1 24 19 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b9ee2be296e00a60c94406d20db6f026.mp3 6950e5504f8b048a9f86e92ac6104a61 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/068f2a4e68a0c4b7e99542cd87a8d588.pdf 58318d32e9a0c4e7acfd047dbfbe557e PDF Text Text God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child Advent IV Scripture: Hebrews 11-4; Luke 2:1-7 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 23, 2001 Transcription of the spoken sermon The thing that I want to say to you this morning is really quite simple. I broached the subject last week; it is the realization on my part of that tension within the New Testament between the Christmas story and what it mirrors about God, and the post-Easter biblical material that speaks of the triumph and the reign and the coming again of Jesus with power to reign and to judge. As I indicated last week, I have lived with that tension for years and years and I never recognized the tension. It never struck me that to speak about the one who came in poverty and humility and then to speak about that one who came as coming again with the splendor of royal power was giving me two pictures of God, two mirrors. It was reflecting God in two contrasting ways: the mirror of Christmas, that is the mirror of the God with the human face– the God who is in the manger as a child in all of the vulnerability and all of the beauty of that moment which we will celebrate again tomorrow evening – and the God of the rest of the New Testament is the same old God, the same almighty, omnipotent God who is in control, the God who at the right moment will send the Son and the Son will come in glory and splendor with power to reign and to judge, and there will be the vindication of the righteous and there will be vengeance on the wicked. That whole judgment scene of the God in control, the sovereign Lord of history, that picture of the New Testament is strung throughout the whole New Testament, and if you want to read it in all of its bare horror, read the book of Revelation. That picture is in contrast to what the Christmas story mirrors about the nature of God. Last week we read in John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the divine intention, and the divine intention became flesh and dwelt among us. No one has ever seen God but the son has revealed God." Or Paul's statement "We have seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Or the statement from the Epistle to the Hebrews that I read a moment ago, where how could it be more explicit? Jesus is spoken of as the Son who is the exact image of God, the reflection of the exact nature of God. That's the Christmas story, and what God is mirrored as being in the Christmas story is a God of vulnerability and ultimately, © Grand Valley State University �God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child Richard A. Rhem Page 2 finally, a God of love. Christmas is about heaven touching earth with love. Christmas mirrors a God who moves by love to persuade, but never coerce, for the child that is the central focus of this Christmas season is a child with all of the wonder of a child, dependent, vulnerable, beautiful, innocent, harmless - there is a picture of God. But that stands in such sharp contrast to the revelation of God in the rest of the story, almost as if Christmas happened and the life of Jesus happened, Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, counseling compassion over against the good and the evil, the righteous and the unrighteous as reflective of God's attitude and spirit. Jesus of the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus of the parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus - all those stories of the God who draws near, the God who is full of grace, the God who is accessible, the God who is approachable. Jesus of Passion Week who goes right into Jerusalem and speaks his truth to power and is crucified for it, not resisting. Resisting only violent response, praying finally for his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”– that Jesus gets jettisoned on Easter, and from there on the Christian story and the Christian Church has become one triumphalistic procession down through the centuries, waiting for that one who came in humility and vulnerability, to come in smashing glory. How could I preach for years and years and years and not feel that contradiction? And which God do we choose? Well, of course, we choose the God who raised Jesus from the dead. Of course we choose the God who will bring history to its culmination point. Of course we will choose the God who has time in his hand, who will call the shots, who will send the Son in clouds of glory to judge the quick and the dead, finally to reign. Of course, that's the God we will choose, the God we can worship. That’s the God we can be secure with, that's the God who can set things right. And what happens to the God of the child? What happens to the God mirrored at Christmas? What happens to the God with a human face? We talked about that last week, but I want to say this week one further insight on this whole week, and that is that, in spite of the fact that we have moved too quickly from Christmas, in spite of the fact that we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," nonetheless, every year we come back to Christmas. We can't forget it. We can't get it out of our system. We can't get it out of our bones. Every year we come back to this moment. Every year we begin to experience the magic and the wonder of Christmas. Every year we come again to bow before the manger that holds the child, and every year it happens again. We all know it. There is no question about it. The world is a softer place this weekend. The world is a softer place at Christmastime. The tear flows, the lump in the throat, the old carols stir something deep within us. The simple and beautiful story told again moves us. I've already celebrated Christmas because I have gone through a couple of rehearsals for the early service for tomorrow night. So, I know the baby gets born © Grand Valley State University �God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child Richard A. Rhem Page 3 again, a real-live baby cries, and as I stood as one of the narrators for the story, being beautifully portrayed by our lovely young dancers