not the
choice of some to the exclusion of the rest, but the choice of some on behalf of the
rest.
The third word is covenant. That word speaks of that gracious, personal relationship to which God gives Himself, in which He binds Himself to a people,
whom He has called, chosen, to mediate His grace to the world; a people He
loves, nurtures and faithfully preserves, having redeemed them and
commissioned them to be His special people through which to reach the world.
The fourth word is mission. The eternal plan and purpose of God - God's predecision to be gracious, to redeem the world; God's election of a people to be the
instrument of that gracious salvation; God's initiation of a binding covenant
relationship with that chosen people - all of that has the end and goal in mind
that the world might be saved. The salvation of the world is God's intention and
the election of a Covenant Community is for the purpose of mission to the world.
Again - God chooses some, not to the exclusion of the rest, but on behalf of the
rest.
© Grand Valley State University
�One Covenant – One World in Christ
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Before us is set the Table of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the Table are bread and
wine, signs of his body and blood, broken and poured out for the life of the world.
In the bread and wine we are reminded,
In Eternity God determined to create and redeem the world; in the course
of history He called a people upon whom from eternity He had set His
love. With that people, He entered into a binding relationship initiated by
Himself - a covenant relationship - in order that that people might be the
means by which light and salvation will be brought to the world.
How ought we respond to such an amazing scenario?
Would it not be the only appropriate response to stand before God with
wonder and awe? Should not being chosen fill us with amazement,
humility and gratitude? And particularly - must we not be in solidarity
with all sisters and brothers of the faith - for there is one Body, one Spirit,
one hope, one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one God and Father of us all and in solidarity with the whole world which seeing our unity, will see a
sign of the unity of the Father and the Son - the love of God for the whole
world? None other than Jesus prayed for such unity that the world may
know...
... may they all be one. ... that the world may believe ...
Then the, world will learn that thou didst send me, that thou didst
love them... John 17:20-23
One day the whole world will know. The universal scope evident with the initial
giving of the Covenant to Abraham will be realized.
I heard a loud voice proclaiming from the theme: “Now at last God has
his dwelling among men! He will dwell among them and they shall be his
people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear
from their eyes; there shall be an end to death, and to mourning and
crying and pain; for the old order has passed away! Revelation 21:3-4
Amen and 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
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
World Wide Communion
Pentecost XVIII
Series
One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World
Scripture Text
Genesis 17:7, Ephesians 1:9-10, 4:4-6
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-0-19871004
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-10-04
Title
A name given to the resource
One Covenant - One World In Christ
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
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 4, 1987 entitled "One Covenant - One World In Christ", as part of the series "One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World", on the occasion of World Wide Communion, Pentecost XVIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 17:7, Ephesians 1:9-10, 4:4-6.
Covenant
God of Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Salvation of all
-
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e59d94c1a8e350f873d0cedaf66e4058
PDF Text
Text
Jacob: The Conquest of a Wheeler-Dealer
From the sermon series: No Stained Glass Saints
Text: Genesis 32: 24, 28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 12, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him… Your name shall
no longer be Jacob, but Israel… Genesis 32: 24, 28
The biblical story is not about what extraordinary people can do to effect the
purposes of God, but rather, what God can do through very ordinary people in the
establishing of His Kingdom. And in the Church, I am sure, the sin of preachers
and Sunday School teachers is to get the focus all wrong, to lift up biblical
characters and to make of them heroes and heroines, to put them in stained glass,
to remove them far from ordinary folk like us, to make them exemplary models to
strive after and to emulate, thereby robbing us of the common humanity that we
share with the people that God has used through the centuries in the unveiling of
the biblical drama.
The Bible is not about saints in stained glass. It's about ordinary people, just like
you and me, people with clay feet exposed, people who could be described as
mixed bags, people with strengths and weaknesses, with good points and bad
points, people who perform nobly on occasion and fail miserably the next
moment - unsteady people. The story is not about faithful people who were able
to effect the purposes of God, but a faithful God Who is able to use unsteady
people for the realization of His Kingdom purposes.
So, for a few weeks we're going to look at some of these biblical characters who
have been put in stained glass and removed far from us, not really to shatter their
image, but simply to be honest with the biblical narratives before preachers
cleaned them up. Biblical characters have been set before us for so long as those
exemplary persons whom we ought to emulate, and we in our own experience
have felt so far removed from the faith of Abraham, the devotion of Peter and
Paul, the loving commitment of a David, that we've written ourselves off as
ordinary people as though there was a day when spiritual giants walked the earth,
© Grand Valley State University
�Jacob: The Conquest of a Wheeler-Dealer
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
but now is the time for ordinary peasants to make their way as best they can, as
though there was a day when God did spectacular things, when He was really
here, using great spirits, noble people for the effecting of His purpose. And now
it's just business as usual with ordinary folk like you and me to whom God really
wouldn't give a second look, or be able to do some great thing.
This series of messages is not intended to debunk the saints, but to cause us to
see that the biblical story is not really about extraordinary individuals far
removed from us through whom God works, but rather about ordinary people
through whom an extraordinary God can effect great things, because the Bible is
not our story, but His story. And the Bible is a story, not about the great
achievements of a few saints, but the marvelous grace of a God Who will never
give up, in spite of the material with which He has to work. The likes of Abraham
and Jacob and David and Peter and Paul and Mary and, well, John and Scott and
Susan and Nancy, and all the rest here this morning – the likes of us – that's what
the Bible story is made of, and I want us to get that focus right. For when we get
that focus wrong, we make it a human drama. Then we sense our own lack and
our own falling short, and we have pressure, that sense of oughtness, a legalism
and moralism that distort the biblical drama.
The wrong focus breeds pride, because if I am successful, I can congratulate
myself for having been so faithful, so steady, so committed, so devoted, having
such great faith. And if I fail, I despair of God's mercy, because then I write
myself off thinking, if only I had more faith, if only I could pray with greater
devotion, if only I could serve with deeper commitment, if only I were a better
person, then maybe God would heed my prayer, then maybe He would heal my
ill, then maybe He would rein in my child, if only I were better, if only I were like
so and so. On the one hand, there's pride: "Look what I have accomplished. Look
how God has blessed me." On the other hand there is despair: "Who am I? What
good am I? Obviously, God wouldn't do anything with the likes of me. Obviously,
my prayers go nowhere. Obviously, I might as well give up on myself, hope to get
in by the skin of my teeth, because I'm just an ordinary peasant, full of ambiguity,
light and darkness, good and evil."
Both the pride and the despair are out of place, because the point is not what we
can accomplish in the Kingdom of God for the purposes of God. The biblical story
is about what God does through us, around us, in spite of us – all to His glory and
according to His purposes of Grace, which He established before the foundations
of the world. The Bible is God's Story, and we and Abraham and Jacob and David
and Peter and Paul and Mary and Rahab and Ruth are just all the minor
characters caught up in this great drama that is God's story. So, let's look at one
of these biblical characters who can teach us a lesson or two, to encourage us in
our own pilgrimage of faith - Jacob.
Jacob is the story of God's conquest of a wheeler-dealer. I might have entitled it,
"The Con Artist of the Covenant." Jacob is about as unsavory as the mess of
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pottage he cooked up was savory. Jacob is the kind of guy you hope never moves
next door. He's the kind of guy you hope never comes home dating your
daughter. He's the kind of guy who puts you on your guard, turns you off and
raises suspicions that he can never be trusted. Jacob is one of the Patriarchs! We
pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob, whose name was changed to
Israel, who gave his name to that Old Testament people. Jacob – what a person
on whom to found a nation that was supposed to be the special instrument in the
hand of God for the effecting of His purposes. Think about it for a moment. Think
about how ridiculous it is - Jacob. Who would have chosen Jacob? Who would
have trusted Jacob with anything? Who would even have wanted to be identified
with one like Jacob? If I were God, I could have made a better choice than that.
Give me somebody who is trustworthy, somebody who is stable, someone who
has unquestioned integrity and tested authenticity. If I'm going to identify my
cause with somebody, I want that person to be of sterling character - like Peter!
Or John. Certainly not Jacob. I don't really want him on my team. For one thing,
he'll be after my job! And for another thing, he'll probably be draining off your
capital gains. No, Lord, You could do a lot better than Jacob.
