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Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
From the series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Amos 7:13; Romans 13:1; Matthew 15:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 15, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I initiated last week a series of messages that will bring us down to October 31, if
we survive. That’s Reformation Sunday, and it is the week prior to the first two
weeks in November, which will be special events here. The West Shore
Committee for Jewish Christian Dialogue will bring Amy-Jill Levine, who will
speak here on Sunday morning. Her theme for the weekend is "When and Why
Did Christianity and Judaism Separate?" Amy-Jill teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity
School, New Testament, although she is a Jewish scholar. Then, John Shelby
Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark, will be here the following week to talk about
re-imagining Christian faith and "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Those
two weeks will be the bookends of this series of messages. Amy-Jill will tell us
how it all got started, and Bishop Spong will suggest where it must be going and,
in the meantime, prior to their coming, I hope that I can help you to understand
that change and transformation has been the rule for 2000 years.
Often the Church would like to give the impression that it has a deposit of faith
given once for all, that it is guarded down through the centuries untouched, but
such is not the case. We started last week going back to the Apostolic community
itself, recognizing the expression of that faith in the New Testament documents
that give from beginning to end the impression that the whole of that Jesus
movement was posited on the premise that Jesus would return as the Lord of
glory very soon. The Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Revelation at the end of the
book all give witness to the fact that there was an apocalyptic expectation, that is,
that the heavens would open and that the Son of Man, the Son of God would
appear to judge the living and the dead and bring to consummation all things, the
imminent return of Jesus.
And, of course, it didn’t happen, and it hasn’t happened for 2000 years, and
reflecting back on that, there is a growing awareness and recognition over the last
century or so that it was that disappointed expectation that provided the womb
out of which the whole Church as an institution developed in its organizational
structure, in its liturgical forms, in its creedal formulations. How we are, how we
live, how we believe is the consequence of that disillusion because of the delay of
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the parousia. The fact that Jesus did not return, that imminent expectation was
shattered and, consequently, they found themselves in a world whose history was
going on. They found themselves in a life that they had to learn how to live as
followers of Jesus. It’s all very understandable, all very normal, all very natural.
But, it was a very great crisis, and out of that crisis we have the early emerging
catholic tradition, catholic meaning simply universal, and that tradition in its
early stages was full of conflict and tension, it was all over the board, it was very
chaotic, as you can understand, everyone trying to make sense of that great event
followed by the trauma of disappointment. What in the world is God doing? The
early catholic tradition was the consequence of sorting all that through.
What I want to do this morning, and I can only do it briefly, I have a two-hour
sermon here, but fortunately you only have ten minutes, so I have to give you
huge chunks of stuff and you’ll just have to take my word for it, although I could
read to you all morning here. But I want this morning to suggest to you that, what
appeared to be a very great providence - that this persecuted minority, this band
of followers of Jesus became the established religion of the Roman Empire, and
that establishment brought it great power, position, and prestige, and that which
appeared to be such a blessing, as a matter of fact, was a great seduction which
ended in the wedding of power and religion, so that for nearly 1000 years during
the whole medieval development up to the eve of the Reformation, a Church in
power became a very corrupt institution.
Religious leaders don’t handle power any better than secular leaders. I think it
was the British statesman, Lord Acton, who said, "All power corrupts, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely," and what the Church became in the wake of
that tremendous transformation, was an absolute institution. It was absolute in
the control of salvation. It had the imperial sword to back up its claims and it is a
chapter with dark shadows because the religion of Jesus, the servant, became the
religion of a very dominant, prestigious institutional Church. I can’t possibly
document that for you this morning. Let me simply point to, for example, St.
Augustine, who early on was still looking to the sky for Jesus to return, but then
he lived into the 5th century; he lived long enough to experience the sack of Rome
by the barbarians, the fall of Rome. He wrote the first Christian interpretation of
history called The City of God, and Augustine moved from an expectation of
Jesus to return anytime to an understanding of Church history as being the
millennium for that 1000 years which is referred to in Revelation 20.
Now, I don’t recommend you go home this afternoon and try to understand the
Book of Revelation, nor the 20th chapter, but there’s been a lot of "stuff" that’s
come out of the 20th chapter which would appear to be a thousand years of peace
on earth ruled over by the Messiah who returns. There are some who think he’ll
return and take the Church out of history first. Those are pre-Millennialists. And
there are some who think that he’ll come only at the end of that thousand years,
which was kind of Augustine’s position, so post-Millennialist. The Reformers
didn’t know what in the world to do, so they became a-Millennialists, and of
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course, I’ve tended to become a pan-Millennialist, that is, living with the
confidence that everything will "pan out" in the end. I recommend that.
But, Augustine made a move from expecting Jesus to return to dealing with the
reality of the fact that history was moving, and of course, his idea of that
millennium as the thousand years of Church history created all kinds of
millennial fever as the year 1000 approached. Fully as much, maybe a bit more
than we have today with all the Y2K hysteria. Augustine I point to simply as one
for whom the reality of history, the reality of his human experience, forced him to
adjust his understanding of that biblical story of the return and the reign of Jesus
Christ on earth.
But, what really happened to the Church, and my point this morning, is that it
was brought into a position of domination. I know you’re familiar with the fact
that the Emperor Constantine saw a sign in the sky and he believed it was the
cross, and he heard a voice saying, "By this sign you will conquer," and he won
the battle the next day at the Milvian Bridge in 312, and from that point on he
converted to Christianity, although he wasn’t baptized until near his death; he
was hedging his bets. But, his successors established Christianity as the state
religion and, in so doing, created a powerful institution whose history is not a
nice story.
John Dominic Crossan, who was here in February, in his Jesus, a Revolutionary
Biography, writes,
Finally, about three hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus, ... the
Roman Emperor Constantine, believing that victory over his imperial rival
... near the Milvian Bridge had been obtained by Christ’s power, converted
to Christianity. ...Constantine, wanting a unified Christianity as the
empire’s new religion, ordered the Christian bishops to meet, under
imperial subsidy, in lakeside Nicea...