and our shepherds, and Mary and Joseph, as I saw it again yesterday, I was cognizant myself of the fact that it does move you again. It happens again. It's a lovely story. It's a story that reaches the deepest part of the human being, and we come back to it every year, and it's the same old story but it's new every year and it moves us every year, and we celebrate every year, and we rejoice in it every year, and I want to submit to you that we do that because it has gotten into the marrow of our bones and we know intuitively that that story is the ultimate truth. We know that the love that came down at Christmas reflects the grain of the universe, the truth deep down in things. You see, most of the rest of the year, we don't live that way. Most of the rest of the year, we simply get caught up in all of the power games and all of the power structures, political life, economic life, social life. We move away from Christmas and we forget the radicality of the vision that we have seen. But, for just a little while, we remember and it touches us because it is true. It is the final truth. And there is that within us that knows it is the final truth. Jesus is our window to God. Jesus isn't the only window to God. Jesus isn't everybody's window to God, but Jesus is our window to God. I appreciate the fact that a dozen or so of you sent me the last page of Time magazine, the essay by Rosenblatt entitled, "God Is Not On Your Side Nor On My Side." I like the fact that so many of you thought of me when you read it, because it tells me that you are listening and that you identify with me with that kind of idea. I appreciate that fact. But, Jesus is our window, and I want to tell you, Jesus is a radical window. Jesus is a magnificent window. Jesus is a window on God that is so profound and so magnificent, that we ought not to miss it. It is so easy to take it for granted because it is the old, old story and we know the story so well, and how could we ever find anything new in it, and then one sits back for a moment, and says, "My God! Do you realize what that story is telling me about God?" It is radical! It is revolutionary! It is so radical and revolutionary that the world hasn't been able to deal with it yet. Our old world is rocking with war again and I am sure the reason that this Advent season I was not able to live with the contradiction without at least lifting it up was the fact of current events, what is going on in our world. That often happens. One has an old story, an old tradition, and suddenly something happens to you or something happens in the world, and one sees something that was always there and one didn't see it at all! Suddenly I see it everywhere now. I see what the future, if there is to be a future, I see what it has to be. It has to be a world that is posited on the nature of God reflected in Bethlehem, in Jesus. That is hardly the way we have lived, even though in the West Jesus has been our window. That’s hardly the way we have lived. It's dangerous to live that way. It can put your national security in jeopardy, of course. But, you see, in this old © Grand Valley State University �God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child Richard A. Rhem Page 4 world of ours, after 9-11, it has become apparent to us what has long been true, and that is that there is no ultimate security through power or might or force of arms. It would be political suicide for our national leaders without talking about securing this nation, but this nation is not secure, and given the technology of our world today, given where we are in our world today, it will never be secure again. It will never be secure in a world where there are those who are dispirited and despairing and hopeless and helpless and alienated and angry and full of rage – never be secure again. And so, what we really have to do is find out another way to be in this world, because power isn't going to do it. It just might be that, while we're number one, it might be the smartest, most savvy thing in the world for us to begin to create a new one world reality. You see, right now, the way it has been, might, force, power has ruled, and the international game is a vast chess game, and those analysts of international affairs plot out those chess moves. We should do this, they'll do that, and if we do this, we can checkmate at this point, because it's a power game, it's a game about winning, or at least not losing. And it isn't going to work anymore. Our world is rocking with war and there is no security and down deep in our hearts, we know, and we keep coming back to Christmas every year and we're moved by it Our eyes moisten again, we get a lump in our throat again, our hearts are softened again. You can feel it on the street, because down deep we know that's true, and we try to get on with life according to the only way life can be survivable, right? Well, one wonders. We come back and we're touched, because that is the deepest truth and, if that is the deepest truth, I wonder when we're going to try it Let me tell you about a savvy move we made in that chess game. You know it, too; it's been in the news. You know that we funded Osama bin Laden. You know that we funded and gave arms to the Taliban, right? As long as they were fighting the Soviet Union. And why did we do that? Simply because we didn't like the Soviet Union? We are smart. We knew if we could get the Soviet Union to have our own Vietnam, it would suck the life blood and resources right out of them. We'd bring them to their knees. And, by God, we did it. There are those among our leaders right now who were responsible for that policy, who are defending it, and I'm sure there are some of you out there who would say that was a good move, because the Soviet Union was brought to its knees. Didn't President Reagan call it "the evil empire"? Ah, dear friends, as long as we're in that kind of a game, we will be trying to save our necks, we will be trying to defend our borders, we will be trying to perpetuate the preeminence of our position, and it's a no-win game, ultimately. You know the problem with the American people? We're a good people at the pinnacle of power, and Christmas has seeped into the marrow of our bones. If we could just use our power in any brutal and violent fashion, we could shape this © Grand Valley State