What are You doing with Jacob, when there's Esau! Now, who wouldn't like
Esau? They are twins, and already in the beginning there is the clue that this is
not an ordinary story. Rebecca had a very difficult pregnancy. That's how rotten
Jacob is. He began kicking before he was born. They called him Jacob, which
meant "heel," which is maybe because, so the story goes, he reached out and got
Esau's heel, as Esau was being born ahead of him. But it's also possible in that
translation that he was named heel because he was a kicker and a screamer. And
the word has to do with heel; maybe we associate heel with deceiver, supplanter,
because this guy was a con-artist, a conniver, a manipulator, a liar and a cheat.
Rebecca said, "I don't know if I'm going to make nine months or not. I'm going to
die!" And there was an announcement, a prophecy.
Two nations in your womb, two peoples, going their own ways from
birth! One shall be stronger than the other; the older shall be servant to
the younger.
Where did it come from? Who heard it? There was something strange about those
two children already in the womb, and what is the biblical story pointing to? Isn't
it pointing to the fact that when it comes to the purposes of God, things are not
left to chance or to accident, but that in and through the things that happen in the
natural course of events there is already a word spoken by God that reflects an
eternal purpose of God that God is about something in this world and history.
I don't know why Jacob was chosen. Frankly, I'd rather have Esau in my tent. But
just as in the case of Isaac, the child of promise who came to Abraham and to
Sarah who was barren, by the promise of God so here it is repeated. Rebecca was
barren. Why? Because, just in case the point was missed in the previous
generation, God will establish it again in the third generation that there is to be
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an heir, the chosen one who will carry on this purpose of God spoken to
Abraham. It will not be through fleshly desire or Isaac and Rebecca, but because
God said, "I will open the womb. I will give a child of promise." That is pretty
heavy, but that is what this story is telling us.
Let's follow Jacob through for a moment. Next scene, Momma's boy close to the
tent, is cooking up a bowl of soup. Esau comes in from the field, hungry. The
firstborn, the rightful heir to the rights of the firstborn, says, "Give me a bowl of
soup." Jacob says, "You like the soup? Smells good, eh? You want a bowl of soul,
Esau? Give me your birthright." Birthright. Spiritual blessing. Intangible goods.
Something for the future. Esau says, "Man, if I don't get that bowl of soup, I won't
have a future. Give me a bowl of soup and you can have the birthright."
Well, not too commendatory, Esau, but I can identify with that. How many of us
haven't preferred a present, tangible gift rather than a future spiritual blessing?
And then, having moved into position at that point, having taken advantage of a
brother in his vulnerability, we get that most dastardly of all scenes where he
tricks his old, blind father and robs Esau of the blessing. Now, if this is a good,
moralistic sermon – I mean a good, moralistic story like most sermons and most
Sunday School lessons – then we would say, "Jacob did this and now Esau's
angry and Rebecca's worried for Jacob's life, and so she is going to send him away
and now he's going to get his. Be sure your sins will find you out. The way of the
transgressor is hard." Right?
Wrong! Jacob goes off into the wilderness, fleeing for his life. He lies down in the
wilderness alone, guilty, afraid, and has a nightmare. Right?
Wrong! He falls asleep like a baby and sees a ladder with angels going up and
down and Almighty God saying, "You're my boy. I love you, and I'm going to be
with you and I'm going to protect you and I'm going to bring you home."
Just exactly what we said, isn't it? Be sure your sins will find you out. The way of
the transgressor is hard. This liar, cheat and deceiver goes off in the wilderness
with a whole burden of guilt, enough to spread over the whole world, and what
happens? He gets a marvelous revelation of a gracious God.
Well, the Bible story could make it easier for us, couldn't it? I could say at this
point, "Go thou and do likewise," but that wouldn't exactly be the point, would it?
But, listen to this point. It's not a story about human behavior and human
conduct. The Bible's not a story about, "Be good and you will be blessed, and be
bad and you will suffer." The story of the Bible is not about the little moralisms
and legalisms that either make us proud of our righteousness or scared of our
unrighteousness. The story is about God Who does something in the world
through us, around us, in spite of us, according to His own purpose and His own
good pleasure and His own sovereign Grace.
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Jacob is no stained glass saint. He's a miserable and abominable cheat and
deceiver, the last person on earth who ought to see a revelation like that, which
doesn't point to the fickleness of God, but to the grace of God Who says, "I chose
you and I've got ahold of you and I'm going to stick with you and I'll protect you
and I will effect everything I have said that I will effect through you because I am
God."
I like that kind of God, really. He blows my mind. He shatters all of our little
pedestrian categories. He's a God Who is about something in this world that is
greater than any one of us and transcends all of our strengths and all of our
weaknesses, Who uses us in spite of ourselves, in our highs and in our lows, Who
never gives us reason to be proud. "Let him that boasteth, boast in the Lord,"
said Paul. After he had said that God had called the things that are despised, the
things that are not, in order to effect His purposes, he concluded, "Let him that
boasts, boast of the Lord." No room for human pride, and no room for human
despair, for there is no one, no one so wicked and raunchy, no one so meanspirited but what he can be the instrument of the Eternal God for the effecting of
His purposes for the glory of His name.
Now, that reduces us to where we ought to be reduced - to a position of humility
before the Sovereign God Who was doing something in this world. Blessed be His
name, and He'll do it with the likes of us - you and me, mixed bags that we are,
filled with ambiguity, bubbling with enthusiasm, motivated by high ideals, falling
flat on our faces, fickle and feeble, dedicated one moment, dry as a bone the next,
unsteady, unfaithful, flawed and fallible. Blessed be His name, Who takes clay
like this and does His thing!
Well, Jacob went to Laban, got into real conflict there with his father-in-law. He
met his match. They really drained all their mutual energy trying to outfox one
another. And Laban was pretty good at it, but God was with Jacob, and when they
finally parted, Jacob took Laban's daughters, his grandchildren, and his flocks
and fled, Laban coming after him. God said to Laban, "Don't you touch him." And
when they finally did part, after Laban had caught up with him, they parted with
what I once thought was a nice benediction.
Did any of you ever go to Junior Christian Endeavor? That was a youth
organization a hundred years ago when I was young. We closed the meetings
every week with a Mizpah Benediction. "The Lord watch between me and thee,
while we are absent one from another." I thought that was so marvelous. Isn't
that marvelous? We could all say it, couldn't we? Every Sunday. "The Lord watch
between me and thee, while we are absent, one from another." I always had a
warm, cozy feeling about that benediction, but you know what it really meant?
That was what Laban proposed to Jacob. He said, "The Lord watch between me
and thee while we are absent one from the other because you've ripped me off
time and time again, and I don't want you to come near me again!" That's Jacob.
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Finally, he comes to the great crisis in his life. He struggles all night alone the day
before he's going to meet Esau and something good happened there. If you go
home and read that story, you will find a real prayer of a man who was afraid and
vulnerable. I think God was eventually getting through to Jacob. I think he was
finally at a point where he knew that he couldn't always connive his way through
all of his life, and he offered a beautiful prayer and made all the preparations he
could, and then, before he met Esau, he was encountered by a man who wrestled
with him all the night. It's a very mysterious story. We must assume that it was a
wrestling with God, not that God is a man or that God is a physical being, but
however that story is to be conceived, it is obviously the point at which Jacob
came to terms with the Sovereign God Who wrestled with him and allowed him to
hold on to Him all night long, but when push came to shove, with a touch,
crippled him. And old Jacob went off into the rising sun that morning limping,
and I think that God finally conquered that wheeler-dealer. Although, even after
he meets Esau and Esau beautifully forgives him, embraces him, kisses him,
invites him to come along, I'm still not sure Jacob was playing it straight. He said,
"Ah, no, Esau, look, I've got a lot of animals that can only move along slowly, and
I've got these little children and you go ahead, Esau. Thanks a lot, but go ahead."
("Get out of here, Esau. Leave me alone!") So, I'm not sure, even at the end...
But you see, wouldn't it be nice if I could say, "Ah, now finally God had His way
with Jacob and here's Jacob, the saint. Put him back into stained glass." And then
I've got to say to you, "It's not that nice."
God conquered him. God did His thing with him. Jacob trusted Him. Jacob loved
Him. And Jacob never did amount to much to his dying day. He's no hero,
friends, just a person God used.