Obviously, resorts were popular then for conferences, as well. And Constantine
had just one purpose and that was to rule out any theological differences. I
imagine he said to the bishops, "Now, look boys, the accommodations are great,
the food is wonderful, Happy Hour overflowing, I have only one concern - come
out of there with a statement on which you can all agree. Eusebius, a historian of
the times, is quoted by Crossan:
Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the
palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God
proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in
which some were the Emperor’s companions at table, while others reclined
on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture
of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than
reality.
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But, Dom Crossan says,
A Christian leader now writes a life of Constantine rather than Jesus. The
meal and the kingdom still come together, but now the participants are the
male bishops alone, and they recline, with the emperor himself, to be
served by others. Dream or reality? Dream or nightmare?
It is, of course, an example of the dialectic just proposed between the historical
Jesus and the confessional Christ, of peasant Jesus grasped now by imperial
faith. Still, as one ponders that progress from open commensality with Jesus to
episcopal banquet with Constantine, is it unfair to regret a progress that
happened so fast and moved so swiftly, that was accepted so readily and criticized
so lightly? Is it time now, or is it already too late, to conduct, religiously and
theologically, ethically and morally, some basic cost accounting with
Constantine?
It was the Constantinian establishment that brought the Church into a
prominence and a dominance which eventuated in a decay and a corruption
which brought about, eventually, a rending again of the body of Christ in the
16th century. The Church became the absolute institute of salvation.
There was total control over the lives of people. Clergy such as Peter and myself
through the authority of the bishops, through the mediation of the pope, who was
the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, would hold you totally in our control. We held
the spigot of grace. We could determine to whom to offer the sacrament, and it
was only with the sacrament received that salvation was possible. Cyprian, the
great bishop and his famous phrase in Latin translated outside the church? No
salvation. It was an absolute institution, infallible and inerrant in all of its
teaching and all its action. It could not be questioned.
Throughout that period there was even a struggle between the throne and the
altar, the princes and the Church. And there was a period in which the Church
dominated the secular powers, as well, until those secular powers eventually
broke free and became dominant. The Church was an absolute institution and it
dominated and it was its death.
The great historian, William Manchester, in his book, A World Lit Only By Fire,
describes the eventuation of that Constantinian establishment and that
absolutizing of the institutional form of religion in the Church at the eve of the
Reformation. He writes,
... The center of the Ptolemaic universe [still the universe where the earth
is the center of everything] was the known world - Europe, with the Holy
Land and North Africa on the fringes. The sun moved round it every day.
Heaven was above the immovable earth, somewhere in the overarching
sky; hell seethed far beneath their feet. Kings rules at the pleasure of the
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Almighty; all others did what they were told to do. Jesus, the son of God,
had been crucified and resurrected, and his reappearance was imminent,
or at any rate inevitable. Every human being adored him (the Jews and the
Muslims being invisible). During the 1,436 years since the death of Saint
Peter the apostle, 211 popes had succeeded him, all chosen by God and all
infallible. The Church was indivisible, the afterlife a certainty; all
knowledge was already known. And nothing would ever change. The
mighty storm was swiftly approaching, but Europeans were not only
unaware of it; they were convinced that such a phenomenon could not
exist. Shackled in ignorance, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in
superstition...
That, my friends, was the state of the Church and the abuses that I cannot begin
to recount here, are legion because the religious institution with human
leadership had power. That, of course, was a total betrayal of the biblical faith. It
was already in Paul’s day a question of how to live in accommodation with the
secular power, the governing power. Romans 13 talks about that. And in the
Gospel of Matthew we have already Matthew writing some 50 years after Jesus
this little scene at Caesarea Philippi where Peter has the keys of the kingdom
given to him, the preeminence of Peter. This was already the dealing of the
authority question within that early Jesus movement. So, we’re dealing with
things here that are part and parcel of anything human.
But, Jesus, after he gives the keys of the kingdom to Peter and would seem to put
such authority in his hands, follows that by saying "If anyone would follow me, he
must take up his cross. If anyone would hold onto his life, he must lose it. If
anybody would lose his life for my sake, he will find it." And when it finally came
down, when the rubber hit the road, Jesus had a banquet quite in contrast to the
one at Nicea in which he took bread and broke it and said, "This is my body," and
he took wine and poured it out and said, "This is my blood," because Jesus was in
the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who spoke truth to power and refused to be
co-opted by power.
Amos was just a farmer, he came to the royal palaces one day and began to
preach and he said God is letting down a plumb line to measure the integrity of
this kingdom, and that began to scare the counselors to the king, and so they
called Amaziah, who was a hired lackey (a good king always hired a priest), and
the priest came out and he said, "Hey, you farmer Amos, what are you doing
here?" And Amos said, "The word of the Lord came to me," and the priest said,
"We don’t need the word of the Lord in the royal palace. Go back and preach to
your sycamore trees and never come here again."
When you preach truth to power, you end up in the possibility of being crucified,
but then you are only following the way of the one who even this morning says to
us, in an open table, "This is my body; this is my blood," for the way of the Gospel
is not the way of domination, control, and abuse, but is the way of grace, of
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compassion, offering the accessibility of God to all who are hungry and all who
are thirsty. This is not the table of this congregation. This is not Peter’s table nor
mine, nor these elders. This is the table of our Lord who invited those who would
stand in solidarity with him to take bread and cup and go forth strengthened, not
to dominate, but to die that the world might live.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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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.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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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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Pentecost XIII
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Good News Then and Now
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Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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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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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 15, 1999 entitled "Religion and Power: A Deadly Combination", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Amos 7:13, Romans 13:1, Matthew 15:18.
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truth to power
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When God Fails Our Expectations
From the Series: Good News Then and Now
Text: Isaiah 2:4; Matthew 24:34; II Peter 3:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 8, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I inaugurate a new series of messages today that will take us to the end of October
and Reformation Sunday, the day we remember the major event in Christian
history when the Protestant tradition emerged out of the Roman Catholic
tradition in the 16th century. That Protestant tradition in its Reformed expression
is my background and the tradition in which this congregation was founded in
1870. It is the tradition of a majority of this congregation still, I believe, although
I suspect over the last decade or more we have received in membership more
folks from the Roman Catholic tradition than from any other.
