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God and History: What’s Happening?
Pentecost XXIV
Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25; I Corinthians 15:20-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 11, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
There is in your liturgy printed a reading from Carl Sagan, which I am not going
to read in its entirety, but in a paragraph at the end, commenting on Planet Earth
as it is seen from outer space, that little pale blue dot that we have all seen, Carl
Sagan writes,
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our
obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from
elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that
astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building
experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the
folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it
underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately
with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only
home we've ever known.
The piece from Carl Sagan to which I referred is a statement that was sent to me
immediately following the events of September 11, and I must admit they
resonated with me more than the pronouncements of preachers and television
evangelists in the immediate wake of that crisis. No help from outside. It's in our
hands, and we are called to kindness and compassion. We see the symbol of that
Planet Earth hanging in outer space, the image that has come to us from that
picture taken from deep space in which we see the reality of that global
community without any divisions or barriers, and we realize that we are on Planet
Earth together. What Sagan says, he says as a scientist, as a great communicator
of the mysteries of science, and also as one who has been rather outspoken in his
denial of the traditional God that we image in the Church traditionally. And yet,
what he says is not so different from what we have been saying here for some
time, and that is that the God "out there," in control, sovereign of history who
directs, governs, moves according to a pre-determined purpose, that that God is
dead. That God doesn't really work for us anymore. Well, at least not for me and
not for some of us. For all for whom it works, that's wonderful. As a matter of
fact, what we know about the cosmic reality of which we are a part and the
© Grand Valley State University
�God and History: What’s Happening?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
historical development whose unfolding and in whose unfolding we have
emerged, that God in control just doesn't seem compelling.
Oh, I know. In crisis times we flee to old securities. A couple of old securities to
which this nation has fled in these recent weeks are patriotism and piety.
Patriotism -I won't ask you to raise your hands, but how many of you have flags
on your cars or in your windows or in your shops? A rather natural and normal
kind of response and reaction. After all, the flag stands for something precious
and the flag is identified with this nation and we love this nation, and this nation
has come under attack. And so, the flag is our effort to affirm our love and our
devotion to this nation that has been so richly blessed and a source of such
blessing to us all. But patriotism also has another side to it, another dimension,
and I think some of that enters into our flying of the flag also. Namely, we are the
United States of America and you really ought not to mess with us, and if you do,
you'll get your due, you'll get yours. The flag is perhaps sometimes, on the part of
some, at least, a sign of belligerence and determination not to succumb to those
who would dare attack us.
And then there is piety, of course. The first week or two the pews of the churches
across the nation were filled. Thank God people got over that in a hurry. But, still,
a flight to the piety of the past, to the old securities, to the God in control.
Dear God, at a time like this, don't we long for, don't we wish for a God in
control? A sovereign of the universe, the Lord of history, the one who is guiding it
and directing it and who will bring it all to its consummation? Don't you realize
that the greatest temptation to a preacher at a time like this is to secure you in
that old security? That is a very normal and natural longing, as well. Deep down
in the human being there is that desire for all to be well and for someone to be in
charge and in control, the good and gracious God in charge, the omnipotent one,
almighty God.
There are many who are exploiting that old traditional image of God to give a
kind of security which, frankly, we can't give. It’s not surprising that we should
revert to that or flee to that. After all, our whole biblical tradition conditions us to
look for that kind of a God.
There is that beautiful vision in Isaiah 65, a passage to which I return again and
again, that beautiful picture of shalom, that picture where there is no infant
mortality, where everyone lives to an old age, where one builds a house and lives
in it and plants a garden and eats its produce, where one is able to benefit from
the fruits of one's labor, a world in which lion and lamb lie down together and
there is no hurting, no destroying in all God's holy mountain. It's a wonderful
dream, reflective of something deep in the human heart, reflective of something
that I think we all think should be or could be or maybe will be - that beautiful
harmony throughout nature in history, shalom. Is it any wonder that we who
have been nurtured in the biblical tradition would flee to a God like that in a time
© Grand Valley State University
�God and History: What’s Happening?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
of crisis? The God who is judge of all the earth brought Judah into its exile, but
now, as the savior of the world will bring Judah back home and will create a new
heaven and a new earth, making it all right. I want a God like that. I would love a
God like that.
Or, Paul, who was nurtured on that same prophet but who had the encounter
with Jesus Christ, the risen one, knocking him off his horse, that vision that Paul
had that turned him around, that vision of the living Lord whom he believed
would come shortly. In this great chapter on the resurrection Paul not only points
to the resurrection, but in that paragraph I read he gives you the whole scheme as
it is going to unfold very shortly - Jesus Christ risen from the dead, now ascended
in heaven, ruling, putting all enemies and all adversaries down under his feet,
and when he subdues all hostile powers, then he will take that kingdom and yield
it up to the father and God will be God, all in all. Wonderful, wonderful drama.
And Paul thought he was living on the very edge of history where it was about to
transpire and, of course, 2000 years later, you can't take that same vision and
still keep it alive. You just simply have to say Paul didn't understand where he
was in the time line. And yet, you can appreciate what Paul was longing for, what
turned him around, that which made him go to the ends of the earth proclaiming.
It was a consummation, it was the resurrection over the last enemy, death. It was
the subduing of all negative darkness. It was the overcoming of all evil. It was
bringing to that moment when God would be all in all, maybe in different
contours than Isaiah, but the same kind of thing.
It’s really a silly thing when, 2000 years later, a series of books called Left Behind
takes that thing literally and plays it out as though it is about to happen in the
future. Ridiculous. But, I can understand what was in Paul's mind and heart. For
me, rather than Left Behind, I'll take Harry Potter. Because Harry Potter deals
with magic and mystery, and there is something in us that believes that there is
more going on than meets the eye.
If you want a couple of concise statements about what is going on in history,
Jacques Monad, the Noble-winning biologist, in his classic Chance and
Necessity, says if he accepts this negative message in its full significance, "man
must at last wake out of his millenniary dreams and discover his total solitude,
his fundamental isolation. He must realize that, like a gypsy, he lives in the
boundary of an alien world, a world that is deaf to his music and as indifferent to
his hopes as it is to his suffering and to his crimes." Wow!
And Erich Fromm writes in Man For Himself. "There is only one solution to his
problem - to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness in the
universe, indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending
him which can solve his problem for him." Sort of like Sagan saying no outside
help available.
At his inaugural at Cambridge University, G. N. Clark wrote, "There is no secret
and no plan in history to be discovered. I do not believe that any future
© Grand Valley State University
�God and History: What’s Happening?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
consummation could make sense of all the irrationalities of preceding ages if it
could not explain them, still less could it justify them."
Well, just three voices of contemporary scholarship in the light of the tradition of
faith of which we are a part which would leave us on our own. And to be left on
our own in a time like this is a scary business. There is no wonder that we unfurl
the flag. There's no wonder that we pray fervently to almighty God.
And yet, there is Harry Potter, and there are the fairy tales that we all love, and
what do we love about a fairy tale? Certainly it has its darkness, its demons, its
shadow side. But, the fairy tale also always comes out right. Eventually, the good
prevails and the light prevails.
We love a fairy tale. I think we love a fairy tale because there's something
intuitively in us that believes that the fairy tale is true. There is something in us
that refuses to believe that there is nothing more, that there is simply this cosmic
reality unfolding without mind or purpose or direction. There may not be
someone grinding the gears of the universe up there. I think Sagan is right. There
is no help out there, but there may be something in here. There may be
something enlivening the process, the whole creative unfolding. There may be
that which moves toward light and life. But, it may not win. It may not prevail.
And yet, it will not finally be destroyed.
I think that really is the story of Easter. As you think about this, we would so love
an omnipotent God. We would so love that God Almighty. We so much want God
to be in control and in charge, and yet the very God that we profess, revealed in
the face of Jesus Christ, was revealed in the vulnerability of a child, and we will
celebrate it here in a few weeks. The clue we have of the nature of God is a God
who is incarnate in a child, who was embodied in a human being, a human being
who with grace and love and compassion makes his way, speaking truth to power
until finally he is crucified, and, as he is crucified, he says, "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do."
The God we want is a God who is in control. The God who is revealed to us if we
could believe it is the God who is revealed in the vulnerability of love. The only
persuasion is the persuasion of love. There is no coercion. There is no God
Almighty. There is no omnipotent one. There is no one out there to pull the
strings and move it around. What do we pray? What do we mean? What do we
ask for when we say "God bless America?"
It is time for us, of course, to be saying "God bless the world," but to know that
that prayer is seriously offered as a commitment to be the embodiment of
kindness and compassion and care, because there is no help that will come from
the outside. There is only that persistent Spirit, that persistent deity that
pervades, with which reality is pregnant, that calls us again and again and again
to life and to love, and if need be, to sacrifice and to yielding up life.
© Grand Valley State University
�God and History: What’s Happening?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
We don't really believe the Gospel. We would hardly dare live according to the
Gospel. It would be a dangerous thing if Jesus were in charge. I don't know if I
would dare vote for him. Because everything would have to be different.