I wonder why God sometimes - seems like all the time - chooses the weak and
despised things of this world, the things that are not, to confound the things that
are. Maybe it is so that finally we will learn the lesson that all is of Grace, all is of
God, all is gift. And all we can do is, in the ambiguity of our own muddy way, cast
ourselves on His mercy and wait on the Lord.
Let us pray.
Father, we might ordinarily, in ordinary days and in ordinary church services,
and in ordinary messages, conclude by saying, "What a man was Jacob! Help us
to be like him." But today we've seen another face of Jacob who saw Your face,
and so we can only say, "Lord, we are like him. We're schemers and connivers
and manipulators and we're cheats. We fudge the truth; we hedge the facts. We
take things into our own hands, we try to manage and control, and we try to put
the best face on everything that we do and the persons that we are, and
underneath, we're Jacob all the way." And so, we don't pray, "Make us like him."
We acknowledge that we are. We pray, "Reveal Yourself to us as You did to him.
Say to us, 'I will be with you. I will protect you. I will bring you home.'" And then,
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Father, from lisping lips and divided lives, we will praise you with all we have.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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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
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Rhem, Richard A.
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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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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost XXI
Series
No Stained Glass Saints
Scripture Text
Genesis 32:24, 28
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1986-10-12
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Jacob: The Conquest of a Wheeler-Dealer
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 12, 1986 entitled "Jacob: The Conquest of a Wheeler-Dealer", as part of the series "No Stained Glass Saints", on the occasion of Pentecost XXI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 32:24, 28.
Covenant
God of Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Jacob
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be92ddecca1338aac5c36515f5f8451c.mp3
890a7c5e7468855c96dd3f700725cee1
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/665725d9767c3a24c17dc00713db8d87.pdf
8c86ed73390ce18bb51597bdbdddeb14
PDF Text
Text
Abraham – Shaky Faith in a Faithful God
From the sermon series: No Stained Glass Saints
Text: Romans 4:17
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 5, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
…this promise, then, was valid before God, the God in whom he put his faith, the
God Who makes the dead live… Romans 4:17
I inaugurate a series of messages entitled, "No Stained Glass Saints," beginning in
this message with Abraham. The purpose of this series is to march before us
biblical characters through whom God has effected His purposes of salvation and
the establishment of His Kingdom in order that we might understand that God's
Kingdom is a witness to what God can do with people who respond in faith to
Him – and not what human individuals can accomplish through their piety,
righteousness or goodness.
My purpose in this series in not the debunking of biblical heroes. There is enough
debunking of leaders and celebrities in our society. It has become a common
occurrence for everyone who has known anyone who was anybody to rush into
print with all the petty and lurid details of the lives of public figures, reducing
them to the level of the common, the mediocre.
It is a disappointment and a disillusionment, often, when the mighty are shown
to have clay feet, when the great ones are revealed to share our common human
weaknesses and flaws.
We know all persons share a common humanity. We should not be surprised at
the revelation of the secrets of the hearts and lives of public persons or giants on
the scene of history.
Still, we are disappointed, let down. We want heroes, heroines. We need models,
persons who inspire us and elicit from us our best,
I am not setting out to rob you of biblical heroes. I am not going on an
iconoclastic binge to destroy your idols. I am, however, hoping to demonstrate
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that the history of God's saving moving in our history points to what God can
accomplish with ordinary human beings who trust Him and heed His word rather
than what great persons can accomplish on behalf of God.
The Bible teaches theology, not morality.
But we have turned the Book of Theology - the Book about God - into a book of
morality, a book about human behaviour.
The Bible is about God, about God's eternal purpose, about God's grace, about
God's faithfulness9 about God's steadfast love. Only secondarily and derivatively
is it about the human person, the human family, human response, human
behaviour.
It is theology - a word about God, not morality (from mor-, mos: custom; plural
mores: manners, morals, character): a code of human behavior, of or pertaining
to character, disposition, of or pertaining to distinction between right and wrong,
good and evil.
My purpose, then, is to exalt the Lord, to point to His Sovereign grace and draw
our minds and hearts to Him, to trust His steadfast love and rest in His
faithfulness to His saving purpose.
I begin with Abraham. Abraham was the Father of the Faithful, and I begin with
him because that is where the whole covenant history began. Those eleven
chapters of Genesis that tell us about the Creation and then the Fall of the human
family and all of the disastrous results that issued in the judgment of the Flood
and God beginning again, and then even after the new beginning, the human race
rebelliously building the Tower of Babel – these symbolic stories point to the
incorrigibility of the human person, which is the prelude to God's movement of
Grace whereby He calls one person, Abraham, and through him, builds a nation
that issues in Jesus, that issues in the Church, that will issue in the final
consummation of His Kingdom. The story of the Bible is the one story of a God
Who moves through human persons and human history, finally to effect His
purposes. And its prelude, those first eleven chapters, tell us why His grace is
necessary, because time and time again it is demonstrated in those early chapters
that we cannot do it on our own.
You may remember back in Easter that I chose Genesis 11:30 as a part of my text
for Resurrection morning. It is a most remarkable little statement about
Abraham's wife, Sarah. It says, "Now, Sarah was barren." And perhaps you'll
remember that I remarked about how remarkable it was that, when God was at
the point at which He would build a family and a nation in order, finally, through
that nation to win all nations, that He would start out with a couple who was
barren. Now, that's not an accident. That little phrase in the 30th verse of
Chapter 11 of Genesis is not an accident. "Sarah was barren."
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Richard A. Rhem
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It was a theological pronouncement of the impossibility of the human
construction of the Kingdom of God. It was the insight of the Old Testament
writer that if the Kingdom would be effected, it would be effected by the steady
faithfulness and powerful love of God, and not through human manipulation,
human ingenuity, human industriousness, human faithfulness, or anything
human. Sarah was barren. And the 12th Chapter opens when God called
Abraham, and said, "I will bless you and in you all nations of the earth will be
blessed." And on this Worldwide Communion Sunday, we, the people of God,
celebrate the one God and the one Faith, the one Baptism; we celebrate the face
that we are here together on behalf of the whole world, for we are the heirs of
Abraham and it is through the Church that all nations of the earth are to be
blessed.
Abraham was a great man of faith, and he is a model of faith. Paul sets him forth
as a model of faith. Paul says how remarkable it was that old Abraham didn't
doubt and didn't waver in his faith, but rather believed God, Who can call into
existence the things that are not as though they were!
Ah, but Paul, wait a minute. Let's argue with the good Apostle for a moment. Is
that all there is? Is it just the story of Abraham's unwavering faith? If it is really
the story of Abraham's unwavering faith, then I don't belong to Abraham's club.
If the Kingdom came in those days through Abraham because Abraham didn't
waver in his faith, then, sorry, Father, I don't qualify. Put me on the second team,
or maybe just let me sit this one out.
Paul, are you sure he didn't waver? Well, what does the story tell us? If we had
time this morning we would go on in that 12th Chapter. Do you know what
happened immediately after Abraham's call? It says Abraham went. Good for
you, Abraham. God said, "Go," and Abraham went. Good for you, Abraham. And
then you know what happened? He got to Canaan and there was famine there.
Oh, so this is the Promised Land? Famine? He says to Sarah, "We'd better pack
up and go down to Egypt." And they got near Egypt, and he said, "Hey, Sarah,
make like you're my sister because you're a beautiful lady and Old Pharaoh might
look at you and want you and if he wants you, he'll do away with me! I'm not
really so concerned about him having you, but I don't really want him to do away
with me!" And if you would go to the 20th Chapter of Genesis, you would find a
similar story. This time it's not Pharaoh in Egypt, but Abimelech.
Now, it's in the Bible. Abraham lied to Pharaoh in order to protect his skin. This
is the guy who hears the call from God Who says, "I'll make of you a great nation
and in you all nations of the earth will be blessed." But Abraham said, "Hey,
Sarah, we'd better take this matter into our own hands." Nice going, Abraham.
I'm feeling more akin to you all the time.
And then the years go by and the barren Sarah is barren still. And Sarah says,
"You know, God is good, but maybe He needs help. Let's help Him out. Let's get a
little human management and a little human ingenuity at work here. Abraham,
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why don't you take Hagar as a second wife? I'm barren. Perhaps she's fruitful."
And Abraham says, "Well, I'm not above that." And the issue of that is Ishmael.