It seems to me that the idea of reformation is an important idea to keep before us
on the threshold of the 21st century and the Third Millennium, and I am hoping
that this Reformation celebration will be our most significant ever because we
will have traced the Christian faith development through 2000 years. On the
heels of Reformation, we will have the Jewish scholar on Christian origins, AmyJill Levine, here for the weekend, speaking here on Sunday, November 7, and
then Bishop John Shelby Spong on November 12-14, speaking on "Why
Christianity Must Change or Die." That should prepare us for an informed and
intelligent movement into the new millennium.
In order to prepare the congregation for this experience, I will in this series go
back not to the 16th century, but to the first and second centuries of the Common
Era and trace the development of the Christian faith story over 2000 years. My
first choice for series title was, "Christian Faith and the Climate of Opinion: A
Two Millennia Retrospective." The Team cried, "No way! No one will come!"
Then I came up with what I thought was really fascinating and even a bit poetic:
"When Symbols Break and Myths Dissolve." The verdict - "Scary."
So, finally, bowing to pressure of those who hope to keep this place alive, I
entitled the series, "Good News Then and Now," meaning thereby what I’ve
meant all along –
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that the Gospel - the good news - has continued to be proclaimed in every
succeeding age in changing expression reflecting the historical context
into which it is spoken.
My purpose must be obvious; I believe we must find a fresh translation of the
good news for the day in which we are living. We all know this happened in the
16th century when the Western Roman Catholic Church was rent and
Protestantism emerged, but I hope to enable you to see that, although that was
perhaps the most dramatic and certainly the shift that has most impacted us in
Western Christendom, it was but one instance of what has been happening for
2000 years, although not always with such major institutional repercussions.
This is important for this congregation to realize because we are endeavoring to
find the medium and the message that will bring good news to our community
and our world at the turn of the millennium.
The Gospel means good news - good - that is, encouraging, hopeful, life
enhancing. News - that means updated, fresh, for now. Thus, Good News then in the first and fourth and 12th and 16th centuries and all points in between, Good
News now: How do we bring a helpful, hopeful, encouraging word to our
moment on the timeline of history?
It is my sense that if we are going to feel the freedom to re-imagine the faith and
do it with passion and seriousness, we must realize that we stand in a line of
those who have wrestled with the faith, have come into times that called for fresh
insight on the emerging human experience, on the unfolding drama we call
history. As the human situation changes, faith formulations must address new
circumstances and new human experiences. I have hammered away at this until
you perhaps tire of hearing it. But, I am now embarking on a rather ambitious
undertaking: to lay the foundation for the perspectives we share here.
I suppose one might say this is an apology for my ministry and for the posture of
this congregation, providing historical justification for daring boldly to revision
and re-imagine the faith.
One more word - my purpose is not to provide an academic lecture series;
this is worship and the sermon should have practical, spiritual import for the life
of the congregation. In the significant shifts through 2000 years, behind the
shifts have always been existential concern - faith matters that matter for living.
Thus, today my sermon is "When God Fails Our Expectations."
I think that expresses the experience of the early Church as the Apostolic
generation was dying off. The whole Jesus movement was posited on the
expectation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ from heaven. They held to the
conviction that Jesus who was crucified was risen from the dead, ascended into
heaven and was soon to return to judge the living and the dead.
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Imminence was the operative word - Jesus would come a second time soon.
The New Testament references are too numerous to cite. Let me simply remind
you of the final words of the Revelation of Jesus to John just prior to the final
benediction: "Surely I am coming soon."
Paul in I Corinthians 15:51, "We will not all die, but we will all be changed." In
I Thessalonians 4:13f, "... then we who are alive, who are left until the coming of
the Lord ..."
And, of course, from the Gospel reading,"Truly I tell you, this generation will not
pass away until all these things have taken place ..." Matthew 24:34.
Let me say here that some of the Jesus scholars today attribute these apocalyptic
passages to the early Jesus community - not to Jesus himself. That is currently a
rigorous debate. But no matter; my point is that this was the expectation of the
Jesus movement in the wake of his life and death.
And Jesus did not return. That was the first major crisis of faith of the Jesus
movement - or as it came to be known - the Christian Church. It takes little
thought or reflection to realize how traumatic was the delay of the parousia, as
this fact is spoken of. Parousia is a Greek term for coming, advent. The "delay"
points to the early sense that surely he is coming, coming soon, but obviously not
as soon as we expected. There has been a delay.
Now, if this was at the heart and center of the early Church’s hope and
expectation, waiting for the glorious appearance of the Lord from glory, then
non-appearance, at first spoken of as delay, created some urgent questions about loved ones who died in the meantime, for example, would they miss out?
But, for the most part, faith held on. But, when the whole Apostolic generation
died, which was to be the terminal generation, the crisis deepened.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that those who died would be included with
those who are alive at the Lord’s coming, but eventually they all died. Now, widescale defection began and the faith of many was put on the defensive. This is the
situation we find in the Second Letter of Peter which was not written by the
Apostle Peter, but is best dated after 90 CE and perhaps as late as about 150 CE,
that is, 70 to 120 years after the death of Jesus.
That a crisis exists we can read from II Peter 3:3ff, "... in the last days scoffers will
come. They will ask mockingly, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever
since our ancestors died all things continue as they were from the beginning of
creation!’" In other words, the believers were taunted with the fact that it was
"business as usual" in the world. Nothing happened. What, then, of the claims of
the risen, ascended Lord coming in glory and power to judge the world?
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Richard A. Rhem
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It is obvious that the delay of the Lord’s appearing must have created an
extremely difficult situation for the early Christian movement. That movement
was composed of two distinct groups - the Jewish Christian community located
largely in Palestine and the Gentile Christian community, the result of Paul’s
mission. These two groups had sharp differences. New Testament study sees
Luke’s writing in Acts as an attempt to show how these two were reconciled, but
there was a sharp division. Yet, both groups held essentially to the apocalyptic
hope that was rooted in Jewish apocalypticism that was anticipating the end of
the age, and both saw the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of
the End, which would be consummated with his return from heaven to judge the
living and the dead.