I don't know about what we're doing in Afghanistan. I don't know about the
military action. I really don't. Very early this morning they were talking about bin
Laden on the videotape saying he had nuclear weapons. I'm not wise enough to
know what we are to do in this kind of a situation, but I know this and you know
it too, military might will not solve this crisis. We cannot bomb enough in order
to bring out a good result.
It's no use praying to Almighty God, for the God within us who would move us to
kindness and compassion, to civility and human decency, and to a transformed
earth - that is the only God we have, and the only power that God has is the power
of love. It's a pretty risky business, good friends. It is the temptation of a preacher
to make you secure in the arms of almighty God, but it is the task of the prophet
to tell you that God would move through you to be the arms that would secure the
world
Something is going on. More than meets the eye. Thank 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
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.
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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
Pentecost XXIII
Scripture Text
Isaiah 65:17-25, I Corinthians 15:20-28
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-0-20011111
Date
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2001-11-11
Title
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God and History: What's Happening?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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/
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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 November 11, 2001 entitled "God and History: What's Happening?", on the occasion of Pentecost XXIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 65:17-25, I Corinthians 15:20-28.
Immanence
Incarnation
Pentecost
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PDF Text
Text
The Human Face of God
From the Eastertide series: Credo
Text: John 1:18; Colossians 1:19
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 6, 2001
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The only explanation for the existence of the Christian Church, the Christian
religious tradition, is the conviction that the one who was crucified lives. It didn't
happen all at once, but gradually. Those who were intimately connected with
Jesus were convinced that he was alive still and they experienced his ongoing
presence.
Jesus was a Jew. Those who followed him were Jews. The earliest Jesus
movement was Jewish. The thing that eventually caused the break off and the
formation of a new, of another, religious tradition was the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. The conviction that this one, who had embodied God in their estimation,
this one in whose face they had seen the heart of God, this one of whom they
spoke in terms of incarnation – they were convinced, ultimately, that such a life,
that such a human existence could not simply be violently ended, entombed and
forgotten. And so, eventually, out of that conviction about Easter, about the
ongoing presence of Jesus in the Spirit, the Christian community was formed.
They gave witness to that in various ways and we have those in the New
Testament. We have Paul, for example, the earliest written witness to the ongoing
life of Jesus through his visionary experience. Luke tells us that delightful story
about the two on the road to Emmaus who were joined by a third whom they did
not recognize until, as their host at table, he broke bread and their eyes were
opened, they saw him. Luke goes on in the next paragraph to add that, discussing
those things on Easter eve, suddenly Jesus was in the midst of them and they
were terrified and afraid. He said, "Please, just give me something to eat and calm
down." There were various ways in which that reality was witnessed to. There is a
great diversity. But, through it all, there is this conviction that the crucified lived
and was present with them still, in conversation, in community, in the breaking
of bread.
It took a long time before that Jesus movement became a Christian movement
and gave itself a clear, creedal definition. Before it did that, it had moved from
that environment, that context of Israel into the culture and the language of the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Human Face of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Greek world, the empire. When eventually that faith was carefully defined and
refined as it found expression, for example, in the Nicene Creed, 325 CE, and the
creed from Chalcedon, 451 CE, what came to creedal expression was reflective of
the biblical statements, but more so. John had said, "In the beginning was the
word," or the divine intention, and that intention became enfleshed, took on
human form in our midst, and no one has ever seen God, but this one reflected
God as a son reflects a father. In the Letter to the Colossians written by Paul,
perhaps, or a Pauline school, there is that claim that in Jesus all of the fullness of
God dwells bodily.
The creeds, Nicene and Chalcedon, did not say a lot more than that, but they said
that philosophically. They said that very clearly, and the picture was that there
was one who came from another realm into our realm, embodying in human form
God from another realm, from outside, who, after doing his work, returned to
that other realm, so that we live, as it were, in an alien realm. Not only are we
alienated, but we are in a natural realm which is not the realm of the Spirit, God
existing outside of this order.
One of the great Church fathers, Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, who carried
on a furious controversy over the natures of Christ, affirming the deity of Christ,
put it this way: Jesus became human, or God became human that we humans
might become divine. God became human that we humans might become divine.
With all due respect to this great bishop of the Church, let me suggest another
angle. What if God became human in order that we might become human? What
if to be human is divine? What if this Jesus around which all this centers, what if
this Jesus did not come in from the outside, but emerged in the process? What if
this process of billions of years eventuated in a creature that began to be human,
that began to be conscious until, in the fullness of time at the right time, there
was this one Jesus upon whom they looked and said, "My God ! That's it!" What if
the incarnation which we point to in Jesus did not really hinge on Jesus, but on
the human? What if the revelation was that God is in the human? What if to be
human is to be divine?
You young people on your way - what if what God is really about for you is not to
make you divine, not to make you some bloodless, blameless, flawless paragon of
divinity, but flesh and blood human beings? This preposterous statement in the
first chapter of Colossians, that all of the fullness of the Godhead was crammed
into him bodily, what does that mean? Doesn't it mean that humanity is a
container for divinity? And wouldn't it be possible if what God is about for us is
not to make us divine, but to make us human, not to rescue us from this natural
order, but to make us at home in this natural order? To be human.
Oh, we are not human, you know. Now and again we are human, humane. Now
and again we glimpse it. We have moments, but for the most part, the old animal
nature takes over, that long clawing out of the jungle. Just put me in a corner, just
raise my fear level and my humanity is drained away in a moment. I wonder if the
© Grand Valley State University
�The Human Face of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
divine intent in the revelation in Jesus was not to say to us God is calling us to be
human, and to be human - would that not be divine?
Now, it may sound a little convoluted, but I am on to something. Do you hear
me? Might not the divine intention for us be, not that we become divine as the old
Church father contended, but rather that we become human? Ah, if we can
become human we could revel in a spring day like this, we could take in the
blossoms, we could listen to the cantata of the birds, we could look into the face
of a child, we could touch each other with love and melt. That is to be human.
On a larger scale, I was thinking this week, there was a proposal that our defenses
ought to be altered and, of course, our defenses will need to be altered in a
different kind of a world, a world no longer determined by the Cold War when the
East and the West had certain kinds of defenses; and the administration is saying
that that has to be updated, and certainly that is a valid point. But, as I listened to
the discussion about this missile defense system from outer space, the claim is
that the technology really isn't there yet. And then, some of my cynicism arose a
bit and I thought, "But, it will be good for the defense industry."
Then I had another thought. It's a silly thought. It gives witness to my impossible
naiveté, but I thought, because I am thinking about God's intention for us to be
human, what if this great nation of ours with all of its resources and all of its
power should go to these rogue nations? Now that the whole game is changed
around and we don't have this impasse of East and West, we have these rogue
nations here and there that could well launch a missile. What if we went to them
with all of our power and all of our resources and said to them, "What is it that
you really need? What is it that you really desire? What is it about us that is so
offensive? And what could we do to help you realize your dreams?"
Ah, now you know I have entered senility. But, I think about it and I think why
wouldn't that be worth a try? I know there are evil people in the world, a Saddam
Hussein, a Gaddafi, the Taliban, I know that. But, what makes people ugly? What
brings out the worst in people? And are not those, our "enemies," demonized in
our minds? What would happen?
I was thinking, we change our defense system now, we aim at these rogue
nations, we find a way to keep the world at bay, we find a way to keep our thumb
on the world. But, what would happen if we, with all of our power and all of our
strength, should try to create a different kind of feel in the world? What if we
really went and said to people, "Tell us your dreams and let us see if we can help
you realize them." The billions of dollars that we will be using to put a missile
defense system in place over the next decade just possibly could be invested in
human community that might not necessitate a new defense system. Now, that is
really stupid: But, I wonder if the call of God is not to become divine, but to
become human. And if we could become human, would that not be divine, for in
him all of the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily, and why not in you? Take
bread and cup as a sign of your solidarity with the one who calls you not to be
© Grand Valley State University
�The Human Face of God
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
blameless and flawless, but to be real, to be human. That would cause one to cry,
"My 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
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
Eastertide III
Series
Credo
Scripture Text
John 1:18, Colossians 1:19
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-0-20010506
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001-05-06
Title
A name given to the resource
The Human Face of God
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
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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 May 6, 2001 entitled "The Human Face of God", as part of the series "Credo", on the occasion of Eastertide III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 1:18, Colossians 1:19.
Divine Intention
Incarnation
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/37c6ce31d56affa51b69cab49417ecdb.mp3
ffcd90a52b1f11f16ac5e0ba312714b0
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4aff2660c7225e86b5abed67a3edceec.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
Of Angels, Songs in the Night and Deep Human Intuition
New Year’s Eve
Luke 2:9, 30; Galatians 4:6
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Christmastide I, December 31, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Well, we've done it again - angels, songs in the night, a Jewish maiden visited by
Gabriel, the annunciation of a child to be born, conceived by the Spirit, a woman
overshadowed, giving forth a son who was to be called Holy, the Son of God. We
have sung the songs again, the beautiful carols. We have experienced the lump in
the throat and the catch in our voice, and we have looked at one another and
loved one another and had that deep down intuition that after all is said and
done, it is true that the final and ultimate reality is love and at the core, at the
center of things, is a God who is the source and fountain of love, the ground and
goal and guide of all that is. We have seen that all in the flesh of a child. We
understand that intuitively. Somehow or other, we grasp it. As we celebrate this
holy birth once again, we know the story is true. We know the fairy tale is true.