University �God in the Mirror of Christmas: A Child Richard A. Rhem Page 5 world up. You wouldn't have to pray. You wouldn't have to ask for God's blessing. You wouldn't have to pray "God bless America." Just turn our resources loose with no moral qualms, with no ethical consideration, just bomb 'em, baby. Bomb them into submission. We have the stuff, folks. We could do it. But, we can't do it, because we have Christmas in the marrow of our bones. We have been touched by Jesus. We've seen God in the face of a child, and once you've seen God in the face of a child, you just can't go on being a mean S.O.B. anymore. That's our dilemma. A good people at the pinnacle of power who know the ultimate truth, but haven't quite dared to live by it yet. Maybe this year. © 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 Advent IV Series God in the Mirror of Christmas Scripture Text Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7 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-0-20011223 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-12-23 Title A name given to the resource A Child Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 23, 2001 entitled "A Child", as part of the series "God in the Mirror of Christmas", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Advent Divine Intention Incarnation Pluralism https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9b2ceae1278f1251b86aea98cafa86b8.pdf d8ca92c9fc2a81a6f8c39414ac14413d PDF Text Text An Accident of the Incarnation Article by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Published in Perspectives A Journal of Reformed Thought February 1987, pp. 4-6 The maleness of the human person in whom God was incarnate was an accident of the incarnation. That is the thesis of this essay, which contends that in another epoch of human history, in another cultural context, the incarnation of the Word might have found expression in feminine form. Accident is used here in its technical meaning in philosophical discourse, in logic, as “something contingent, not necessary, non-essential, or that might not have been,” not in its more popular meaning of “anything that happens, an event, especially an unforeseen contingency, a disaster something to do with chance or fortune. Accident as used here means specifically “a non-essential accompaniment.” Thus the contention is not that the maleness of the incarnation of the Word in its concrete historical manifestation in Jesus of Nazareth was a matter contingent, a chance occurrence apart from the predetermined will of God; on the contrary, given the time in which God took time for us, maleness was the historical garb chosen to accomplish the purpose of revelation. However, the gender of the incarnation was determined by the historical context of its manifestation; it was not determined by its purpose, namely, the revelation of God in human form. The same contention can be made from the opposite side using another technical philosophical term: the essence of the incarnation was the revelation of God in human form. The essential matter which came to expression was the humanity of the Word. To accomplish the essence of God’s purpose, to be revealed in human form, it was necessary to select a gender, male or female. But the selection of gender was determined by the time of the incarnation, not the essential purpose of the incarnation. The essence of the incarnation was God in human form; the accident of the incarnation was God in a human form of male gender. © Grand Valley State University   �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Given the patriarchial society of the world into which Jesus came, the purpose of the incarnation was best accomplished by the utilization of a human person of male gender. But the essential element of Jesus in whose face we have been shown “the light of revelation - the revelation of the glory of God ...” was his humanity, not his male gender. In The Preparation of the World for Christ, a history of the world into which Jesus was born, David R. Breed describes the historical circumstances which prevailed at the time of Jesus’ birth and points to the providential preparation of the large tapestry of history which made the time of incarnation “the fullness of time” - a time in which the revelation of God in human form took root and flourished and gained the ascendency over the great power of imperial Rome. It was one world united under the pax Romana, pervaded by Hellenistic culture, drawn together by the Greek language; a world empty of soul, hungering for a true word. Breed makes an interesting case for the preparation of the moment chosen for the supreme revelation of God in our time and space. It was indeed a Kairos time, a most opportune moment for God manifest in the flesh. However, recognizing a providential purpose operative in the course of human history preparing the world for the incarnation of the Word must not be extended to include the patriarchial character of Jewish society at that moment as essential to God’s purpose to reveal himself in human form. If that were the case, then the argument being made here would fall; then, indeed, not simply revelation in our humanity, but revelation in humanity of male gender would be essential and the superiority of male gender as reflective of God would be established. It is that that I am denying by asserting that the maleness of the incarnation of the Word was an accident, not an essential mark of the incarnation. Otherwise, we would be saying something about God which would distort the biblical image. Were male gender the essence of the incarnation, maleness would necessarily be ascribed to God. But such ascription would run contrary to the biblical understanding of God in spite of the fact that God is referred to as Father. Such reference is found in the Old Testament as well as in Jesus’ usage. It is also found in other religions of the ancient world. But the use of Father in reference of God is not a statement about gender. In the later of the two Creation accounts (Genesis 1:1-2:4), we read, So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male, and female, he created them. (11:27) Without getting into the complexities of the biblical idea of the image of God, it is obvious that in whatever that image consists, it embraces both maleness and