The imminent return of Jesus did not happen and that significant fact
necessitated a major transformation of Christian understanding.
It was Albert Schweitzer who called biblical scholarship and theological inquiry to
the recognition of the fact that there occurred in the immediate past Apostolic
period a transformation of understanding of the Gospel. The transformation
moved the early Christian movement to what is called early Catholicism. That, in
fact, was a move not only to create a new understanding of the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, but also toward the creation of the Christian Church as an
institution, a regularizing of the faith, mode of worship (liturgy, sacrament)
and structure of the Church. This was the beginning of doctrinal formulation
and the formulation of orthodoxy.
It was not a simple process. There were strenuous battles fought over the right
interpretation of the Gospel and it did not happen smoothly or at all places at the
same time. There were now groups and views designated as heretical and after a
long, tortuous process there emerged what was designated the regula Fidei, the
Order of the Faith. In the process, Jewish Christianity was reduced to a sect and
eventually faded from the scene and St. Paul’s theological understanding was
transformed into the faith of the early Catholic Church.
It is not possible for me in the sermon format to document this or set forth the
conflicting path by which it was accomplished. Perhaps, however, you can sense
what was happening if I describe the whole movement as the eschatology of the
Apostolic faith. This must be plain to see, for the problem was the imminent
return of Jesus which did not happen.
Eschatology is the teaching about the last things, the end of history. It derives
from Eschaton, a Greek word meaning “End.” In sum, the post-Apostolic
movement had to create a new scenario - a scenario which took into account
ongoing history and the living of life in the world which obviously did not pass
away.
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This was the first and major shift in understanding made imperative for the
Christian movement by the delay of the parousia. In his Formation of Christian
Dogma, Martin Werner, a Swiss historian of dogma, taking his cue from
Schweitzer and others, claims this was the womb out of which all Christian
dogmatics must be understood.
So what?
Remember, my purpose in this series, to demonstrate that the point in history at
which we have arrived as the third millennium dawns calls us to revision and reimagine the faith, in continuity with the tradition but in fresh expression which
takes account of the new world which is our historical context, and that need not
cause fear or anxiety because this kind of development has been going on from
the very beginning.
The second letter of Peter was a plea not to yield to the inevitable. Those who
realized that Jesus’ return was delayed were not all scoffers, although I am sure
some were. There were also those who took up the challenge to try to make sense
of the Gospel in new historical circumstances. The author of our text was an early
fundamentalist, pleading yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.
I find it fascinating that that writer still has voices crying the same thing. Two
thousand years later there are those claiming the days are counting down. In
Grand Rapids, as reported in the Press yesterday, the TV evangelist John Hagee
signed his most recent book. He was pictured with a considerable article. The
new title is From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun, and Hagee
claims he is speaking the Gospel and telling people what the Bible says about the
"terminal generation." That is remarkable. That is precisely what St. Paul thought
he was doing. It was precisely the fact that the Apostolic generation was not the
terminal generation that created the crisis that necessitated the major revisioning
of the faith that led to the development of early Catholic tradition.
This week I viewed a catalogue from Christian Book Distributors. On the back
cover is advertised the novel series Left Behind, by Tim La Haye and Jerry B.
Jenkins. Six volumes out. Millions of copies sold. You can get all six at the
bookstore for $134.92 or discounted from CBD for $88.50. The same catalogue
has a centerfold advertising seven titles on Y2K, titles such as The Road to
Armagedon and Jesus’ Final Warning. And, of course, there are t-shirts
emblazoned with such slogans as "Don’t Be Left Behind," and "Trib Force."
The lack of taste is one thing. The economic exploitation is another. But, the
abysmal ignorance of such guilt-imputing, fear-inciting abuse of the Bible is
simply incredible. My pastoral concern rises from the damage such misuse of the
Bible and ignorance of the development of theological understanding creates. The
biblical story tells of the God Who has created all, sustains all, and embraces all full of grace with the purpose of love. It is Good News. It was Good News then,
© Grand Valley State University
�When God Fails Expectations
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
when Paul was overwhelmed by the grace of God and the hope that appeared in
Jesus. It is Good News now, recognizing Paul’s misconstruing of history, but
recognizing, as well, his marvelous sense of being in Christ, in grace.
If we can see through the limitations of Paul’s knowledge of the created order,
beyond his limited understanding of world history, human development and the
ongoing evolutionary unfolding of reality, we can still hear his witness to the God
Who in Jesus drew near, was embodied, and Who invites us to trust, to rest, and
to continue the 2000-year process of updating the Good News.
It was not easy to realize that Jesus was not imminently returning. It was a curse.
Many lost their grip, gave up, sought another way. That is part of being human. It
felt like God failed their expectations.
That happens to us, too, when we use God as a magic genie to protect us or secure
for us some favor, when we make God too small, a "fix it" person keeping us from
harm’s way, free from the tragedy and suffering that is part of our human lot. But
that is to use God, and such a God sometimes will fail our expectations - our
prayers will be to no avail.
The problem, of course, is not God, but our expectations. God calls us to
maturity, to responsibility, to the way of Jesus, to the life of compassion and
community and, in all of that, God is Emmanuel - God with us, today and
always.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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c804448cc56f91f5ee82871da8a8c83c
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
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<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.
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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
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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
Pentecost XII
Series
Good News Then and Now
Scripture Text
Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 24:34, II Peter 3:4
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-0-19990808
Date
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1999-08-08
Title
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When God Fails Our Expectations
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 8, 1999 entitled "When God Fails Our Expectations", as part of the series "Good News Then and Now", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 24:34, II Peter 3:4.