We all love stories, don't we? I told you before that I have such a vivid memory of
loving the fairy tales of my childhood. I remember when I must have been four or
five years old, I contracted Scarlet Fever and, in the dark ages when I was a child,
the house was put under quarantine. There was a sign on the door, warning
anyone who would approach. My father and my three sisters had to move out into
the garage. What could my mother do? She couldn't leave me a motherless child
and so she had to put up with me over a week or ten days. She read me stories,
The Gingerbread Man, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, all those
stories, and she would get so weary, I know now. She would try, on occasion, to
skip a page or two by turning two at a time and I would catch her, of course,
because I knew the stories by heart. They were always the same, but they were
always wonderful, and they always gave that same impact.
Fairy tales are true, you know. They are true deep down about the nature of life.
Take a fairy tale and look at some of the favorite childhood tales - they are not all
sweetness and light at all. They have violence in them, they have darkness in
them, they have dragons, princesses locked up in castle towers and all of that
kind of thing.
© Grand Valley State University
�O Angels…and Deep Human Intuition
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
If you go to Marshall Field's in Chicago right now, you can see the magnificent
windows downtown that they always decorate at this season of the year, and who
makes the cut this year? Harry Potter. We hear so much discussion about what a
wonderful phenomenon this is, that our children are reading again and it is not
too unusual to see children going down the hallway in school reading a book.
Someone should tell them that the Greek philosopher Demosthenes fell into a pit
doing this, but the point is that these stories are wonderful and we all get caught
up in stories. But, the stories, you see, are posited on the premise that there is
some meaning and purpose, that things mean something, that things fit together,
that things go somewhere, and so we love stories because we find ourselves in the
stories.
"Once upon a time ..." All I have to do is say those words and don't you feel all
sorts of warm associations with "Once upon a time?" Or, "It came to pass," and,
of course, the wonderful, final line, "They lived happily ever after." Well, you see,
that may sound naive, but I am not being silly this morning. The fairy tale and the
fact that we love it, the fact that it starts out in some time whenever, and the fact
that it ends with people living happily ever after is posited on a whole world and
life view. It is a whole sense of reality and that is that things make sense and that
finally, ultimately, things will work out and that finally there is a positive purpose
at work in the total mix of things. Fairy tales are loved, I believe, because they
convey that to us and we love them because, I'm going to suggest, that that
touches something deep within us, some deep human intuition, and the
Christmas story is certainly an example.
The Christmas story is not a fairy tale like the Gingerbread Boy. We're talking
about a real, concrete, human birth and a real, concrete moment of history and a
particular place among a particular people, but all the accoutrements with which
the story is clothed are those marvelous accoutrements of the imagination, the
poetic sense, this trying to bring to expression the deepest, deepest truth that
came to expression in that child, in that life, in that ministry, and all of those
wonderful garments in which the story is cast, of angels and songs in the night, of
kneeling shepherds and adoring kings, all of those are retrojected back to that
holy birth of that One who in his humanity caused people to kneel and to say,
"My God!" There, they said, is the clue to the meaning of the universe. There is a
window on the core of reality. There is an insight into the best of human life. And
so, they told the story with angels and shepherds and kings, a night sky illumined
by a star, and glorious, angelic anthems, and they told it all dressed marvelously
in those garments in order to give expression to what was their deepest
conviction and that was that what came to expression in the flesh of this one was
a projection of that which was at the heart of things, that this one was the
embodiment of God, that this one, in flesh, embodied that which was true deep
down about the nature of reality.
I got a call from my daughter about a television program this past week. It ended
up, actually, to be an infomercial, but the reason the call came was that there
© Grand Valley State University
�O Angels…and Deep Human Intuition
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
were a couple of familiar faces that showed up there - Amy Jill Levine, who has
been here, you remember Amy Jill, the Jewish scholar, and Dom Crossan, and
come to find out, this was a program sold to the network by the Coral Ridge
Ministries. When I saw Amy Jill Levine and I saw Dom Crossan and then I saw D.
James Kennedy, I knew that either the millennium had come, or there was
something operative here, and as a matter of fact, this was a Coral Ridge
Ministries effort to tell the story of Christmas, but there was that which I could
identify with so completely from my past. There was this anxious effort to prove
that it was all true. The scholars selected were some mainline scholars, such as
Dom Crossan and Amy Jill Levine and Helmut Koster and others, and it was so
interesting to watch how the whole thing was stacked, how their sentences were
selected out and used to make a certain point, and then the truth was told. I
thought to myself, I could see myself and my past when I so much worried that it
really happened in Bethlehem. Or that annual trotting out of the astronomy
stories about constellations and whether or not the taxation under Quirinius was
really at that particular time, and all of those little details that were so important
in order to make it true. I remember those days. It has been a painful journey, to
be able to get beyond all of that and to celebrate it as a wonderful story which at
its heart has the deepest trust, the deepest intuition, that at the center of reality is
the pulsating abyss of love.
Ah, you say, Christmas once a year, a naive little story. But, one has to remember
that that intuition that spied in this child, grown into adulthood in the person of
Jesus Christ, the intuition that saw in him what the story says, was an intuition
that arose in the darkest of times. It was brutal, Herod's reign. It was the time of
Caesar Augustus. It was a time of tramping Roman legions. It was not a good
time. It was not all sweetness and light. For the people to whom he came, he was
to be a savior and a deliverer from a life that was tough and rough and pervaded
by darkness.
So, we have just celebrated the story again with all of its wonder and all of its joy.
We could say, well, we can put it away. It's nice story, it’s naive, however, because
just this past week six or seven murders in Connecticut in one shot, and six or
seven in Philadelphia a day or two ago, and one of the anti-Palestinian, orthodox
rabbis shot last night in Jerusalem, and the peace process going nowhere, and the
Palestinians being encouraged to step up the fight in order to find somehow or
other some freedom, some independence in that seemingly implacable impasse of
ancient feud and violence.
You may say, "Ah, nice story." I say, Yes, yes, yes. I believe it. I believe it in the
face of all the evidence to the contrary and all the evidence to the contrary only
convinces me more deeply that the story is true, and I don't know when and I
don't know how, but I do know that love is stronger than hate, and light prevails
over darkness and I do believe the story is true. Angels, songs in the night, all of
the garments of this wonderful, wonderful story, and it meets the deepest human
intuition and by God, it is true.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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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.
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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New Years Eve
Scripture Text
Luke 2:9, 30, Galatians 4:6
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20001231
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2000-12-31
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Of Angels, Songs in the Night and Deep Human Intuition
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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/
Language
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eng
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Sound
Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 31, 2000 entitled "Of Angels, Songs in the Night and Deep Human Intuition", on the occasion of New Years Eve, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 2:9, 30, Galatians 4:6.
Incarnation
Love at the core of reality
-
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PDF Text
Text
This Is Our Story
Christmas Eve Candlelight Eucharist
Text: Micah 5:5; John 1:14, 18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
December 24, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I had a very easy morning; I didn't have to preach, so I was able to sit where you
sit and to take in the wonder of the story in song, pageantry, drama, and as I sat
there, I was very much aware of the fact that that is precisely the way the
Christmas mystery ought to be experienced. That is the way it is best presented;
that is the way it is best appropriated. It is a beautiful story and it can best be
sung. Of course, eventually it catches up with me and here I am, trying to preach
about it again. But, let me contrast for you the story as it was dramatically,
musically, instrumentally set forth, and the account which we read a moment ago
in John's Gospel.
The drama, the pageant, of course, is from the birth stories of Matthew and of
Luke, principally Luke's story, the shepherds and angels and the virgin with the
baby boy, but, also from Matthew the kings, and in those birth stories we have the
story form. Can't you feel the contrast with the reading of the first chapter of
John, prologued in this Gospel, "In the beginning was the word and the word was
with God and the word was God. All things were made through him and apart
from him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was
the light of humankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has
never comprehended it."
Then the little historical paragraph about John the Baptist, but then again the
statement, "This was the true light that enlightens everyone that was coming into
the world." And then another historical reference, "He came to his own and his
own received him not," and that marvelous, climactic statement - "The word
became flesh and dwelt among us."
You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a literary critic to feel the contrast
between Luke's marvelous story and John's more philosophical or theological
presentation of exactly the same event. In Luke, it is story, and on Christmas Eve
we're here to celebrate this, our story. It is a particular kind of story. Some would
call it a myth, but it is not really myth in a technical sense, because it refers to
© Grand Valley State University
�This Is Our Story
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
historical events. This was the time of Caesar Augustus and Herod and his brutal
reign. It happened at a particular place and in a particular social context, so the
story is rooted historically. But, it is not just documentary history, either. It is not
the kind of historical account, for example, if one would visit France and the
Normandy Beach area and take in that marvelous museum that was built for the
50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, where one becomes in a cinematic
production, as it were, a very part of that climactic moment of the Second World
War. That is not the kind of history it is, either. It is a story that is rooted in
history about real history and real people, but it is told with legendary
accoutrements that make it into a marvelous tale, as it were.