And then there is a marvelous encounter again between Abraham and God and
the promises of the Covenant are reiterated in the 17th Chapter of Genesis, and
God says, "I'll be a God to you and to your seed after you, and I will bless you and
your seed will be as the stars of the heaven and the sand of the sea."
Abraham stands awestruck before God, and then he says, "Oh, by the way, Lord,
would it be all right - could Ishmael stand before you? Can't we give up this
ridiculous idea that old Sarah at 99 years old is going to conceive in her womb
that is withered as a prune? Could Ishmael stand before you? Come on, God, I'd
like to get you off the hook. I'd like to make it a little easier for you."
God says, "No way! Because, if Ishmael would stand before me and if Ishmael
would be the line of the Kingdom, then you could always look back and say, ‘Well,
God promised this, but I had to come in and help a little bit. There had to be a bit
of human manipulation, a little bit of human management, a bit of human
control.’" God said, "No way! I love Ishmael. I'll bless Ishmael. But it won't be
Ishmael. It will be a son of Sarah's barren womb."
Abraham said, "I guess I get the point." And eventually there was an angel
messenger who came down outside the tent and told old Abraham that Sarah
would have a child. Sarah was listening behind the flap of the tent - and she
laughed. She tried to hold it in, but it exploded. The angel said, "Why is Sarah
laughing?" Sarah said, "I wasn't laughing." The angel said, "Yes, you were
laughing. But I'll tell you the joke's on you, because you're going to conceive and
you're going to call your boy ‘Laughing.’" (That's what Isaac means - laughing.)
"You're going to have a little boy and I'll have the last laugh. Isaac will stand
before me."
Ah, isn't it wonderful that the whole covenant of God was initiated with this man
of such great heroic faith, noble, great Abraham - the Father of the Faithful?
Don't you believe it. Old Abraham struggled to hold on to the promises of God
just as much as do you. Abraham knew just as much as you do how ridiculous it is
to play by God's rules, to live by His Grace, to trust in His promises. Abraham was
tempted just as much as you are to take matters into your own hands, to
manipulate a little bit, to have a little human management, a little human control,
and help God out.
Ah, the story of the scripture is not what God was able to do because there were a
few great people around to do it for Him. The story of the scripture is about the
great God Who can use flawed people like you and me to effect His purposes.
Well, I understand Paul. Abraham is a model. He is a model for me – a model of
hearing the Word and heeding the Word and following the Word. He's also a
model for me in recognizing that my faith wavers and doubts overcome me and
© Grand Valley State University
�Abraham – Shaky Faith in a Faithful God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
sometimes I say, "I can't believe it." And when I go my own way, getting off God's
way, Abraham is also a model for me because I know that, like Abraham, and in
spite of Abraham, through me and in spite of me, God will do His thing.
Shaky, shaky faith in a faithful God. That's the glory of the biblical story. And so,
come to this table. Take bread and take wine and know again that God loves us,
and Jesus died. He loved us and gave himself for us. I take the bread and I take
the wine and I taste it and it becomes a tangible sign of the love of a God Who will
never let me go, even though I let Him go all the time. A God Who will never
forsake me, even though I forsake Him all the time. But our liturgy recognized
long ago that after announcing that we must come to this table prepared, with
hearts prepared and sin confessed, this is not intended, dearly beloved, to
distress the contrite hearts of God's people as though no one may come to this
table but those who are without sin, for we acknowledge that we are weak and
that we have failed, and therefore, that we need the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And we come and take bread and wine and say, "Thank God for Grace - Grace
greater than all of my sin, overcoming all of my weakness, all of my frailty. Thank
God for a faithful God Who grips those of us of shaky faith." And one day the
kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.
One day the people of God gathering today around the world as a sign of what
God is doing with this world will see the sign fulfilled when every knee bows and
every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.
Thank God. It is God upon Whom it all depends. Thank God for His Grace that
will never fail us, and that when we prove faithless, He shows Himself faithful.
Thanks be to God. '
© 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
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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
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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
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Event
World Wide Communion
Pentecost XX
Series
No Stained Glass Saints
Scripture Text
Romans 4:17
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19861005
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1986-10-05
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Abraham: Shaky Faith in a Faithful God
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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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
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 5, 1986 entitled "Abraham: Shaky Faith in a Faithful God", as part of the series "No Stained Glass Saints", on the occasion of World Wide Communion, Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 4:17.
Abraham
Covenant
Faithful God
God of Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Nature of God
-
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PDF Text
Text
God is Easy to Live With
Text: Psalm 103: 13-14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 31, 1986
Transcription of the spoken sermon
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on all
who fear him. For he knows how we are made, he knows full well that we are
dust. Psalm 103: 13-14
The Psalmist begins this Psalm with a call to his own being to bless the Lord. The
Psalm ends with the same call, now inviting the whole created order and all
created beings to join in the praise of God. The body of the Psalm witnesses to
who God is by pointing to all God does, thus giving the cause for gratitude which
issues in the praise of God.
Psalm 103 is an expression of pure praise. Nothing is requested; no plea or
complaint is expressed. It is simply a paean of praise to the good and gracious
God, a God Who is easy to live with. The psalm flows; it is a spontaneous eruption
of joy at the contemplation of the wonder of God's goodness, compassion and
grace. It is the amazement at the realization of Who God is and what He has done
and continues to do.
Praise is spontaneous. It arises in our hearts; it erupts on our lips; it breaks forth,
irrepressible. The Psalmist calls himself to consciousness of God's mercy; praise
is the result. Praise cannot be coerced; forced, it is not praise.
But we learn from the Psalmist that it is in the contemplation of God in His
saving acts toward us, His mercy and goodness to us, that we put ourselves into
the posture of praise. Let us listen as the Psalmist describes the God Whom he
calls upon his soul to bless.
We bless God because of Who He has shown Himself to be. Old Testament faith
was not speculative and abstract. Rather, the God Whom Israel praises was the
God Who revealed Himself in human experience.
He was the God Who revealed Himself to Moses. That brings to expression the
whole history of redemption in which Israel was called and claimed by God to be
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
His people. Israel had a sense of being God's chosen people. In the Exodus event,
God freed their Fathers from Egypt's bondage. He was the God Who led them
through the wilderness and brought them into the promised land. In His
revelation of Himself to Moses, He made Himself known as merciful and
gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Mercy, grace, steadfast love - what a list of attributes that makes. He was the God
of salvation; He set His people free from the galling slavery that de-humanized
and oppressed. He provided for them, nurtured them and established them in
their own land. Israel's history was a history of salvation of the Mighty God Who
delivered them. In Exodus, as Israel gathered at Mount Sinai and prepared to
receive the Law, these were Moses’ words to them:
You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’
wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will obey my
vice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all
peoples…. Exodus 19: 4-5
That beautiful image expresses well Israel's sense of being called and claimed by
God.
But not only in their corporate history, but also in their personal, human
experience, the Old Testament people had a sense of God's grace and mercy. Just
listen to the five verbs of verses 3-5. God pardons, heals, redeems, crowns,
satisfies. Consequently, His people live as renewed persons, kept in the steadfast
love of God.
Expanding on the first blessing mentioned - God's pardoning grace - the Psalmist
gives us one of the most vivid figures of speech found anywhere to describe what
God does with our wrongs. Here is the marvelous surprise: God does not deal
with us as we might expect to be dealt with.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requites us according
to our iniquities.
How often we get things out of focus. We grumble and complain. We are prone to
look on the dark side, feeling we have gotten a bum deal. We luxuriate in self-pity
and whimper while we nurse our wounds and rationalize our poor showing. But
the reality is far different! God does not deal with us as we deserve.
C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, tells of a busload of folk from the grey, misty
flats of purgatory who take a bus excursion to the borders of heaven to see if they
might desire permanent residence there. One of the "tourists" meets a man
known to him on earth who was tried and executed for committing a murder. The
man is now a citizen of heaven. The visitor is amazed to find the murderer there.
He cries out, "What I'd like to understand is what you're here for, as pleased as
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Punch, you a murderer, while I've been walking the streets down there and living
in a place like a pigsty all these years."
The citizen of heaven tries to explain that he had been forgiven the crime and that
both he, the murderer, and the man he murdered had been reconciled at the
judgment seat of God. But the "spirit" from purgatory would have none of it. It
was unjust, unfair! He keeps protesting that it is not right, and all he demands is
his rights.