History of Church
Re-imagining the Faith
-
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d81960265235f52ac041368b5da95c17
PDF Text
Text
Journey With Us Toward New Horizons
Text: Genesis 12:1; Hebrews 11:8, 10
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 13, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
This is always a wonderful Sunday for us. There is a vibrancy in the air and
electricity; there is anticipation, and so we have a moment again of new
beginnings - new beginnings for the church year, for the educational year, for a
new intentionality and seriousness in making this place a place of deep reflection,
a place of education, study, taking faith seriously and trying to create a whole
congregation of theologians. The invitation this year is COME, JOURNEY WITH
US - Toward New Horizons. The image is that of the journey, which is a biblical
image, very common biblical image of the life of faith, the pilgrimage of faith.
And, Toward New Horizons - it is always so for the people of God, always called,
as was Abraham, to go into the future, claiming the future by faith, with
confidence, because of the one who calls us.
Today I want to think with you about thinking the faith, about the serious
wrestling with the Christian tradition, so that it is more than a matter of rote,
recitation, and simple perfunctory, habitual action, but that it is that which arises
out of the center of our being and is pursued with dedication and commitment,
with seriousness. Next week Peter will talk to you about another aspect of that
journey, which is the whole matter of spiritual formation, for it is not enough to
think the faith. There is a hunger within all of us for the experience of God, the
experience of faith. On the third week, Bob will call you to compassionate action,
because the faith that we think and the God that we experience is not simply a
luxury to be enjoyed in splendid isolation, but is that which shapes us and forms
us to be instruments of God for the carrying out of God’s purpose of compassion
and justice and love in this world. So, it is a time of new beginning. At Christ
Community, we are on a journey. It has ever been so. But, it is so in a new,
serious manner as we speak, because we have a new charter of freedom and a
great opportunity to find that translation of the Christian tradition that finds
resonance with our contemporary experience. That is what we are trying to do.
As Gary Eberle, in his book, The Geography of Nowhere, has said, "The old maps
don’t work anymore. The early cartography you’ve seen in books, the shape of a
world as it was conceived, those maps were wrong. They were based on an
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
inadequate understanding of the physical universe. But the mapmakers did, in
the forming of those maps, have a sense of orientation, and those maps did help
people to have an understanding of where they were in the world. We know today
that those old maps are archaic. They’re simply wrong. And today we have this
global positioning system where you can be steaming in a boat in the middle of
Lake Michigan and turn that on and from a satellite it will point out exactly where
you are. In such a day, in such an age where we can pinpoint our location on the
planet, we recognize that there are many of us who don’t really know where we
are. Because the old institutions have crumbled, and the old authority structures
have been called into question.
Just to create a little envy in those of you who aren’t going with us to Geneva this
afternoon, where we’ll spend a few days with the ghost of John Calvin over our
shoulder, and then, if you really want to get jealous, I would tell you that we’re
going down to Provence in the south of France, to lollygag on the Riviera. But, on
the way down, we’ll stop at Avignon and, in order to prepare a little bit for that
for the people going with us, I was reading again of that old church history and
was reminded that it was in the 1300s that the papacy moved out of Rome and
moved to the south of France, Avignon, and one of the old wonders that we’ll visit
and tour in another week is the Palace of the Popes, and it’s a very splendid place,
I understand. I have not seen it. But, the Palace of the Popes in Avignon was a
sign of the wealth of the papacy in the 1300s. This was the age of the domination
of the church and the papal structure found ways to tax and charge fees and to
gain money by hook or by crook, so that the income of one of those popes in those
60 or 70 years in which the papacy was in Avignon was better than three times
that of the king of France. (I’d always thought I’d wanted to be a Cardinal, but I
think I might as well go all the way and try to be a pope). My point in bringing
this up is that, in this time, the Pope was the most powerful person on earth. He
was a religious figure and the church dominated the continent of Europe, and the
kings groveled before the papal authority because the papal authority had the
keys of the kingdom. The papal authority could excommunicate a person and
shut them out of heaven. Or, on the other hand, open the gates of paradise.
Think of it. That was the world. The king groveled before the Pope because he
believed that the church was a divine institution on this earth that literally
controlled the gates of the kingdom. Now, if you have that kind of power, you can
do anything you want to, and you can control the masses, let alone the monarchs
of the earth. That was the world; that was what was believed. The kings groveled
before the religious authority, and it works if you believe it. And, if you believe it
and you have a dominating religious figure, you can control society, you can
manage people, you can manage morality, for example. They say that Moscow
was a very moral place during the heyday of the Communist regime. Dictators,
potentates, totalitarian powers can control people, and there are those who
believe that people need to be controlled. There, in Avignon, is a palace to witness
to the power and the authority of the religious authority that dominated the
world.
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
But also in Geneva is the memorial to the Reformation in which that institution
that had grown corrupt and fat began to crumble before the waves of reform. But,
even the Reformation would still, on the basis of authority, make the Bible the
authoritarian power that the Pope was in the Catholic communion. John Calvin
did everything he could with the elders of Geneva to control the morality of
Geneva. Authoritarian power and domination.
Well, is it any wonder that once that institutional form began to shatter that the
human spirit eventually emerged to a point where it threw off all kinds of
authoritarian hold? Isn’t it humanly understandable, isn’t it perfectly obvious,
human beings being who human beings are, that, where there is a crack or a
fissure in the structure and the daylight comes through, it will go like this? And so
we have the Age of Reason and we have the ascendency of the human intellect
and the honoring of human rationality to a fault, as we know in our postmodern
age, where we have come to recognize that the rational depiction of reality is only
a model and a fiction, as a matter of fact, and the human mind and human
rationality cannot get itself around the mystery that is life, the ultimate mystery.
Nonetheless, we are the products of that move to the modern and we are people
who take for granted that non-authoritarian way of living. Modern society will no
longer tolerate a church or a book or a tradition that shuts down its mind and
simply calls it blindly to follow through the labyrinths of life.
Robert Bellah, one of the most acute observers of society, a sociologist in this
country, in an essay about religious evolution, cited Tom Paine, at the Age of
Reason, who said, "My mind is the church," and Thomas Jefferson who said, "I
am a sect." Then Robert Bellah went on to say that the modern period has come
to accept the fact that people will join themselves voluntarily to institutions.