John does not tell the story. John philosophically, theologically looks behind the
story to its meaning. But, John and Matthew and Luke are trying to give
expression to the same mystery, the mystery of Christmas that we celebrate
tonight. This is our story. It is our story. It is not the only story. There are other
peoples of other times and other places who have stories, too, and those stories
also reflect their deepest intuitions about what is at the center of things, deep
down. But, this is our story and it is a marvelous story. It is a beautiful story. It is
a story with a profound meaning. This is our story and it tells us about the nature
of God.
John in his more philosophical, theological presentation reaches behind the story
to say that what the story is about, what Luke wrote about the shepherds, the
angels in the night, the virgin Mary giving birth to a child in a cattle stall, is the
birth of one who is truly human, but in whose humanity there was an
intensification of luminosity, of revelation so that he could say that that word that
was in the beginning with God, which could also be translated the divine
intention, in this moment in history, was enfleshed so that in the humanity of this
one who was born, who came to maturity, those who saw him and were
encountered by him could do no other than to say, "My God."
The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and John says no one has ever seen
God, but this one shows us who God is. This one, in human flesh, is the selfexpression of God. This one sounded like God. This one acted like God. What one
experiences in this one is what one experiences in God and, maybe most
profoundly, John would say that in the manner of this one's revelation, humble
birth as a child, one has an insight into the nature of God, which is love revealed
in all of the vulnerability of a child. The nature of God read in a human birth. The
being of God revealed in a child. The love and the vulnerability of a child's birth,
the ultimate revelation of that which is at the core of reality. That is our story.
That is what the story says. It's a wonderful story. It's a beautiful story, and what
it tells us is even more wonderful: that at the core of reality is the love
unconditional, as wide as creation, that embraces us and will never let us go.
Our story speaks of a God who is love, a love that is vulnerable, and a love that is
with us and continues to be available to us in the enfleshment of the other. In the
© Grand Valley State University
�This Is Our Story
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
letter of John we read God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in them, the love of God experienced in human flesh, the ultimate
truth about reality, as concrete and real as the person on your right and on your
left, God revealed in Jesus, the nature of God, love, present with us. The story
tells us what is true everywhere, at all times, and the ultimate, final word is love.
That is our story. It is love that would stop at nothing to live out the embodiment
of the heart of God, even to the extent of being broken and poured out in order
that finally we earthlings might get it, with the ultimate truth lying in the
vulnerability of love, because it's a reflection of the very core of reality. My, my,
my, what a story!
© 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
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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
Christmas Eve
Scripture Text
Micah 5:5, John 1:14, 18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20001224
Date
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2000-12-24
Title
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This Is Our Story
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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 24, 2000 entitled "This Is Our Story", on the occasion of Christmas Eve, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 5:5, John 1:14, 18.
Advent
Incarnation
Love at the core of reality
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/04fae8e78999c087f73acbf444bd5df3.mp3
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PDF Text
Text
The Lost Cause of Christmas
Advent III
Text: I Samuel 2:8; Luke 1:52-53
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
December 17, 2000
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Last week I spoke a bit about Christmas and its drivenness and the frenzy of the
season that can be so distracting for us that we fail, ironically, to do the very thing
the Advent season is for, which is to wait, to be quiet, to contemplate. I spoke of
that because I think it is an important fact of which to become aware, to be
conscious. I didn't really mean to-be "Rev. Grinch," throwing a wet blanket on
your celebrations, and it was not one more preacher's harangue about keeping
Christ in Christmas or scolding you for the commercialization of the day. That is
not how I understand preaching. My task is not really to scold you or to drive you
or impose guilt upon you. My task as a preacher is to hold up a slice of life and
invite you to think about it, invite you to think with me about it in order that we
might come to full consciousness of our lives, in order that we might come to an
awareness so that we live our lives and are not simply lived, in order that we
might live from the inside out, and so I try to hold up that slice of life and invite
you to think with me. This is really a conversation in which you are invited to
think about it with me. Receive it not as some authoritarian proclamation, some
declaration from above, some dogmatic utterance which is absolute. It's more
often tentative.
Someone went out last week and, apparently agreeing that the days could be
frenzied and we could be driven in our life, said, "Now, next week tell me how to
unplug." Well, as a matter of fact, we can't unplug. We are so thoroughly woven
into the fabric of our cultural experience that what we have to do is live, learn to
live with attention, and the only way that we can overcome that drive that would
snuff out the spirit and stifle the emergence of spirit in our lives is through
awareness and consciousness. But we cannot disengage from our social, political,
economic structures, the whole social context in which we live. We could try to
escape life somehow, maybe, flee to a monastery or a convent, but that's not
possible for most of us. We're going to have to deal with life and all of its variety
and all of its diversity and all of its seductiveness and all of its pressures and, in
the midst of that, do our best to live with awareness that we might be intentional,
that we might realize our fullest humanity and our greatest potential.
© Grand Valley State University
�The Lost Cause of Christmas
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker the other day and clipped it out. The scene in
the background was probably the Himalayas and there was a cave in front of
which was sitting one of these Eastern gurus and there was a young man sitting in
front of him with his backpack on, and the caption under the cartoon was, "Don't
you think if I knew the meaning of life, I wouldn't be sitting in this cave in my
underpants?"
That's the way I feel often when I prepare to come here to try to say something
with enough significance to get you out on a Sunday morning in a blizzard when
you might well read the paper with a cup of coffee. So, hear me again this
morning as I address the idea of the lost cause of Christmas.
By the lost cause of Christmas, I want to set before you the almost impossibility of
us celebrating the Christmas miracle as it originated in this world. I want you to
think with me this morning about the fact that for people like us, it is almost
impossible to observe Christmas according to its original meaning and intention
– almost impossible, because the Christmas story is a story about a revolutionary
movement toward liberation. It has a particular historical, social, economic,
political context, and in the last decades we are becoming more and more aware
of the times of Jesus, the time of Jesus' birth, the nature of the life of the average
person the majority of which were peasants at the time that Jesus came into this
world.
I hope this afternoon sometime you take a moment and read the page in your
liturgy from a book, The Message of the Kingdom, by Richard Horsley and Neil
Silberman. Horsley has another excellent book that I did not quote called The
Liberation of Christmas, and these scholars have taken what we know now about
the concrete historical context of Jesus' birth and life and, in setting that forth,
have come to understand the birth stories, as I believe they were intended when
they were written by Matthew and by Luke. The context of the world into which
Jesus came was a world in which the people of Israel, God's, people, Jesus'
people, were a people occupied by a foreign power, a backwater province in a vast
Roman empire, and there was social disruption brought about by heavy taxation,
loss-of land, movement to cities, and the ever-present Roman legions. The period
is spoken of as the Pax Romana, the Roman peace.
The Romans were not bad people. In fact they were wonderful administrators.
They are still revered for the law, the administration of government of which they
were geniuses. But, nonetheless, the bottom line was the Roman legion, and there
was the exploitation and the oppression of the poor of the provinces, and the
people to whom Jesus came were a marginalized people who were voiceless and
powerless, and the Song of Mary, is a revolutionary ballad. The closest I could
come to in thinking about a parallel in our own experience would be the song “We
Shall Overcome."
There is tremendous power in music, tremendous emotional power that unites
and bonds human beings in a cause or a movement- and those songs, in Luke's
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gospel the Magnificat which I read a moment ago, the song of John, the
Benedictus, the song of Simeon, the Nunc Dimittis, those songs which were based
on the psalmody of the people of Israel’s past – Mary's particularly, as I
mentioned, very much dependent on the song of Hannah. Those songs that
celebrated the birth of Jesus were revolutionary ballads, which celebrated the
mighty act of God moving for the liberation of God's people. "The mighty cast
down from their thrones, the lowly lifted up,,.the hungry fed, the rich turned
empty, away." The world is turned upside down in those songs. The way of the
world as experienced by those poor and dispossessed people is turned upside
down. There is a reversal of circumstance, and God is praised in a spirit of
Doxology with great joy because now God has acted, God has moved, and those
songs and the birth stories of Matthew and Luke are probably some of the earliest
records we have of that early Jesus movement that was a revolutionary
movement, looking for a change of historical circumstance, moving from being
the underdog to the possibility of a humane existence. I don't think that, if we
look at those songs carefully and if we put them into the context of which we are
becoming more and more aware, the social, historical, economic, political context
at the time of Jesus, there can be any question about that. Those songs continue
that grand tradition of the Hebrew prophets who saw the possibility of an
alternative world, of an alternative kind of community.
And so, I say to you what must be obvious - it is extremely difficult for us to
celebrate Christmas in its original meaning and significance, because we just have
nothing in common with the poor, marginalized, voiceless and powerless people
among whom Jesus was born. We naively identify with those people. We put
ourselves in the skin of Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Simeon and Anna,
the people of Israel to whom the Lord came, but, as a matter of fact, if we're
honest, we're on the other side of the line. We are Rome. We are empire. We are
affluent. We are powerful. We call the shots in our world, and for us to celebrate
Christmas in its original meaning and significance is to undercut ourselves and
the status quo, which has dealt very kindly with us.