"I've got to have my rights, same as you, see!"
"Oh, no," the citizen of heaven assures him, "It's not as bad as that. I
haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours,
either. You will get something far better."
Thank God we do not get our rights. Thank God justice is not done. Thank God
His grace is greater than all our sin.
Will Campbell learned the heart of the Gospel the hard way one day. It was
during the days of great tension and ugliness of the Civil Rights Movement in the
South. A young seminarian and a black man were gunned down in cold blood by
a Southern sheriff. Will and his brother were with a friend who would have
nothing to do with the Gospel, when they heard the news. The friend put Will,
himself a minister of the Gospel, on the spot. In effect, he said, "What will your
God do about such an outrage? Can that sheriff be forgiven?" Will, his own heart
broken and full of anguish, knew this was the acid test. Did he believe the Gospel?
He answered, "Yes."
So, the murdered and the murderer are alike loved by God?
Yes. Then, what is this Gospel of yours? We are all bastards and God loves
us anyway?
"Yes," Will replied.
That is the scandalous Gospel we believe.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according
to our iniquities.
This is the testimony of the whole of Scripture.
He blots out our sins as a thick cloud. He casts them behind His back. He buries
our sins in the depths of the sea. He remembers them against us no more.
We remember our sins. We remember the sins of our neighbors. We nurse them,
fume and fuss about them, burden ourselves with them, wallow in them.
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
But, God puts them away - forever.
No wonder the Psalmist said,
Bless the Lord, O my soul!
How does He deal with us? With compassion! Like a parent deals with a child.
But no earthly parent begins to realize the magnitude of God's compassion. The
best of human parenting is only a faint reflection of the parental love of God. It
gives us an image we can grasp and begin to understand. But God's Fatherly
compassion surpasses our best insight and understanding.
The Psalmist calls us to bless the Lord because of the way He loves us – human as
we are.
He knows how we were made.
He knows full well that we are dust.
Here is not only a beautiful statement about God, but here, too, is the charter of
our humanness. In the Scriptures we find surprisingly that it is all right to be
human. Does not this statement reflect the Psalmist's understanding that God
loves us and accepts us in our very humanness?
The Bible celebrates that humanness. In the eighth Psalm we read of both our
smallness when compared with the cosmos and our greatness in that we were
created a little less than God. In this Psalm we sense that the Psalmist believed
that God fully understands us in our humanness.
We are not God. We are not angels. We are human.
To be human is to be finite, limited. To be human is to have to choose, to decide,
to act on limited knowledge and insight. To be human is to struggle to find the
balance between freedom and responsibility. To be human is to be part of the
created order of the earth and to feel the tug of that which connects us to the
earth and to be created in the image of God, made for and called to fellowship
with God. To be human is to be a person in process, a pilgrim, a struggler.
We have not allowed ourselves to be very comfortable in the Church being
human. We do get down on ourselves. We condemn ourselves and we are harder
on ourselves than anyone else and we are harder on ourselves than God is.
Somehow we've gotten the message that it is not all right to be human. We just do
not measure up.
In the Church - in religion in general - there is a large measure of moralism.
There is a strong stress on the "ought." There is the threat and warning about our
shortcomings, the constant call to do more, to do better. There is that constant
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
pressure to perform and there is the equally constant sense of falling short. The
"message" seems to be that it is not "OK" to be human.
Dr. J. Harold Ellens gave a paper to a Christian Psychological Association some
years ago in which he addressed the relationship of worship and emotional
health. The whole paper is full of insight and greatly impressed me when first I
read it. On our present focus, Ellens writes:
Worship is the celebration of a feat accomplished and being realized. That
fact is the historical datum certifying that God was uniquely in Jesus of
Nazareth "reconciling the world unto Himself." The celebration of worship
is the act and experience of taking profound and grateful account of God's
demonstrated nature and behaviour: He is for us, not against us.
Humans natively envision God as a threat. …It may well be that man's
native view of God as a threat derives from the natural state of anxiety
which seems to be coincident with self-consciousness. …Worship as the
celebration of God's grace addresses itself essentially to human anxiety
regarding God, self, and one's world of relationships. This follows directly
from the fact that the Christian "good news" is the announcement of man's
freedom from those threats - freedom to be and become oneself.
The purpose of worship, then, is the achievement of emotional health and
spiritual wholeness in the form of relief from destructive anxiety by
means of the celebration of God's grace.
Ellens stresses the fact that worship either incites and embodies experiences of
forgiveness, acceptance and a desirable destiny, or enforces guilt, shame and
bondage. Worship either frees or sickens. Speaking directly to the point I am
making in this message, Ellens writes:
The process of worship must provide a comfortable and safe arena for
humans to deal with their real inadequacy to the responsibilities of life
and the challenges of godliness, as well as their sense of inadequacy as
humans. The two are usually quite different and the difference is often the
dimension of man's dishonesty, self-deception and pathology including
psychic conflict. Worship must provide opportunity and necessity for
humans to face their real humanness without employing the typical
pathological techniques of self-deception, deception of the community, or
mechanisms of escape. Typical worship encourages rather than prevents
such pathologies. However, when worship fails to lead people out of them,
it cannot be healing. Where deception of self or the community is
necessary or possible, freedom in God's grace is impossible. That is the
setting for emotional illness, not health.
Ellens continues:
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Worship must provide such humans with the strength and safety to face
the crushing reality of our personal and communal potential for
envisioning sainthood, on the one hand, and our inability to produce
sainthood on the other. It is not a new insight that man is at war with his
self. It would be a new experience if worship consistently resolved that
conflict in the peace of grace. ... To achieve a healing emotional response,
liturgy must provide for honest, relief-affording resolution of the anxiety
and ego-insult inevitable to our internal conflicts. This requires aiding
persons, through worship, to realize and act out the fact that it is
acceptable to be human and sinful. Worship must aid persons and the
community to realize on the emotional level that that acceptability is
precisely what divine grace and Christian graciousness means.
There is much more that could be said on this point, but this is enough to indicate
how in worship we should experience the Psalmist's insight that God knows how
we are made, knows we are "dust" or "clay" – people in conflict, full of anxiety,
loaded with guilt and a sense of inadequacy, needing the good news of an
unconditional love and total acceptance of the God Who knows it all better than
we do and has already handled our dilemma in the gift of Jesus and the grace
which there came to expression. He meets our guilt with forgiving grace, our
inadequacy with the total adequacy of Jesus, our weakness with the strength He
provides, and calls us simply to trust Him that it is so and to rest in the abyss of
His love.
To catch a glimpse of such a God and such a redemption is simply to praise,
spontaneously, irrepressibly. The Psalmist calls his soul to reflect on this good
and gracious God and then he knows praise will flow.
Praise cannot be coerced. C.S. Lewis was at first put off by all the calls, "Praise
God," when first he became a Christian, until he came to realize that praise was
simply the overflow of the enjoyment of the object of praise – in this case, the
enjoyment of God. When we read a great novel or experience a great concert or
see a beautiful sunset, we want to tell somebody about it. The fun of a good joke is
sharing it.
So is the praise of God. Lewis says praise is "inner health made audible." I'm sure
he is right. Show me a person full of praise and I will show you a person healthy
and happy.
Some of us are praisers.
Some of us are simply "chronic grumps." Again, praise cannot be coerced; either
it is "felt" and thus will be expressed, or we remain numb and dumb. But we need
not be fatalists, simply resigning ourselves to being "grumps," going through life
groveling in the mire when we could soar with eagles. We can talk to ourselves;
we can take ourselves in hand as did the Psalmist. We can become conscious of
© Grand Valley State University
�God is Easy to Live With
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
the chronic posture of our souls and we can become self-conscious, reflecting on
patterns that may be deeply ingrained.
Rather than viewing a magnificent sunset and grumbling, "Well, another day
shot," we can bask in a few moments of beauty. We can sense the cool, crispness
of the autumn morning and remember this is our Father's world. We can feel the
smooth softness of a newborn's cheek and revel in the wonder of a child. We can
call upon ourselves to become conscious of the very gift of life and the resources
for facing even the most difficult circumstances. We cannot contemplate the God
Who "pardons, heals, redeems, crowns and satisfies" and not sense within the
upsurge of emotion that finds expression in praise. Then with all creation and all
the angels of heaven we can bless the Lord and experience the wellbeing of His
grace and goodness, the God Who is easy to live with.