There is no compulsion for you to be here, to be a member of this institution, and
one of the marks of the church in our day is that its voluntary nature is
recognized. There is no longer that coercion. If you live in this block, you are not
automatically a member of this parish, and therefore coerced to be a part of its
institution. Robert Bellah says that private, voluntary, religious association in the
west achieved full legitimation for the first time in the early modern situation.
But then he goes on to say, in the full flowering of modernity, will there be
another kind of institutional structure that will be able to encompass the
freedom, even the autonomy of the human person? Will we find some kind of
institutional forms that will be supportive and helpful and give guidance and
direction, but apart from the kind of authoritarian control that was imposed from
the outside? He says, rather than interpreting these trends, this fragmentation in
society where we go our own way and start our own clubs and our own
denominations and our own congregations - rather than interpreting these terms
as significant of indifference, of secularization, I see in them the increasing
acceptance of the notion that individuals must work out their own ultimate
solutions and that the most the church can do is provide a favorable environment
for doing so without imposing on them a prefabricated set of answers.
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Bellah says in the modern situation, the contemporary situation, it is the task of
the church to create here an arena, an ambience for the pursuit of the religious
quest, for the asking of the questions, for the struggle and the wrestling with the
issues of life, but no longer will it be tolerated that we impose upon you a
prefabricated structure of belief. That’s the way it was. That’s the way
traditionally it has been, and it will not work anymore, and we are simply at that
cutting age where we have accepted that fact, we celebrate that fact, and we invite
you to journey with us into a future that is unknown and uncharted, because that
is the very nature of the human pilgrimage of faith. Bellah says it remains to be
seen whether the freedom modern society implies at the cultural and personal, as
well as the social level, can be stably institutionalized in large-scale societies. Yet,
the very situation that has been characterized as one of the collapse of meaning
and the failure of moral standards can also, and I would argue, more fruitfully, be
viewed as one offering unprecedented opportunities for creative innovation in
every sphere of human action.
Now, that’s the very same note that was sounded earlier when I read that excerpt
from Gary Eberle. Will there be, out in the future, some reconfiguration of the
institutional life of the human family that will be able to embrace our questions
and our quest? Who knows? But, one thing we know - you cannot go back to
yesterday. To go back to yesterday, you might as well go back to Avignon. You
might try to re-invent a world where the Pope can subdue the king or the
President. But it won’t work. And I don’t want to go back to such a world. I want
to be able to think. I want my own belief and my own faith to rise out of the
center of my own being; I want to believe what I believe. I want to be able to think
about it so that what I believe is what I really think, so that I really believe it, so
that it’s a reflection of the authenticity of my humanness. No one is going to put it
on me. Not an institution, not a book, not a tradition. I’ll use the institution for
every value it has; I’ll value this book and study it and mine its treasures; I’ll
respect that tradition and gain all of its wisdom, all the wisdom I can from it. But,
it will finally be my journey, my pilgrimage, my faith, my insight, because it’s my
life! And I invite you to journey with me, and to think about it, so that it is a
thought-full journey of faith.
I’m afraid that in many churches today, the situation in our country will be
berated and the President will be berated and all of that despair will be
everywhere. Well, that’s the very time for the people of God, recognizing our total
vulnerability, all of us, recognizing the weakness in the heart and center of all of
us, recognizing that the decay and the distortion that is present everywhere is not
the consequence of some fall from perfection, but is simply the clinging of the
slime and the mud from which we’re emerging.
I believe in the future! Because I believe in God! I believe in the human family
because I believe the Spirit of God is nudging us, beckoning us ever onward. I
believe in a world of the future marked by justice and by grace and by compassion
because that’s in this book. This book tells me that the image is the journey. We
© Grand Valley State University
�Journey With Us to New Horizons Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
are on the way. Abraham was called to go out, not knowing where he was going to
go. He was 75 years old and married to a barren woman. When God would start a
new beginning out of the chaos of Genesis, of the garden scene, of the flood scene,
of the Babel scene - when God would start a new beginning, when God would
form a people, he starts with human impossibility; he starts with an old man and
a barren womb in order to create newness. And the writer to the Hebrews was
writing to an early church in the wake of Jesus. People who were followers of
Jesus, but who were getting weak knees, who looked about them and were
becoming dismayed, who didn’t know if they could hold on anymore, and he said,
"Hold on. Be strong. Faith is the conviction of things not seen, it is the evidence
of things hoped for." Look at old Abraham. Look at Sarah. They went out; they
didn’t know where they were going, but they simply heard the voice of God and
they followed to be the people of God.
To be a biblical people is to be a people not settled, not fixed, not set in concrete.
It is to be a people who are on pilgrimage, who don’t know what the future holds,
who are willing to take all the tradition and all the wisdom of the book and all of
the institutional forms and use them for all they’re worth, but to submit to none
of them, not to submit one’s mind and one’s heart. It is to be a person who
believes, who thinks and who goes, confident, because God is God.
That’s where we’re going, by God. Then, don’t despair. Don’t let your tail drag.
Stiffen the weak knees. Let there be a glint in your eye. Believe in the future;
believe in possibilities; believe and know, as Bob offered in his prayer, that we
create our future because we recognize that we don’t stand here as puppets on a
string, but as responsible human beings who are called to journey and faith
toward new horizons with confidence and joy.
References:
Robert Bellah, “Religion in Human Evolution,” American Sociological Review,
1964.
Gary Eberle. The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern
World. Sheed and Ward, 1995.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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50fc5e996b23d211fb70cbb1f8fde47f
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
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
Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11,8,10
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Robert Bellah, "Religion in Human Evolution," American Sociological Review, 1964
Gary Eberle. The Geography of Nowhere: Finding Oneself in the Postmodern World, 1995.
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-0-19980913
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-09-13
Title
A name given to the resource
Journey With Us Toward New Horizons
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
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 September 13, 1998 entitled "Journey With Us Toward New Horizons", on the occasion of Pentecost XV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11,8,10.