Now, that isn't so profound and I think it must be clear if we think about it for a
moment. The reason that Jesus was crucified, my old Lenten theme put concisely,
is that he died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. The autnorities,
ecclesiastical and political, of the day of Jesus, rightly saw him as a threat to the
world as it was organized at that time. Any time a world is organized in any time,
those who are the power brokers are not going to want that world to be changed,
and they are not going to be happy with the prophetic voice which suggests an
alternative possibility. So, I simply make the point - for us to celebrate Christmas
is pretty much of a lost cause.
So, what have we done? Well, I talked about one possibility last week. We have
made a holiday out of it, and it's a wonderful holiday. Friends gathering together,
families coming home, beautiful trees and flowers, the sights and sounds and
fragrances of the season, all the remembrances of Christmases past, all of that
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wonderful, beautiful, warm, human experience. Nothing wrong with that. We've
made the Christmas mystery and miracle into a wonderful holiday.
I emerged from my lofty perch last night only to find that Nancy was channel surfing. When Nancy surfs, she is bored. Now, on most Saturday nights she is
bored because I am incommunicado from about Saturday noon until I get here
Sunday morning, I grunt. That's all. But I emerged long enough to come down
into the bedroom where she was surfing the TV only to see that Lawrence Welk
had arisen from the dead and there he was! It was the conclusion of what must be
a famous Christmas special that is probably trotted out every year about this
time, and I entered just at the end of the program where Lawrence Welk said,
"And here comes Santa Claus," and Santa Claus came out in all of his regalia and
all of his splendor and the band struck up "Joy to the World, the Lord Has
Come!" I said to Nancy, "God has just spoken to me. I'm going to write this down
so I don't forget it." Precisely, precisely. On this wonderful holiday, Santa Claus
comes and the band plays, "The Lord Has Come, Joy to the World!"
In the Church we have done another thing with it In the Church we managed to
celebrate Christmas by weaving it from its original intention as a social protest, as
a social critique, and moved it to the personal experience of salvation. We sang it
a moment ago as a supplication and one of my favorite carols, "0 Little Town of
Bethlehem, Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today." It's wonderful.
Nothing wrong with that, either. The personal experience of being in communion
with God, being at peace with God, the experience of grace and forgiveness, my
goodness, how could I be against that? It is very, very important. It is just that
that is really not what Christmas was about. Christmas was about an alternative
kind of community, a different kind of society, different power arrangements,
different economic arrangements.
Now, if Jesus had been about personal salvation, Jesus may have gone about to
people and said, "Are you saved? This is how you can be saved, if you will repeat
this formula, if you believe in me, your sins will be forgiven and you will have the
hope of heaven, the promise of something in another time and another world."
The Gospels were not good news about the fact that a person can be reconciled
with God through Jesus Christ. Paul talks about that, but then Paul thought the
end was right around the corner and so he was excited about the fact that this
treasure of Israel was for all people and all people could come into this experience
of grace in this God of Israel, and of course, he identified this with the death and
resurrection of Jesus which you don't find in the Gospels.
The birth stories in Luke serve as a preface to his Gospel, which is about the life
and the ministry and the teaching of Jesus, and Luke tells us in those birth stories
how he understood this Jesus. How he understood this Jesus, according to the
Gospel that we read every Christmas, is that this one was the act of the eternal
God coming into human experience in the flesh of Mary's child in order to change
the world. But, we've been able to salvage some of the spirituality and the piety of
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the holiday by turning it into the possibility of personal salvation and making of
our Christian religion, frankly, a salvation cult. That's what we are, and we invite
people to faith in Jesus, to receive forgiveness and have then heaven's gates open
wide. Go through your hymnal, read your Christmas carols and just see how we
have domesticated and spiritualized the story of the birth of Jesus. I don't mean
to ruin the carols for you but, if you read them perceptively over against what was
quite obviously the intention in the original story, you will find that we have
made of this revolutionary liberation document an event, a matter of personal
piety and salvation.
So, what are we to do? We can recognize, for one thing, that throughout the
centuries the Christmas story has regained here and there its original intention,
because there have been peoples who have read the story and found hope and
been inspired and have initiated movements toward liberation and freedom.
Most recently in our own experience we know of Liberation Theology that
originated among the poor, particularly in Latin and South America, in what they
call base communities where the poor folk, the peasant folk would come together
in homes and study the Gospels and they actually read themselves into the story.
As I said a moment ago, we tend to identify with Anna and Simeon and Mary and
all of them, when really we have to identify ourselves with the Roman Empire.
These base communities of people that are dispossessed and socially outcast,
marginalized and powerless, read themselves into the story and are able to
identify with it and it has become a tremendous source of ferment and a
movement toward more justice and equity and it has had that revolutionary
intent realized in many of those communities. Interestingly, the Vatican has
silenced some of the leading voices of Liberation Theology because the Church, in
order to maintain its establishment status, doesn't want to rock the boat and get a
peasant rebellion going, and so the Church has officially said you may not talk
about the original meaning of Christmas. Continue to speak about saving souls.
You can have the most wonderful personal spiritual experience in the world and
no one's going to care. You can be just as pious, just as devoted, just as full of
faith, just as sure of your salvation as possible, and there is not a tyrant or a
dictator or a politician anywhere who will bother you. It's only when you begin to
speak and act like Jesus did that you get into trouble. But, the stories have been a
stimulus for that through the centuries.
Still, here we are. What are we going to do? How are we going to celebrate
Christmas, being in the position we are? Here I am white, male, affluent,
powerful.
The nation went through an extended period of time without knowing which
candidate for the Presidency actually won, and now we know. Some voices are
being raised about the fact that there are minority groups that have been
disenfranchised, and I don't suppose we're ever going to know the full story of
everything that went on, or really who got what numbers of votes. But, I wonder
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if there is anything to that. Is it a fact that minority people were herded down to
get registered and that they went to vote, and once they went there, they didn't
really know what they were doing? That's a possibility, isn't it? And one shouldn't
be too surprised about that. For whatever reason you might defend it or attack it
today, the Electoral College originally was instituted in order to ensure that the
elite would rule, and as a matter of fact, when the elite rules, things go better. For
people like me, at least, they do.
But, now, I wonder if there is anything to the claim that the poor and the
marginalized were disenfranchised. Jesse Jackson says so. I don't like Jesse
Jackson. I worry about the fact that I don't like him and I really ask myself, "Is it
because he's black that you don't like him? Is it because he's black that your first
response is negative?" I don't think it is; I think it's because of the curl of his lip
and the shape of his moustache, but then, my mother didn't like my moustache,
either. So, I have to say, when he comes on the screen, I don't want to hear him,
and when he talks about a mass demonstration of minority folk on Martin Luther
King's birthday in January, I say, "Jesse, we've just been through a rather
strenuous period of time. Can't we get on with life? Can't you drop it? You're
nothing but an opportunist, anyway. Why don't you just let it go?"
And then, I realize that I'd jolly well like it to be let go. In fact, I wouldn't change
anything if it were up to me, if nobody complained. If there wasn't somebody out
there, a gadfly, an irritant, a revolutionary, with all of his flaws and all of his
foibles, if there wasn't somebody agitating, I wouldn't do anything about the
world. What can a white, male, heterosexual, powerful, affluent person do to
capture something of Christmas?
If I were a woman, I would use the revolutionary, ballads to get equal rights. If I
were a person of homosexual orientation, I would use it in order to gain respect
and dignity and be accepted just as a human being. But I'm on top of the heap.
Any protest that changes anything is going to diminish my privileged position.
How can I celebrate Christmas? Holiday cheer? Revel in my personal salvation?
And then, these words from Rudy Wiebe. I don't know who he is, but I like what
he wrote:
Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live.
You show wisdom by trusting people.
You handle leadership by serving.
You handle offenders by forgiving.
You handle money by sharing.
You handle enemies by loving.
You handle violence by suffering.
In fact, you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody,
Toward nature,
Toward the state in which you happen to live,
Toward women,
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Richard A. Rhem
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Toward slaves,
Toward all and every single thing,
Because this is a Jesus society and you repent, not by feeling bad,
but by thinking different.
Maybe the only way I can be honest with Christmas and honest to God is to work
at thinking different.
References:
Richard Horsley and Neil Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus
and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World. Grosset &
Dunlap, 1997.
© Grand Valley State University
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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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Interfaith worship
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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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Event
Advent III
Scripture Text
I Samuel 2:8, Luke 1:52-53
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Richard Horsley, Neil Silberman. The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World, 1997.
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The Lost Cause of Christmas
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Richard A. Rhem
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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 December 17, 2000 entitled "The Lost Cause of Christmas", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I Samuel 2:8, Luke 1:52-53.
Advent
Awareness
Incarnation
Intention
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fc7aab70eab7737a64cb1ff24e2b0143.pdf
9f13becf1aa9ced24403c50169eaef2c
PDF Text
Text
Birth: The Way Home
From the Advent series: Home
Text: John 1:12-13; John 3:3
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Christmas Day, December 25, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
In his poem, “For The Time Being,” W. H. Auden writes, “Nothing can save us
that is possible. We who must die demand a miracle,” and so we do. The Advent
theme of “Home” culminates today as we note that birth is the way home. And
birth is a miracle. Birth is not a human possibility; it is the gift of God. Not this
morning that we celebrate the literal birth of the Christ Child, but the birth that
the Christ Child pointed to and made available to us: that birth from above, or
being born again as it is popularly referred to. It is that birth and only that birth
which is the way home. We’ve noted the yearning for home in the human heart.