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
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 XV
Scripture Text
Psalm 103:13-14
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19860831
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986-08-31
Title
A name given to the resource
God is Easy to Live With
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
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 31, 1986 entitled "God is Easy to Live With", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 103:13-14.
Covenant
Forgiveness
God of Grace
Human Nature
Nature of God
Praise
Psalms
Unconditional Grace
Worship
-
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PDF Text
Text
Why I Believe in Purgatory
Text: I Corinthians 3: 14-15; Luke 12: 47-48
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Advent, December 15, 1985
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Purgatory is a foreign word in a Protestant pulpit. It is even a greater surprise to
find it in a title such as I have given to this message: "Why I Believe In
Purgatory."
Perhaps it is just a teaser: baiting you a bit to get you to return - an attention
catcher. You will have to judge that for yourself when we are finished. In the
meantime, I must declare the seriousness with which I am treating the subject.
Purgatory conjures up all sorts of ghosts in our minds and certainly there is much
in the history of the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church with which I cannot
agree. Yet there is a reality, a truth to which that teaching pointed, and we may
well have missed that truth because our forefathers in the Reformation threw out
the idea of Purgatory with all of the many abuses that went along with it.
Before we get into the idea itself, let me remind you of our deliberations this
Advent Season. We are considering the great questions of the End. The drama of
history will have its End. That is Advent's theme: the King is coming. God will
bring Creation to its consummation. We personally will have our End; we will die.
And then what?
We have affirmed that there is life after life. Death remains the last enemy but its
sting has been removed; it is a conquered foe. The grave has been robbed of its
fearsome power.
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again; even so, through
Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. (I
Thessalonians 4:14)
Therefore we do not grieve as those who have no hope; we have a basis for
comforting one another.
We have seen, too, that the New Testament sets forth a double image of the End:
Heaven and Hell, Glorification and Condemnation, Union with God and
© Grand Valley State University
�Why I Believe in Purgatory
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Separation from God. We quoted the pithy statement of C.S. Lewis in The Great
Divorce:
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy
will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done."
(p. 66F)
The traditional teaching of the Church and the conventional understanding of
most of the Church is simply that those who receive Christ will be saved and
those who reject him will be damned.
But a little sober reflection - and reflection on this subject ought to be sober shows us that the matter is not quite that simple. Even if those who are exposed
to the Gospel are judged on their acceptance or rejection of Christ - what about
those who never heard? What about those who die in infancy? What about the
mentally impaired?
A further serious question: What about those who have been terribly wounded by
the Church itself? What about those who have been abused as children and are
never able to trust? What about those who have received only a perversion and
distortion of the Gospel?
It would seem that we must begin to make some exception, some qualification.
Then, too, we have noted that the witness of the New Testament is not consistent.
Several texts in Matthew and Revelation especially speak of eternal torment but
several statements in Paul's letters seem to point in the direction of universal
salvation.
Therefore I raised the question whether or not it might be possible that God's
grace might finally triumph in the case of all persons; whether God would finally
be "all in all" with every remnant of opposition to His Rule of Grace wiped out. I
suggested that perhaps God's "Yes" to us in Jesus might be stronger than our
"No."
God respects our response. He will never coerce. His is always a gracious
invitation. Therefore, just as our "no" turned to "yes" by His grace must be
authentically our own, just so our "no" maintained is always a possibility. It
remains a possibility and witnesses to the seriousness of our decision.
But what if in His infinite patience He never gives up? (I asked you whether you
hoped Hell might be finally empty.) I suspect you have thought about that. I
suspect, too, I would receive a variety of responses. Let us admit at the outset we
cannot know the answer to the question as to whether Hell will finally consume
some eternally or whether Grace will finally triumph completely.
In either case, the reality of judgment is a reality through which we all must pass.
There is a double judgment for each of us. First, the judgment regarding eternal
© Grand Valley State University
�Why I Believe in Purgatory
Richard A. Rhem
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salvation. Second, the judgment regarding the character of our lives - the story we
write with our lives.
The first is determined by our relationship with Jesus Christ. He is the Saviour of
the world.
God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world but that the
world through Him might be saved. John 3:17
And Paul declared,
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus. Romans 8:1
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1
In John's Gospel we read:
Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who
sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed
from death to life. John 5:24
Thus judgment is passed. The verdict is not still out. The acquittal has been
granted. We possess new eternal life.
But there is a second aspect to judgment that remains to be experienced by every
person, that is the judgment of our work or our lives. This judgment has nothing
to do with whether a person is saved or lost. This judgment has to do with seeing
our lives in God's light, seeing our lives played out before us in His presence.
The main contention of this message is that God is not done with us at the
moment of our death.
I can base that contention on Scripture in regard to those who die trusting in God
through Jesus Christ. I will suggest that the possibility of an "empty hell" can be
based only on the possibility of a continuing process of encounter between God
and the person who dies without an experience of His grace.
Let us first look at the Scripture. To begin with, we must recognize that there is
not much to go on because the whole thrust of Scripture is the imperative to
repentance and faith and the whole stress is on the urgency of decision. Yet there
are indications that there is something more.
Our first Scripture investigation is Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 3.
Let me acknowledge immediately that this passage can be used only indirectly for
the purposes of establishing the main contention of this message - namely that
God is not done with us at the moment of our death. Paul is talking to a particular
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Richard A. Rhem
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congregation about a specific problem - divisions in the Church. Dealing with
that issue he decries the choosing up of sides, identifying with one leader rather
than another and thus forming factions in the Church. He points to the one
foundation of the Church, Jesus Christ, and says all who build on that
foundation, which he had himself laid in Corinth, must take care how they build.
But all are co-laborers.
Whether they plant or water, they work as a team. I Corinthians 3:8
That refers to the image of the garden. One plants, one waters, but God makes it
grow. The image of the building picks up the idea of foundation and
superstructures. Christ is the foundation. He, Paul, Apollos and the other
apostles build the superstructure. If they build well the building will stand; if they
build of faulty materials the building will not meet the test.
This is where we touch our interest - the idea of judgment: This is not a judgment
regarding one's eternal salvation; this is a judgment of one's works or a judgment
of one's life. This is a judgment through which all God's children will pass. The
question is not whether one will be finally redeemed and enter the presence of
God - enter "heaven." The question is how will one fare as one's life comes under
the scrutiny of the Eternal God.
The text speaks specifically about ministers of the Gospel and the building of the
Church. I do not think we err, however, in seeing what here has a specific focus as
being generally true of all persons regarding their life's issue whether that be in
building churches or building houses or laboring in business or industry or living
in community, nation, family.
Will the things to which we devote our lives, our time, our energy stand God's
refining process or will they go up in smoke?
Notice: The one who builds with precious stones, gold and silver, will see his
creation stand the test. He enters life beyond life with something good and
positive going with him.
The one who builds with wood, hay, straw - one who cuts corners and just gets by
will see his life's devotion consumed before his eyes.
But now note carefully:
He will bear the loss but he himself will escape with his life, as one might
from a fire.
Such a person will enter life beyond life having lost everything, secure in God's
eternal presence, yet with nothing to show for his life.
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Richard A. Rhem
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From this text I conclude that there is beyond death or through death an
encounter with God in which one's life will be tested. The issue will not be
salvation or condemnation. The issue is whether we bring into God's presence
something, or nothing.
Now I am going beyond the text's specific teaching but drawing, I believe, a
legitimate inference from the text:
Through death, beyond death, at death, there is something more.
Does this text not indicate that Paul thought in terms of encounter with God and
perhaps continuing the process beyond death? If it is a matter simply of being
saved or lost as we enter the moment of death - if there is a status called
"Salvation" and a status called "Condemnation," and that is all there is, then why
be concerned about what one brings to death's moment: a fruitful life, or a barren
life?
I see in our text Paul's conviction that there is not only the discontinuity between
our time and God's eternity, death being the break, but also continuity between
this life and the life beyond death's passage. We bring something (or nothing)
with us and whatever lies beyond is influenced and determined by what we bring
(or fail to bring.)
Let us look at one more text: Luke 12:47-48. These verses are in a context of the
teachings of Jesus. The immediate context is a call to be watchful and ready for
the End - the coming of the Son of Man. Jesus is encouraging loyal, faithful
stewardship of life.