Authority
History of Church
Journey of Faith
Modernity
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/befcd6a9717ce1988cae2762beb203e5.pdf
de1954b1bb8b583be2337cb95c306751
PDF Text
Text
Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Text: Genesis 3:10; Psalm 130:1, 4; Psalm 132:1; Philippians 3:12
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 9, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
About three weeks ago, our house began to tremble and a check out the window
revealed that, down the driveway next door just south of us, lumbered a great big
Cat, some kind of heavy equipment. It had a steel arm that seemed two stories
high that came, finally, to an iron jaw. The next morning the engine roared, the
Cat positioned itself in front of the home that had sat next to ours as long as we
had been there. The arm went up, the jaw came down on the flat-roofed dwelling
and punctured through it, here, there, in another place – through that roof like it
was nothing but tar paper. And then the arm raised up and the jaw moved over
and down to the side and simply nudged the wall in and another wall in and
another wall in, and before one knew it, that which had been a home in which to
dwell was lying in fractured rubble on the basement floor. And then those jaws
reached down and hungrily grasped all of the shattered fragments, lifting them
up and depositing them in a dump truck that was waiting. Once all of the rubble
was out of that floor, once again the arm rose up and moved over to the side of
that poured concrete wall and just went, "Poof, poof, poof," and then crrrunched
those slabs of concrete until again the jaws could come down and pick up the
pieces and put them also in the truck and, within a day’s time, where a dwelling
had been there was now simply a vacant lot, a sandbox.
Demolition. Deconstruction. Dramatic. Changing the landscape. Not just for the
fun of it, but in order that in that place there might rise a new dwelling, to the end
that my tax appraisal will go up.
Deconstruction, demolition is a part of the human experience in order that there
might be reconstruction, new construction. An old and inadequate dwelling was
demolished in order that a new house might arise more adequate to the moment,
to the time, to the person. And, as I experienced that event, I saw an analogy of
my ministry, a ministry of deconstruction, perhaps even demolition – I hope not
with the brutality of that iron Cat. Nonetheless, for the same purpose.
The analogy breaks down at one point. In the case of the house, there was total
demolition, total clearing of the space before the new construction could begin. In
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the case of my teaching and preaching ministry, it is necessary, obviously, that
there be deconstruction and, simultaneously, construction, that there be
dismantling and, at the same time, mantling anew, lest we be left for a time with
no place to dwell. But, the purpose is the same, and the deconstruction and the
dismantling that must always take place in terms of our faith dwelling is not in
order to demolish, but to clear the space for something new and more adequate
to our ongoing knowledge and human experience.
It has always been that way in the faith journey of the people of God. Jesus stood
in the line of the Hebrew prophets. Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew. His
devotion, his worship, his communion with God was within the parameters of his
Jewish experience. But he reached into that structured religious establishment
and rearranged some rooms and created some new spaces, challenging the
conventional wisdom that had moved God afar off. He brought God near, the
unbrokered presence of the God Who was accessible to all. And, of course, he
paid for it with his life.
It was the same throughout 2000 years of church history, but perhaps nowhere
more dramatically than in the 16th century. We are the children of the
Reformation, that disruptive event in the life of the church that tragically tore
asunder the body of Christ, and yet necessarily dismantled and deconstructed an
institution that had become overlain with forms and structures that blocked and
hindered and obstructed the flow of the grace of God rather than aiding that flow.
It must have been difficult for people in the 16th century, at the time itself. I think,
for example, of those who came to the altar for the bread and the cup, believing
that when the bell sounded at the altar and the priest invoked the spirit of God
there was a miracle that occurred, the transubstantiation of the bread and the
wine into body and blood, literally. Martin Luther had a hard time moving away
from that. His fine distinction was that the bread remains bread and the wine
remains wine, but the body is above and around and under the physical element
that doesn’t change. Similarly with the cup, so that over against the
transubstantiation of the Roman church, the Lutheran tradition had
consubstantiation, con, that prefix that means "with." The body was with the
bread; the blood was with the cup. I suppose there were those who were troubled
when John Calvin suggested that it is neither transubstantiation nor
consubstantiation, but rather that Christ is present spiritually when one receives
bread and cup with faith.
I suppose there were those who brought their children to the baptismal font and
got the baptism executed and breathed a sigh of relief because the Catholic
tradition taught that the child was born with original sin and that in the
baptismal act, the grace of God removed the original sin and gave the child a
fresh possibility, a new start, a start for the first time, as it were. I suppose there
were those who were troubled when they brought their child to the baptismal font
in Geneva, only to learn that there was no automatic grace attached to the act, for
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
the sacramentarian conception of things had been altered to where it was now the
prayer and the faith that engaged the promise and brought the grace, but without
that automatic guarantee.
Throughout the history of the church, as human knowledge has expanded and
human experience has grown, and reflection on the faith has continued, there has
been that ongoing deconstruction, not in order to leave us naked and bare, but in
order to clothe us anew with that which is more adequate, which is in accord with
the broader spectrum of our human experience, so that one need not check one’s
mind at the door and come in for mindless ritual or devotion but, rather, that one
with mind and heart according well might offer one’s whole being to God.
In these fall weeks we are re-imagining God, not simply because new is better or
old is no longer valid in every case, but in order that we might meet God again for
the first time, in order that we might have a fresh experience of the living God, a
taste of new wine, that we might experience the presence of God, the
illumination, the light of God on our total experience in a whole new way in order
that it might be deeper and richer, in order that it might engage our whole being
and our life of worship and our life generally might flow out of a center within us
that is whole, in order that there might be cohesiveness in our life.
Living before the face of God - that’s the purpose. That’s the end of our thinking
and our rethinking. Our thinking and our rethinking are vitally important, but
are always a step removed from what really matters. What really matters is the
communion of the soul with God. What really matters is that we might live with
that peace of God within us, that we might live with a kind of confidence and
strength and serenity in the conscious awareness of the presence of God in whom
we live and move and have our being.
Sometimes it’s necessary to deconstruct some of our images and some of our
systems and doctrines, because they become blocks. They no longer fit with that
which we experience otherwise. They no longer illumine our lives, but they
become, if they can be continued, just rote exercises that we do out of custom or
superstition, rather than that which we do thoughtfully, with awareness, with
attentiveness. Finally, all that we do here together is only for one purpose - that
we might live before the face of God in a relationship that is personal.