femaleness. Maleness and femaleness reflect something of © Grand Valley State University �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 3   God who must incorporate both within the Divine Being. Thus, God transcends our human sexual differentiation. It is interesting to note that even our human sexual differentiation is not an absolute differentiation; maleness and femaleness are the opposite poles of the human sexual spectrum. The individual finds a place not at one pole or the other, but somewhere on the continuum that connects the poles. In this, the human person would appear to be a reflection of the image of God who incorporates both male and female qualities and transcends sexual differentiation. Why, then, is God called Father in the Bible? As indicated above, the concreteness of the incarnation demanded a particular time, place, people, gender and person; the “scandal of particularity” comes to expression in our claim that the infinite and eternal God is revealed in the face of Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem during the reign of Caesar Augustus. An aspect of that concreteness was the patriarchal society and thus the use of Father. The “Father” image is so deeply ingrained that one wonders if it could ever be replaced by another image. It has been called in question, however. Hans Küng has raised the question about the appropriateness of the name Father. He asserts that such usage is problematic in the age of women’s emancipation. He asks, Should we without more ado apply to God a name implying sexual differentiation? Is God a man, masculine, virile? Are we not making God in the image of man, to be more exact of a male human being? (On Being a Christian, p. 310) He points out that the designation of God as Father is not determined solely by Yahweh’s uniqueness, but appears to be also sociologically conditioned, bearing the imprint of the male-oriented society. (Ibid.) But in the Old Testament, God is not “forthrightly male,” but has also feminine, maternal features. Today, however, we must be clear about this. He contends, The designation “Father” will be misunderstood unless it is regarded, not in contrast to “Mother,” but symbolically (analogously): “Father” as patriarchal symbol - also with matriarchal features - of a transhuman, transsexual ultimate reality. Today less than ever may the one God be seen merely within a masculine-paternal framework, as an all-too-masculine theology used to present him. The feminine-maternal element in him must © Grand Valley State University �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 4   also be recognized. To address God as Father can then no longer be used as the religious justification of a social paternalism at the expense of woman or in particular for the permanent suppression of the feminine element in the Church (or ministry). (Ibid.) The God revealed in the human form of Jesus is a God of redeeming love, not a God who is in fact the projection of instilled fears, of human domination, lust for power, arrogance and vindictiveness. This Father-God is not a theocratic God who might serve as an excuse - if only indirectly - for the representatives of totalitarian systems, whether piousecclesiastical, or impious-atheistic, who attempt to take his place and exercise his sovereign rights. These men become holy or unholy gods of orthodox teaching and absolute discipline, of law and order, of dictatorship and planning, regardless of the claims of other human beings. (p. 312) Is there an image for God that might better reflect the divine-human relationship, avoiding the possible misunderstanding and exploitation of the father image? Alternating the pronouns referring to God, she and he, is being done by some; also the use of “father-mother” finds occasional expression. Our biblical understanding of God certainly justifies such usage even though it may not find easy acceptance. “Parent” is a possibility, although not carrying the emotional weight of father or mother. Anne E. Carr of the Divinity School in Chicago suggests that some would move away from the parental images ... which can inculcate a relation of childish rather than adult religious dependence. That is to say, while parental images express compassion, acceptance, guidance, and discipline, they do not express the mutuality, maturity, cooperation, responsibility, and reciprocity demanded by personal and political experience today. Carr refers to Sallie McFague who shows how the father image has expanded into patriarchalism as a “metaphysical worldview,” a “mindset” that becomes a “whole way of ordering reality.” McFague argues that this dominant father image must be countered with many images; no one image will suffice. She points out that we image God according to that which is most important to us humanly and suggests “friend” as perhaps the most appropriate image. Carr affirms this image, claiming that © Grand Valley State University �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 5   The metaphor of God as friend corresponds to the feminist ideal of “communal personhood,” a relationship among persons, groups, and lifestyles that is non-competitive, mutually enhancing, and desperately needed in our world. Jurgen Moltmann supports the appropriateness of the friend image. He writes, The friend of God does not live any longer “under God” but with and in God. One finds this demonstrated in the life and death of Jesus who reveals a God who suffers for us and invites us into a fellowship of suffering for others. I have argued that the maleness of the Word of God was the accident of the incarnation, its essence being the revelation of God in human form. This is confirmed by Karl Barth who prefaces paragraph 15 of Church Dogmatics I, 2, “The Mystery of Revelation” this way: The mystery of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ consists in the fact that the eternal Word of God chose, sanctified and assumed human nature and existence into oneness with Himself ... (p. 122) In section 3, the splendid discussion of the virgin birth entitled “The Miracle of Christmas,” Barth speaks of the human involvement in the birth of the Word being ... only in the form of non-willing, non-achieving, non-creative, non-sovereign man, only in the form of man who can merely receive, merely be ready, merely let