Last week we established the impossibility of home, the impossibility as a human
possibility. But let me celebrate with you this morning the reality of spiritual
birth—that new birth which is the gift of God. It is that miracle that we who must
die demand, for nothing humanly possible can save us.
New birth – that’s the way that John describes it in the Christmas story that he
tells, which is not with all the familiar accouterments of stars and angels and
bright shining song, but rather in a cosmic eternal drama. In the prologue to his
story of Jesus, he begins in the beginning, in fact before the beginning. He says,
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.” Then he tells how that Word was in human history, in the history of that
special people that God had called. But that Word, coming to his own, was not
received. “He came to his own, but they received him not.” But there were a few,
John tells us. Some received him and some believed, and to them he gave power
to become the children of God. John is very clear that that is not a human
possibility, for he stresses that those who believed in his name were born not of
the blood or of the flesh, or of human will, but of God. For birth, the way home, is
not a human possibility. It is God’s gift and it is all of grace.
In order to explicate the themes of his prologue, John tells us in the third chapter
the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a respected leader in Israel, a rabbi, a
great teacher. Nicodemus was curious about this one Jesus who had caused such
a stir and to whom the common people listened gladly. He came to him by night
to learn the secret of that spiritual reality, that world that seemed so foreign to
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Nicodemus. Jesus said to him, “You must be born from above.” And Nicodemus,
as the foil for this mysterious teaching, says “How can one enter a second time
into his mother’s womb?” Jesus replies, “I’m not talking about literal physical
birth. I am talking about that miracle that happens to one. That miracle that no
one can manipulate and no one can force that is not at our disposal. I’m talking
about that birth from above, where the breath or the wind of the Spirit of God
blows where it wills. You see the effects of it, but you don’t know whence it comes
of whither it goes; the mystery of the movement of God who has invaded our
space and our time in the miracle of the Word become flesh, whose Spirit
continues to riffle our hearts and create newness within us.” Nicodemus probably
stands for the classical, institutional religion, that institutional religion which is
so very valuable because it keeps the story alive and it continues in a community
like this where the story is cared for and nurtured, and where the rituals are
enacted, and where we baptize children, and take bread and cup. The
institutional religion is so very important because the Spirit always needs form.
But Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus made it very clear that
institutional religion and ritual and form such as we are all participating in is not
an end in itself, but only a means to an end. And, the end in itself is new birth. It
is a spiritual life. It is newness that is created that comes upon us silently,
mysteriously; that new spiritual reality that opens up whole new worlds before us
and brings us home wherever we are in whatever circumstance. When one has
been born from above, one is birthed into a whole new reality and that is the end
of Christmas. That is the end of incarnation. And that is the glad Good News that
has come to the world in the birth of one who said, “You must be born again.”
To be born again. That phrase has entered into popular terminology in our day,
hasn’t it? Wasn’t it Jimmy Carter who in his presidential campaign brought the
term to common usage? I think perhaps it was, and since that time don’t I
remember a cover on Time Magazine some years ago that talked about the “Born
Again” phenomena. Since it has become so popular, everybody gets ‘born’d again’
now and again—athletes, celebrities; any kind of a peak experience is now
referred to in common parlance as being ‘born again.’ Of course, when that
happens it tends to drain such an ideal, or such a reality, of its deep spiritual
meaning. Yet, maybe the very usage of the term is the way people at large get the
idea that it dawns upon them that there is something more than just getting up in
the morning and going to work and coming home and going to bed to get up in
the morning . . . and all of the routine of our ordinary days where we can live such
one-dimensional lives, unaware of rumors of angels and intimations of
transcendence. Maybe the fact that being ‘born again’ has entered into common
parlance is a sign that people are becoming aware, that there is another whole
world and the possibility of newness into which one might be created.
Nicodemus, thank God, I think had the experience because if you read further on
in John’s Gospel (after the crucifixion as a matter of fact), you’ll find that it was
Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, that took down the body of Jesus
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and embalmed it an put spices upon it and laid Jesus to rest—at some great risk,
of course. We are told also by John that there were many of the leaders who
believed in Jesus but secretly, daring not to say anything because they loved the
honor of men rather than the glory of God. I think Nicodemus had the
experience, and it wasn’t something that was contrary to the ways of a great
religious teacher in Israel, a great rabbi, but it was something more . . . more than
just the institutional forms, more than just the thing in itself and the practice of
religion. I think Nicodemus as an old man experienced new birth, and that’s the
wonderful possibility, and it’s the promise of Christmas. And it’s the promise for
all of us as well in our day.
We live in a most exciting time. We live in an age of transition. When did it
begin? I don’t know exactly. When will something jell? I am not at all sure, but
we’re living in a hinge period. We are living in a fascinating time, and for some a
very anxious time, because some of the old forms and structures have been
shaken a bit. Some of the foundations are crumbling a bit. You see, a culture goes
along on its way rather thoughtlessly and almost automatically for a long time,
maybe centuries. Then the myths and the ideas and the common assumptions
that are held by everyone lose their grip on the human imagination. People begin
to think that perhaps there’s something other, and perhaps it is that there are
angels that hover about and send messages, perhaps in the intuition and the
depths of the human being. Then old ways are questioned and institutions begin
to falter, and the guardians of the law, and the guardians of the old tradition hang
on with desperate clutching fear, trying to buoy up structures that no longer will
carry the freight. We live in such a time as that.
There are a lot of people that are afraid and are anxious. You always at times like
that hear the cry that we ought to go back to a former day. Nostalgia fills the air
as though there really were “good old days.” If we really describe the “good old
days” we would find that we’ve moved a long way beyond those “good old days,”
those common assumptions that everyone took for granted. We live in a day
when there are many people and whole nations, and whole groups of people that
are coming to consciousness and to self-awareness and are saying, “We too are
human. Look at us. Give us our day, our ‘place in the sun.’ ” We live in a day that
is full of the rising of expectation and of dreams and desires. We live in a time
when the old ways simply won’t do it any more. It’s a time of transition. It’s a
fascinating time.
The cover story in Newsweek Magazine, November 28, 1994,“The Search For
The Sacred,” gives accounts of all kinds of people who are searching for
something that, perhaps without their knowing it, has been born from above. A
spirit has taken hold of them and they are simply not satisfied any more to live in
that old way, some of them very successful in the old way of the world, the
commonly accepted way. Some of them are getting ‘off the trolley’ as it were and
simply saying, “There must be more.” They must have had a sense of angels and
intimations of eternity coming to birth in their heart. Some of them are seeking
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that spiritual reality in the most bizarre fashion. But we live in a day in which
there is a widespread and general spiritual awakening.
I want to say that very clearly because we hear so much of the opposite. We hear
so much that denigrates our present day, that there is so much wrong with our
world, and that society is so filled with ills and all of that negative talk. God
knows there are enough problems to deal with in the social structure of our
society and our world, but I believe that Christ has come and light has come, and
the yeast of the Spirit is continuing to permeate the history of humankind. And I
believe that we live in one of the most fascinating times that it has ever been
possible for anyone to live. We live in a time where spiritual openness and
curiosity and sensitivity have emerged, such as have never been known before. I
do believe that. When you have a news magazine covering this spiritual quest of a
multitude of people in great diversity, then you know that there is something
afoot in the world. There is so much in the dreams of humankind spoken by the
poets in great beauty with all kinds of images that the world has never yet
realized. Will we always simply live with dreams and never come to reality? Or
will those dreams, will the poets finally get through to the marrow of our bones?
Will this world be transformed one day? Oh, not in a superficial optimism, but
look about you. Recognize that you have brothers and sisters around this world
who are not satisfied any longer to live in a closed world, one story with no
angels, no transcendence, no love at the core of things, no beating of the heart to
the needs of the other, those who would simply dominate rather than build
community.
We live in a fascinating day. There are great possibilities in our day as we stand at
the edge of the future, the third millennium, a time that seems to bring out the
fear and anxiety of people, but rather ought to be for us an invitation to invite the
newness that is created by the eternal Spirit of God. Home is through birth. It is
not a human possibility. But, by God, it happens here and there, and it is
happening, and I believe it will happen in widespread fashion as the millennium
comes around. It’s a wonderful time in which to be alive.
For example, I think there are people all over in different religious traditions who
are beginning to wake up to one another. We live in a decade that is on the edge
of the third millennium. I do believe that the next millennium will be not a
millennium of religious absolutism, but of a pluralism that is open to the other,
where we share the spiritual riches and the endowments that we have all
received, where together we grow into a greater understanding of the reality of
life and the depths of love. This is a world in which a statesman such as Vaclav
Havel of Czechoslovakia calls on world leaders to wake up to the spiritual reality
and to build a global world community, which is obviously necessary. This is a
day in which to come alive to the riches of our own tradition, to be ready to share
them, and to be ready as well to receive the riches of others – rather than closing
ourselves off, opening ourselves up to the reality of spirituality that is being
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created by the one true God who has come to us, sharp focused in the face of
Jesus Christ.