Let us be clear about that. What we are engaged in here week after week is
sometimes a matter of deconstructing, but never as an end in itself, but always to
aid and abet that living, personal relationship with God which is at the heart and
center of our religion. The function of religion is the hatching of the heart; it is
the opening of the self to the sense of the sacred, to the holy, to God. And in order
to make that accessible, available, in order to create the environment, the setting
in which that may happen, we stammer and stumble and we re-imagine,
sometimes involving dismantling, but always in order to be mantled afresh with a
sense of the gracious, living God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
The images we carry of God, as we have noted, are terribly important. That
Genesis story pictures the Garden of Eden, that blissful place in which the human
persons are placed, protected, innocent, and unaware. The image of God in that
old Hebrew myth which is so profound in portraying our human experience, our
relationship with God, conveys the image of a God Who comes into the garden
from outside, Whose very presence brings with it fear and guilt to the human
person who has engaged in that inevitable human act of wondering,
experimenting.
The church, I think, has missed the point of that garden scene, particularly
through the interpretation of St. Paul. The experience of experimentation, that
transgression, the coloring outside of the lines is called "the Fall." As a matter of
fact, there is part of the liturgy of the church that recognizes that there was
something more going on there. It is called The Paradox of the Fortunate Fall,
because obviously that which evolved in the human being following that
transgression was gain along with the pain. There was that inquisitiveness that
brought knowledge and awareness and fear and guilt. There is in that story a
reflection of that which is endemic to the human person, a sense of fear and guilt,
a sense of treading over boundaries. Dwelling east of Eden now involves
alienation and estrangement. Yet, who could say that they should have stayed
within Eden in that innocent unawareness?
In the Hebrew tradition, the images of God were churned as they wrestled with
the concrete experience of their life in the presence of this Creator God Who
could only be conceived of as sovereign lord and king in a hierarchical society
that was structured from the top down. Yet, there was also a sense of the grace of
God. The Psalmist, in Psalm 130, speaks out of the depths. Have you ever been in
the depths? Have you ever had to cry out of the depths?
Out of the depths I cry to you, O God. O God, if you should mark iniquity,
who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be
feared.
And the forgiveness creates hope and newness.
Here we have one model, one experience, but the experience of a personal
relationship with God, the sense that there is a grace that embraces even the one
who in the depths, in the crisis, feels estranged, alienated.
The next Psalm is a poem of serenity out of creaturely humility, the human
person being what the human person ought to be, not lifting up the eyes, not
raising the sights too high, not haughty of spirit, and consequently, in that
acceptance of the human condition, experiencing the presence of God as a child
nursing at the mother’s breast. "O God, my soul is serene." Serenity through the
awareness of God Who is Creator and I a creature.
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
But, there are also people like Paul whose lives are going down the road one way
and who have an experience, cataclysmic and dramatic that turns them around in
their tracks and, whatever that vision of Jesus involved, it issued in the
transformation of Paul’s life. Was it for him also a moment of awareness? Did he
suddenly see everything in a moment? What he saw clearly was that religious
structures are transcended in that kind of experience. His wrath was raised when
religious people came in after him, into the communities that he had formed, like
the community in Philippi, with "religion." He calls them dogs; "Beware of the
dogs, the mutilators of the flesh."
Paul has been pictured in a thousand sermons as a classic case of conversion,
obviously from Judaism to Christianity. It’s just not so. Paul in the 3rd chapter of
Philippians denigrates not at all his Jewish experience. It was a very positive
experience. It was a very adequate experience. It had the potential for mediating
to Paul the God of Israel. But that mystical encounter which he had, relativized it,
until he came to see, not Christianity, but the possibility, the experience of the
reality of the communion of the soul with God. He was born a Jew and he died a
Jew. He would never have sensed himself to be anything else, but I think he
would have said, "It’s not so important that I’m a Jew anymore," and I don’t think
he had the foggiest idea that he would be the founder of Christianity, which he
was. Jesus didn’t found Christianity. Paul did. But he would have said the form
doesn’t matter, because religion is not a ritual form or a doctrinal system.
The experience of God transcends religious ritual and doctrine. All is transcended
in the communion of the soul with God. Once the soul has been indelibly marked,
when it has been seared with the seal of the presence of God, the reality of God,
then all religious form and structure is relativized. Then use it or put it aside. But
know that, in a moment of awareness, the presence, the embrace, the
undergirding, the overshadowing of God – of the sacred and the holy that
permeates the whole of reality – sustains, succors and nurtures and nourishes us.
So, where are you? That was God’s question to that first couple cowering in the
bushes. "Where are you?"
"Hiding."
"Why are you hiding?"
"Well, we decided to be human."
God knows our frame. God remembers that we are human. God made us that
way. God didn’t create this whole vast cosmos and all the myriad millions of
humankind in order with a blast of God’s breath to damn it all. God is the One in
whom we live and move and have our being, who says, "Where are you?"
Why don’t you just stop for a moment, for just for a moment. You could become
aware, if you could just hear you are loved. If you could just break through as
© Grand Valley State University
�Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Paul broke through and finally see that, if God is for us, who could be against us?
That there is nothing in life or death or principalities or powers or things present
or things to come, nothing in the heights or the depths, nothing in all creation
that could ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. If for just a
moment you could become aware, it would transform us forever and enable us to
rest from our restlessness and be reborn with an energy that, with the Apostle
Paul, we would say, "I press on with joy, seeking to grasp that which has grasped
me."
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/002f0445ebe2a49ab830148f2a3a450a.mp3
6279c408b092c1d3ef29f955d24915f8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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 XXV
Series
Meeting God Again for the First Time
Scripture Text
Genesis 3:10, Psalm 130:1, 4, Psalm 132:1, Phil. 3:12
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-0-19971109
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-11-09
Title
A name given to the resource
Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
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 November 9, 1997 entitled "Living Before the Face of God: The Personal Dimension", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XXV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Genesis 3:10, Psalm 130:1, 4, Psalm 132:1, Phil. 3:12.
Faith Journey
Grace
History of Church
Re-imagining the Faith