Happy that servant who is found at his task when his master comes!
(Verse 43)
But then Jesus speaks of two kinds of servants. One knew the master's
instructions and failed to comply with them. The other did not comply either, but
he was unaware of the demands. The first was flogged severely; the second was
flogged less severely. This vivid, picturesque language of Jesus must not be
pushed too far. We certainly could not build a whole system of judgment on the
basis of these words. Yet, perhaps it is legitimate to draw at least this teaching:
the sentence will vary in light of individual circumstances. Again, we have here
not a judgment to eternal salvation or eternal condemnation; we have here a
gradation of judgment on the basis of the individual life being examined.
The moment of death, the moment of encounter with God will be very personal,
individual and discriminating. The sentences will vary. Does this point to a
process beyond death's moment? If this were the only text it would be risky to
claim so. But again, this seems to point in the direction of Paul's teaching
explained above. To be sure, the Luke passage speaks of a gradation of severity of
judgment depending on knowledge or opportunity while the Pauline passage
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
speaks of entering God's presence beyond the testing of judgment – with positive
fruit of one's life, or denuded of whatever constituted one's life. Yet in both cases
there is judgment in terms of one's life being put to the test and then the entering
into the consequences of what that judgment revealed.
The traditional understanding of our texts is that, in the case of the Luke passage,
there are gradations of punishment - yet to be lost, eternally condemned is to
remain in a state spoken of as hell - separation from God. In the case of the
passage from Paul, the understanding has been that the "saved" enter into
heaven, or union with God, but some with greater, some with less capacity to
experience the joy of salvation.
But let us push those conventional interpretations. Let me repeat what I said
earlier: we cannot finally know answers which remain for us veiled in mystery.
Yet it is important to come to some place where we can live with faith, conviction
and peace. Think with me then; let your imagination loose. Think about the God
of grace, His creation purpose, His covenant faithfulness, His final triumph over
all. Think about the whole impact of the Scriptural revelation beyond individual
texts.
I entitled this message, "Why I Believe in Purgatory," because I did want to grasp
your attention. Surely you know that in a day when Catholic theology itself is very
self-critical and is engaged in serious encounter with Scripture, I am not about to
suggest we reinstitute a teaching that has been a means of distortion of the
Gospel and open to great abuse. We cannot forget that it was precisely at the
point of the teaching of indulgences, the exploitation of the faithful for purposes
of raising money and manipulating people, holding them in spiritual bondage,
that the Reformers rose up in protest.
But my title is more than a ploy. It expresses a conviction to which I have come
through study and reflection, which is as much a surprise to me as it may be to
you. I am convinced that, behind all indefensible practice and abuse of the
Church, there is yet a true intuition. There has been over the centuries a sense
that God was not through with us at the moment of our last breath.
Now the traditional Reformed faith never said He was through with us; there
remains the judgment with its double issue - to salvation or condemnation. But
the traditional teaching has been that with the last breath the issue is irreversible.
It is this claim that I am calling in question. I do recognize that the strong call to
decision, the seriousness of choices in this life is stressed. I would not deny that
or even downplay the urgency of that call. However, is it not possible that in the
experience of death itself, understood as an encounter with God, there is the
possibility of something of eternal significance occurring? I raise the question for
reflection.
Let me share with you some of the best thinking available on the subject. My first
serious consideration of the idea of purgatory or the reality toward which that
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Richard A. Rhem
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teaching points was in Berkhof’s Christian Faith. Because of my high regard for
the thoroughness of his scholarship, depth of biblical and theological
understanding, and deep personal faith in Christ, I had to take seriously his
suggestion that there was really something here to be taken seriously. In his
discussion of the judgment of the works done by believers, which we discussed
above, Berkhof writes:
In protestant theology, this viewpoint is almost completely pushed aside
by the accent on grace. In Roman Catholic piety it is (or used to be) very
prominent in connection with the veneration of saints and purgatory. The
Roman Catholic Church assumes correctly that believers differ greatly in
regard to their progress and fruitfulness...
So the idea of a judgment according to one's deeds leads of itself to the
consideration of a process of purification, called purgatory in Roman
Catholic tradition. ... The Reformation broke with that doctrine because of
its moralistic conception of salvation and its detrimental effect on the
practice of piety (indulgences; intercessory prayers and masses for the
dead.) It imagined a sudden, radical transformation after the judgment,
usually without giving it further theological reflection and without
connecting it with the struggle for sanctification on earth. Meanwhile
Roman Catholic thinking, too, has become much more reserved. Typical of
the modern R.C. conceptions is the idea of "ripening" ... which K. Rahner
develops in "The Life of the Dead."
Referring to our text, I Corinthians 3:15, Berkhof asserts,
... that statement does suggest that Paul thought of more than an abrupt
re-creation of man; salvation is accompanied by a painful becoming aware
of one's own failures on earth. The difficulties here are more an open
question for theological reflection than a subject for back and forth
theological denouncement. (p. 489)
In the previous message I cited Berkhof s statement about the question of
whether "Hell" was forever. He writes:
God is serious about the responsibility of our decision, but he is even more
serious about the responsibility of his love. The darkness of rejection and
God's forsakenness cannot and may not be argued away, but no more can
and may it be eternalized. For God's sake we hope that hell will be a form
of purification. (p. 532)
That word "purification" is one used by the Catholic theologian Hans Küng. It
was Küng who stimulated me to pursue these matters. His forthright handling of
them at the University of Michigan convinced me that these questions do not go
away; they are deeply written on the human heart. In the published lectures
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�Why I Believe in Purgatory
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
Eternal Life? Küng treats the idea of purgatory in his discussion of the question
whether hell is eternal.
Some theologians argue that it is not God who damns man by a verdict
imposed from outside. They are human beings themselves, by sins
committed with inward freedom, who damn themselves. The
responsibility lies not with God but with man, and by death this selfdamnation and distance from God (not a place, but a human condition)
becomes definitive. Definitive? Do not the psalms say that God rules over
the realm of the dead? What is supposed to become definitive here,
contrary to the will of an all-merciful and almighty God? Why should God,
who is infinitely good, want to perpetuate enmity instead of removing it
and in practice to share his rule forever with some kind of anti-God? Why
should he have nothing more to say at this point and consequently render
forever impossible a purification, cleansing, liberation, enlightenment, of
guilt-laden man? (p. 137)
Then he refers specifically to purgatory.
Purification, cleansing, liberation, enlightenment: Here perhaps may be I want merely to prompt a few reflections - the particle of truth, the real
care, of the problematic idea of purgatory, which has been translated in
German from the Middle Ages onward with the unfortunate designation of
Fegefeuer ("winnowing fire") -This may be the true core, but it remains
only if the idea is not reified. ... as no human being is entirely bad, neither
is anyone entirely good. Any human being, even the best, falls short of
what he might be, fails to meet his own demands and norms and thus
never wholly realizes himself. For if he is to be fully himself, even the
"saint" needs completion, not after death, but in death itself. And, in view
of so much unpunished guilt in the world, a number of people wonder not entirely wrongly - if dying unto God, the absolutely final reality, can be
one and the same for us: The same for criminals and their victims, for
mass murderers and the mass of the murdered; for those who have
struggled a whole life long to fulfill God's will, true helpers of their fellow
human beings, and for those who for a whole life long have only carried
out their own will and at the same time shut out others? ...how this ...
purification, cleansing, follows is not left to the speculation or calculation
of human curiosity but remains a matter for God as merciful judge, in
God's all-embracing final act of grace.
The key idea Küng would stress is the shattering effect of the encounter with God.
We die not into nothingness; we die into God. Küng cites Karl Barth:
Man as such therefore has no beyond. Nor does he need one, for God is his
beyond. Man's beyond is that God is his Creator, Covenant-partner, Judge
and Saviour, was and is and will be his true Counterpart in life, and finally
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
and exclusively and totally in death. (Church Dogmatics Vol. Ill, 2, pp.