Or, if you want to go into another area, the area of the sciences. If you would trace
as you’ve heard me say many times, the history of the science of physics, you
would find that, in the wake of new physical theory, there has always been a
breakthrough in theological understanding. It was in the rise of the Age of
Reason, the Modern Age, the Enlightenment, with Newtonian physics that we’ve
got this closed cause and effect universe. And rationalism dominated the scene.
The human mind was the measure of truth and reality. Then along comes an
Einstein with his Theory of Relativity that I don’t understand, but which I know
really threw a wrench into the Newtonian machine that had so neatly described
reality. Then, of course, building on Einstein was Niels Bohr, the Scandinavian,
the Danish physicist, who comes up with Quantum Theory. He and Einstein were
friends but toward the end of their life they couldn’t communicate any more
because Einstein couldn’t quite go along with the indeterminacy, the
unpredictability, the randomness, the mystery of this physical universe. Einstein
said of God, “The Old Man doesn’t play dice.” Bohr said, “Oh yes, the Old Man
does. This world is filled with more potential, more infinite possibility than any
predictability on the part of anyone who has yet thought about these things.”
Then if you read the implications of Quantum physics you know about the
possibility of parallel universes. We hear of black holes and no one knows what
black holes are, but what if you could go through a black hole and find yourself in
another whole universe through a time warp, in another whole age, in another
whole reality? You think that’s poppy cock?
It’s the stuff of science fiction and the stuff of science fiction usually is the prelude
to what everybody knows in another century or two. There will be a day when our
enlightenment thought, our heavy rationalism, our bowing down to the God of
human reason will look so shoddy and so shabby, we’ll laugh at our silly
smallness in the light of the infinity of the universe that has been created by the
Eternal God who can never be defined and will never be brought into a corner.
This God who creates and continues to create in an expanding universe whose
deepest minds, probing it, stand in wonder of it all. There is more wonder and
awe in the natural sciences today than in those of us who are people of the Book,
who know it all, have it all wrapped, all sealed up, and have the definitions down
pat.
No, home is a way of birth. Home comes by opening oneself up to a miracle. It
comes silently. It comes unpredictably. It comes without being able to demand it.
It comes . . . and when it comes . . . and when it has happened . . . one says, “Oh,
my God! I never would have thought . . .” and then all of our hopes and dreams
and all of our creeds and scientific propositions are like child’s play in the face of
the reality that breaks through and comes within our grasp. Ah! It’s a fascinating
time in which to be the people of God. It’s a fascinating time to acknowledge the
© Grand Valley State University
�Birth: The Way Home
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
possibility of new birth, of being born from beyond ourselves, of being born into
newness such as we’ve never yet dreamed of.
I want to interrupt this sermon with a commercial. I want to tell you that you
have a Team whose quartet of voices are ready to lead you into the newness and
the excitement that lies beyond the horizon. You have in Colette one whose faith
formation will tell the children the “Old, Old Stories” with question and wonder
and awe, so that the children we baptize will know the stories that have shaped
us. Then you have, in our young friend Bob, one who will care for you and also
challenge you and lead you into social engagement in order that the world of
which the prophets dreamed where lion and lamb will lie down together, where
they would beat swords into plow shares and spears into pruning hooks, where
they would learn war no more, where they would not hurt nor destroy in all God’s
holy mountain not because of an enforced Roman peace, but because of justice
and equity and compassion and community – you have in young Bob Kleinheksel
one who will lead you to the edge and push you over. And if you are hungry, if you
are looking for something more, if you would see a rift in the heavens, if you
would be born again, come to Peter who will lead you with prayer and
meditation, and a cultivation of a spirituality which is the wave of the future
where we are all going. And I . . . I hope, simply, to skid into the next millennium
on their coattails.
This is a wonderful day in which to be alive. Nothing can save us that is possible.
We who must die demand a miracle. And the miracle has happened. It happens
and one breathes deeply and everything so familiar and known and ordinary is
transformed with a radiance that shines out of the depths of eternity. The light
has come for those who have eyes to see it. The Word has been enfleshed in those
who would touch it . . . for just a moment.
For just a moment let’s have the lights dimmed. The evangelical church has
missed the point so often because it has said that if you would believe, or if you
would assent to this, or if you would have faith you would be born again. It’s
backwards. Being born again is not a human possibility. It is not the end of some
human effort. It is not the will of the flesh or human will. It is of God. But in just a
moment or two, be open to the miracle. Just breathe deeply, for who knows, there
could be in this moment the intersection of eternity with time, and the likes of us
might be born from above.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5602ab8006105ca2be395c30f23cc4f1.mp3
e5d450ab7aafd6dbe73cd9732743cd25
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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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
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>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Christmas Day
Scripture Text
John 1:12-13, John 3:3
Location
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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-0-19941225
Date
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1994-12-25
Title
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Birth the Way Home
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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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 December 25, 1994 entitled "Birth the Way Home", on the occasion of Christmas Day, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 1:12-13, John 3:3.
Christmas
Incarnation
Mystery
Spiritual Quest
Transforming Grace
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cc683672d489b1d8a22bf5f74bd796e4.mp3
1ede0a2155f35506c45ab5e2ebce0b3f
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b19cdda82c25c9e6be51e28fbffbea31.pdf
4d5272f8180d4b2f608406923ce18dcb
PDF Text
Text
Loving is Living Without Fear
Text: Luke 1:30; Matthew 1:20; Luke 2:10; I John 4:18
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 4, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
... Do not be afraid, Mary for you have found favor with God. Luke 1:30
... Joseph ... do not be afraid to take Mary home with you as your wife...
Matthew 1:20
And the angel said to them [the shepherds), "Be not afraid; for behold I bring
you good news of a great joy ..." Luke. 2:10
There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear. I John 4:18
If we did a little word association game and we were looking for pairs of
opposites, and I said "black," you would probably say, "white," and if I said "hot,"
you would say, "cold," and if I said "war," you'd say, "peace," and if I said "love,"
you'd say, "hate." And you would be wrong. Love and hate seem like a pair of
opposites, but when you really stop to think about it, it's not really love and hate,
but love and fear.
That's an insight which has been brought to light by a psychiatrist named Gerald
Jampolsky. He shared that on the Hour of Power, and it was an insight that Bob
Schuller appreciated so much that he got to know Jerry Jampolsky and last year,
in March, when we were on Maui at a theological conference with Bob Schuller,
Jerry was there. I must say that he lives his creed. He's written a little book, Love
Is Letting Go Of Fear. It's a simple book; it's almost a simplistic book. It has
cartoon characters and bold-type declarations that one can memorize, but in
spite of the fact that it seems like an elementary treatment, he does have hold of
something, and there is a profound truth there. He has had, in his own
experience, life transformation through the insight. On reflection, I got to
thinking, "Well, Jerry, you're not so smart. The Apostle John in the First Century
said that a long tine ago!" He said there's no room for fear in love. Perfect love
banishes fear. And so, what has been rediscovered in our day is simply an old
truth, and, as a matter of fact, it's at the very heart of the Gospel; it is at the very
root of what God has done for us at Christmas in the incarnation of the Word, in
© Grand Valley State University
�Loving is Living Without Fear
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
the revelation of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. The Christmas message, at
its very core, says that loving is living without fear.
Love and fear, according to John, are mutually exclusive. Love and fear cannot
coexist in the same heart. Well, I suppose our hearts are always living in a
balance of love and fear, but to the extent that we are loving, we are not fearing,
and to the extent that we are fearing, we are not loving. And the battle is to get
hold of the insight of Christmas and begin to love and not fear. Loving is living
without fear, and that is a life-transforming truth if we'd ever let it grip our souls.
We do have some control over the ingredients of our minds and the stuff of our
life. We can make some conscious and deliberate choices, and those conscious
and deliberate choices can be made, for a Christian, on the basis of a foundation
of truth rooted in the Gospel, rooted in the Christmas Gospel. John says the
greatest reality is that God is love. It is repeated over again in that fourth chapter
- God is love. God is love. The ultimate reality is love. At the heart and center of
things is love. Reality, history, human experience, the transcendent ground of
everything is not love, among other things - it is love. That's John's grasp of the
truth that he discovered in Jesus Christ. God is love.
And so, when he says that there is no room for fear in love, but rather that perfect
love casts out fear, he is giving a very practical prescription for living and that
prescription can really transform our human experience. At the heart and center
of reality there is love, and he says that love came to manifestation. If you want
next week's word, Epiphany, the word is in this text. God showed or God
manifested His love to us in that He sent His son. Jesus was the gift of God by
which he signaled to the world that He is love. The Gospel of Jesus is the good
news that the heart of God is the heart of love, and that the great, basic, ultimate,
final, supreme reality of everything, of human life and of the world and of the
whole of the cosmic scope of things is love. That's the Christmas message. The
Christmas message is meant to enable us to live with love and to be done with
fear. That is very, very elemental; it speaks to the root of our problem. God
displayed love that casts out fear.
I was rather surprised as I began to think about the story, this wonderful
Christmas story that we've just lived through again. Mary gets a marvelous
announcement from Gabriel. I suppose it would strike fear into one's heart.
Gabriel's words to Mary were, "Mary, fear not. Fear not. Don't worry about the
fact that you're engaged and the marriage hasn't been consummated. Don't worry
about what the community will say. Don't worry about the fact that you might
lose Joseph and lose everything and have all your dreams shattered."
Easy to say, Good Old Gabriel - "Don't be afraid." But that was his word, because
that was Mary's problem. It's always our problem. We're always afraid. Who
knows what this new year will bring? Sometimes we grow anxious. How will our
new business do? How about the new practice we've just started? How about the
new relationship we've just established? How about the new child in our home, or
© Grand Valley State University
�Loving is Living Without Fear
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
grandchild? What about all the scary possibilities of this new year, in this world
that is going with such a whirl, on its way, always teetering on the brink of
disaster? Fear fills the human heart. "Don't be afraid, Mary."
And then, there's Joseph. Joseph is a decent sort of person. What will he do? Will
he be willing to risk being made the laughingstock of the community? Will he
expose Mary to that ridicule? Will he be so put off and offended at Mary? "Yeah,
sure, Mary, a dove. I know, a dove." The angel comes and says, "Joseph, don't be
afraid. Don't be afraid to take Mary." He would be afraid. Who wouldn't be
afraid? And so the Word of God always has to come through His angelic
messenger. "Don't be afraid."
And then this marvelous event is broadcast to the world, brought personally to
shepherds. Good News! And what did the angels have to say? "Don't be afraid.
Fear not. Good news of a great joy that shall be to all people. Settle down. Calm
yourselves. Don't be afraid." It must be that there is something intrinsic,
something at the very core of our being; there is something about being human
that makes us react to life with fear. It's very elemental. It's a very primitive
response to life. I suppose it's because of our connection with the whole animal
kingdom, our connectedness with all of Creation, that survival instinct. Did you
ever watch a bird in the grass looking for a worm, cocking its head, listening? I'm
never sure if it's listening for a worm rattling down in the clay, or whether it's
cocking its head to see if I have a slingshot in my hand. I think it's always worried
about a BB gun. Here, there, all over the place. A parable of a human being.
Always looking around for the next threat, the next attack.
Life is viewed as threatening, and people's relationship is often viewed as an
attack, and we live our lives in an adversarial environment with others. Always
feeling that we have something to protect, something to hold onto, something to
possess, something to guard. Fear is a very primitive human response. So, all of
our lives we go about being afraid and interpreting the behavior of others as an
attack. And it happens all over the place.
Did you ever go in for a nice meal in a restaurant and the waitress begins by
spilling your ice water over the table, pours hot coffee down your back, and
snarls, "What do you want?" And you've just come in, expecting a pleasant
evening with a waiter to be at your service, and he turns out to be grouchy, and so
you say to the people with you, "Well, I'll fix him. We'll give him a little tip."
(Don't leave out the tip completely, because then the waiter will interpret that as
though you forgot to leave a tip.) Leave a quarter when it should have been a tendollar bill. That will get the message across. Then he'll know that I am saying to
him that I am displeased with the service. And, of course, that will make his day,
won't it? And maybe the man's wife was just laid off with the prospect of
unemployment for months. Maybe his son was just taken to the Emergency
Room, having been struck down with an automobile. Maybe he is about to go in
for emergency surgery with a bleeding ulcer that's about to burst in the next two
© Grand Valley State University
�Loving is Living Without Fear
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
or three hours, and maybe you were able to add to all the anxiety that will bring it
to a head. We do it to each other all the time. Never stop to ask, "Why? Wow, that
person must be struggling with something." Rather, we say, "Who do you think
you are? And I'll fix you. I'll get my own back." And so, we get this adversarial
kind of relationship going, static sparks between us, and we go around through
life like a bull in a china shop, we go around causing sparks to fly all over, and
sparks fly all over the landscape.
What does it do to us? It leaves us more deeply entrenched than ever before in
that which has shackled us and gripped our spirit. The pall of darkness is heavier;
the loneliness, the isolation is more extreme. And the reaction of fear and anger is
all the more intense. We do that to each other, and it's one thing when we do that
to each other, but we do it also as peoples and as clans and as ethnic groups and
as races and as nations, so that the whole world, the whole human story is a
violent story of action and reaction, charge and counter charge. Attack and fearful
response, and attack again. There must be something deep down in us that causes
us to respond with fear – basic insecurity that makes us go through life always
interpreting everything as an attack to which we, out of fear, respond in anger.
Attack and anger and attack and anger and the static grows and the sparks grow
and the conflagration explodes on the earth.
Now, God wants to get through to us. Why don't you do what would be so obvious
to do, God, for rebellious subjects like we are? Why don't you come in and
clobber us? Why don't you come in with a 2 by 4 to get our attention, beat us over
the head? Why don't you come in as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, with
angel hosts and flashing lights and great power? Why don't you climb on a
bulldozer and move through history? Get our attention! Show us who we are! Put
us in our place!
Well, that's what He decided to do. But He figured, if He did it that way, He'd
make us more of what we were already. Oh, He could get our attention. He could
make us cower in the corner. He could probably even get our grudging
conformity to His will, but it would be full of hostility. It would be full of anger.
And it would be the kind of relationship that is characterized by coercion and
manipulation.
Well, He had a problem, didn't He? So, He decided to come in the vulnerability of
a child. Because what He really wanted was not our subservience. What He really
wanted was not our obedience, not our cowering, groveling before the presence of
His glory. What He wanted us to do was look Him in the face so that He could say
to us, "All I am is love, and I love you." So that we might be able to look Him in
the face and say, "I love You, too." And how do you get that kind of thing going?
You only get that kind of thing going when you take the risk of vulnerability. So
there he lies in a cradle, in a child, in all of the harmless vulnerability of a child there's the Lord of glory, there's the everlasting God, the Prince of Peace. And you
can handle Him and you can run roughshod over Him and you can put Him up
© Grand Valley State University
�Loving is Living Without Fear
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
on a cross and do away with Him. But He'll have the last word – it's Love. And
every once in a while – out of our intense fear and anger that frequently lashes
out from us, at various times or inappropriately – every once in a while,
somebody looks up and says, "Why am I fighting and full of anger if God is
Love?" Every once in a while, somebody gets disarmed by love.
That really is what Christmas is all about. God is love. He didn't write that in the
sky. John says, "In this the love of God is manifested in that He sent His son."
Then John says, "Beloved, if God so loved us..." Well, obviously, again, in our
human understanding of things, we know the concluding clause will be, "We
ought to love God," because we expect that love will be responded to with love. If
God loves us, we love God. How neat. We can go through life with this nice,
personal relationship with God and create Hell the rest of the time. But that's not
what John says. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another." Isn't
that amazing?
The Gospel is radical. The word "radical" comes from the root, "radix," which
means "root." God addressed the root of our problem at Christmas. The root of
our problem is that we're insecure and we're afraid, and so we live always on the
attack, interpreting everything as threat, and we create Hell on earth. The Gospel
is the radical solution to the human dilemma. The Gospel is God's move into the
vulnerability of a child by which He signals to us, "I am love. Be not afraid."
Loving, is living without fear, because there is no room for fear in love; perfect
love casts out fear. Every once in a while somebody wakes up to that radical story
and says, "Wow," and finds the hostility and the anger melt away and life
absolutely transformed.
One set free - free from fear, free to love. That is a radical message. That is the
Christmas message. That is the truth, and in a moment like this, if one could just
be grasped by it, it could change one's life. One could go out for dinner and get illserved and smile at the person and give them a gentle touch, and leave a large tip
and turn their life upside down. They'll tell you that this won't work. This won't
work in Washington, of course. Nor in Moscow. Or Beijing. It won't work in
Geneva. It won't work at City Hall. It won't work at the boardrooms of industry.
Well, as a matter of fact, it really won't work anywhere without the possibility of
one being taken advantage of, made a fool of, maybe even crucified. So, it
probably won't work. But, to be honest, nothing else works; we only compound
the problems: fear, threat, anger, attack, leaving all parties more deeply
entrenched in fear.
Nice going, God. We're going to try it on our own. We've got a couple more
techniques up our sleeve. But, to be honest, what we need is a miracle of love.
I wonder if it would work. I am, on the first Sunday of 1987, going to make a
public pledge to try it, intentionally, in that little circle of my life. I invite you to
join me, for loving is living without fear. And I suspect that's really living.
© Grand Valley State University
�Loving is Living Without Fear
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Let us pray.
Father, forgive us for all of the common sense rationalization of our failure to live
the Gospel. Release us from our fears. Help us to hear Your word, "Be not afraid."
Enable us to respond to Your love by loving. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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
Christmastide II
Scripture Text
Luke 1:30, 2:10, Matt. 1:20, I John 4:18
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19870104
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-01-04
Title
A name given to the resource
Loving is Living Without Fear
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 January 4, 1987 entitled "Loving is Living Without Fear", on the occasion of Christmastide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 1:30, 2:10, Matt. 1:20, I John 4:18.
Community of Grace
Fear
God is Love
Incarnation
Love at the Core
of Reality
Transforming Love