632-33)
Küng also cites a Catholic theologian, Greshake:
From this standpoint we can understand what was pointed out earlier, that
God himself, the encounter with him, is purgatory. But this means that we
need not fall back on a special place or still less on a special time or special
event to grasp the meaning of purgatory. Still less do we need to work out
crude ideas about the 'poor' souls. Instead we can understand what the
Church teaches and has taught from the earliest times as an element in the
encounter with God in death. ... we should avoid any talk of fire and speak
instead of purifying and cleansing as an element of the encounter with
God. At the same time what should be particularly clear is that purgatory
is not - as it often seems to be in popular piety - a "demihell" which God
has erected in order to punish the person who is not entirely bad, but also
not entirely good. Purgatory is not a demihell but an element of the
encounter with God: that is, the encounter of the unfinished person, still
immature in his love, with the holy, infinite, loving God; an encounter
which is profoundly humiliating, painful and therefore purifying. (Cited on
p. 139)
Küng concludes,
That is to say that, since it is a question of dying into the dimensions of
God, where space and time are dissolved into eternity, nothing can be
discovered, either about place and time or about the character of this
purifying, sanctifying consummation. (p.139)
A Lutheran theologian, Hans Schwarz, discusses the views of Tadislaus Boros
who suggests something similar, the significance of the final decision at the
moment of death.
... decisively modifies the traditional concepts of purgatory and death.
Boros agrees that the Church has only gradually developed the doctrine of
purgatory. Though the Scriptural basis of purgatory may be obscure, the
fact and the essential nature of purgatory are of such quality that it must
be called a "truth of revelation." However, through his hypothesis of a final
decision, Boros seems to view purgatory as the "point" of intersection
between life and death. Purgatory is no longer conceived of as a process of
purification which can be measured similar to the days and years we live
here on earth. According to Boros, "purgatory would be the passage, which
we effect in our final decision through the purifying fire of divine love. The
encounter with Christ would be our purgatory. ... Boros replaces an
untenable concept of purgatory with the idea of a confrontation with
Christ in death. ... he calls death "man's first completely personal act;"
and, "therefore, by reason of its very being, the place above all others for
© Grand Valley State University
�Why I Believe in Purgatory
Richard A. Rhem
Page10
the awakening of consciousness, for freedom, for the encounter with God,
for the final decision about eternal destiny." (On The Way To The Future,
pp. 142F)
It has been obvious to me as I have pursued this subject that those who have
reflected on the biblical material, the whole context of Scripture, the revelation of
God as He has shown Himself in Jesus Christ and the human person are very
restrained in their conclusions and very cautious in their statement. There is in
all serious inquirers into this question a recognition of the serious nature of
human decisions, an acknowledgement of the urgent need for repentance and
faith, the reality of evil and human wickedness that demands response if there is
any justice, the judgment as the exposure of our lives to the scrutiny of the God of
truth.
All serious biblical thinkers recognize that God takes us seriously and that our
wrong and guilt are not simply soft-pedaled and our exposure to God's light and
truth will be painful even while we are conscious of being embraced within a
larger grace. Judgment will be experienced: No one will "get away" with anything.
If an eternal hell is questioned, it is not because passing through God's final
examination is not a serious matter and neither is it because there is no sense of
the need for change and renewal of the person who through the earthly
pilgrimage has become scarred and tainted and twisted.
Recognizing that we cannot simply move from the ambiguity, partial insight,
fickleness and unfaithfulness of one's human experience into the presence of the
God of light and truth, there is the belief on the part of some that a purifying
process will be necessary.
What have we believed traditionally? Simply that God sees us in Jesus; his
righteousness is our righteousness now and when we pass through death to life
we will be made like him - instant perfection.
What I am questioning in this message is the instant perfection.
Certainly the question is not whether God is able in a moment to totally
transform us. But does He ever work as far as we can trace His work in Creation
apart from process? How often we wish He would work by a "snap of the finger;"
but God takes time and allows the process to work.
Further, we must recognize that we can only think in terms of time but when we
speak of moving through "the moment of death," what do we mean? At that
"moment" we move beyond "moments in succession" - we move into the
dimension of Eternity. It is far beyond our purpose or capacity to enter into the
discussion of time relative to eternity here, but we must not naively project our
time-conditioned thinking beyond death.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
Page11
C. S. Lewis has dealt as creatively and profoundly as anyone of whom I am aware
with the question of heaven, hell and purgatory. He points to the relation of time
and eternity in a fascinating imaginary discussion with the Christian writer,
George MacDonald:
'In your own books, Sir,' said I, 'you were a Universalist. You talked as if all
men would be saved. And St. Paul too.'
'Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in
those terras. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be
well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. But it's ill
talking of such questions.'
‘Because they are too terrible, Sir?’
'No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time
and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of
ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death.
Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into
eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for
so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the
Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very
lens through which ye see - small and clear, as men see through the wrong
end of a telescope - something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see
at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your
Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only
through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted
telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in
each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise.
Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have
chosen and didn't is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a
symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than
any mystic's vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see
the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your
knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which
shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in
which to be real, but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper
truth of the two. And wouldn't Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know
eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill
Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were gods.
How long could ye bear to look (without Time's lens) on the greatness of
your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?' (The Great Divorce,
p. 114 F.)
In his imaginary conversation with MacDonald, Lewis is told that it is possible for
people in hell to take holiday excursions to the boundaries of the heavenly
country, Lewis exclaims,
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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'But I don't understand. Is" judgement not final? Is there really a way out
of Hell into Heaven?'
'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they leave that grey town
behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And
perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye
understand.' (Here he smiled at me). Ye can call it the Valley of the
Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven
from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the
Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will
have been Hell even from the beginning.'
I suppose he saw that I looked puzzled, for presently he spoke again.
'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when
Anodos looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message
back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil,
when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all
their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only
the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by
the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They
say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not
knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even
that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me but
have this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation
will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of
the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past
begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take
on the quality of Heaven; the bad man's past already conforms to his
badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all
things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down
there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in
Heaven", and the Lost, "we were always in Hell." And both will speak
truly.'
'Is not that very hard, Sir?'
'I mean, that is the real sense of what they will say. In the actual language
of the Lost, the words will be different, no doubt. One will say he has
always served his country right or wrong; and another that he has
sacrificed everything to his Art; and some that they've never been taken in,
and some that, thank God, they've always looked after Number One, and
nearly all, that, at least they've been true to themselves.'
'And the Saved?'
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Richard A. Rhem
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'Ah, the Saved ... what happens to them is best described as the opposite of
a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery
turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present
experience saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools
were full of water.'
'Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states
of mind?'
'Hush,' said he sternly. 'Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind - ye
never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every
shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the
end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All
that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and
only the unshakable remains.'
'But there is a real choice after death? My Roman Catholic friends would
be surprised, for to them souls in Purgatory are already saved. And my
Protestant friends would like it no better, for they'd say that the tree lies as
it falls.'
"They're both right, maybe. Do not fash yourself with such questions. Ye
cannot fully understand the relations of choice and Time till you are
beyond both. And ye were not brought here to study such curiosities. What
concerns you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them
making.' (The Great Divorce, pp. 61F.)
Lewis' fertile imagination is thought provoking. Great caution is there; our
curiosity will not be satisfied this side of death's portal. Yet it is clear that Hell, he
seems to be saying, is porous. If one spends Eternity there or, conversely, if one
never comes to the light, it will not be so much God's verdict as one's own fatal
choice.
Much lies veiled in mystery. Yet all that is needful is clear and how can it be more
clearly set forth than simply,
Now is the day of salvation;
Now is the day to choose the things that matter, things of ultimate concern; now
is the day to live faithfully - covenant with the Good and Gracious God. Then
already we possess Eternal life and death will move us "from splendour to
splendour 'til we see Him face to face." Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�Why I Believe in Purgatory
Richard A. Rhem
Page14
References:
Hendrikus Berkhof. Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith.
Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979.
Hans Küng. Eternal Life? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical and
Theological Problem. Doubleday, 1984.
C. S. Lewis. The Great Divorce. First published by HarperCollins, 1946.
© Grand Valley State University
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Description
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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
Advent III
Scripture Text
I Corinthians 3:14-15, Luke 12:47-48
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979
Hans K
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1946
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-0-19851215
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1985-12-15
Title
A name given to the resource
Why I Believe in Purgatory
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
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 15, 1985 entitled "Why I Believe in Purgatory", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Corinthians 3:14-15, Luke 12:47-48.
Advent
Death
Eternity
Forgiveness
God of Grace
Judgment
Nature of God
Purgatory
Salvation