something be done to and with himself. (p. 191) He is in no way denying that the woman has her share in the determination of man. Only a foolish ideology of manhood or an equally foolish ideology of womanhood can deny her her share in this determination of man. (p. 193) But Barth argues there can be no talk of an equality of the two sexes in this respect. God alone knows whether the history of humanity, nations and states, art, science, economics, has in fact been and is so predominantly the history of males, the story of all the deeds and works of males, as it appears to be, or whether, for all that, the © Grand Valley State University �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 6   hidden factor of female co-operation and participation has not, in fact, always turned the scale in a way of which chronicles, acts and monuments give us no information, because it involves an element which is deeply concealed both psychologically and sociologically, although it was not and did not need to be less potent for that reason. Be that as it may, if there had been a matriarchate instead of a patriarchate ... nevertheless it is - well, “significant,” that the historical consciousness of all nations, states and civilizations begins with the patriarchate. Male action is significant for the world history and characteristic of the world history with which we are acquainted, as it has been and actually is for us, even if it is not so in itself. (p. 193) Therefore, Barth contends it is precisely the male participation that had to be set aside. What takes place in the mystery of Christmas is not world history and it is not the work of human genius. His eternal generation of this eternal Son excludes a human generation, because a human father and human generation, the whole action of man the male, can have no meaning here. Therefore it is the very absence of masculine action that is significant here. (p. 194) Of interest in this discussion is not Barth’s argument for the virgin birth as a sign of the one who was fully in our history but did not arise from our history; rather, it is his contention that the virgin birth signified the setting aside of precisely the male domination of which history is full. The sign is a judgment on the willing, achieving, creative, sovereign action of the male. If one grants Barth’s contention that the sign of the virgin is a judgment on male domination, then it would confirm the argument pursued above that maleness was not essential to but accidental to the incarnation of the Word. To read back into the God of revelation sexual differentiation, specifically maleness, is to distort the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And on the basis of such a distortion, to justify male domination of the Church and its ministry is totally without warrant. Carr cites the ethicist Daniel Maguire, who argues, Sexism is the elementary human sin. If the essential human molecule is dyadic, male/female, the perversion of one part of the dyad perverts the other. And, to distort femininity and masculinity, the constitutive ingredients of humanity, is to distort humanity itself. Maguire welcomes feminine participation in theological discussion which will bring a new wholeness to the public conversation in the Church. The © Grand Valley State University �An Accident of the Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 7   incorporation of affect, mysticism and concrete experience into theological and ethical discussion and the denial of the almighty, macho-masculine God whose exclusionary symbolism is utterly arbitrary will move us toward wholeness without distortion. © 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 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. 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 RA-4-19870202 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-02-02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource An Accident of the Incarnation Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 eng Description An account of the resource Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 2, 1987 entitled "An Accident of the Incarnation", it appeared in Perspectives, February 1987, pp. 4-6. Tags: Incarnation, Creation. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Creation Incarnation 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 © Grand Valley State University   �Birth: The Way Home Richard A. Rhem Page 2   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 © Grand Valley State University �Birth: The Way Home Richard A. Rhem Page 3   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 © Grand Valley State University �Birth: The Way Home Richard A. Rhem Page 4   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 © Grand Valley State University �Birth: The Way Home Richard A. Rhem Page 5   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/. 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 Christmas Day Scripture Text John 1:12-13, John 3:3 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-0-19941225 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-12-25 Title A name given to the resource Birth the Way Home Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Christmas Incarnation Mystery Spiritual Quest Transforming Grace https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/222c938da8b3510bcd81a5c7b02445fa.mp3 faf4cd3d6032a9aa6279d032f24a5d6d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/27ef5ad37d49e44819bfaf33471d6481.pdf 3583d73333b0d75e2c2067227f411eff PDF Text Text Companions: The Mark of Community Scripture: John 21:9-14 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan June 30, 2002 Transcription of the spoken sermon At the invitation of Jesus, "Come and have breakfast," the disciples gather around him for a breakfast of bread and fish on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. That story is in the 21st chapter of John, which we are told is an addendum to the Gospel that was the last to be written. Those who study the scriptures tell us this addendum was probably about the issue of leadership in the early Church between Peter and the beloved disciple. However that may be, it is also felt that this addendum to the latest Gospel reflects some very early Galilean tradition. Jesus is purported to meet the disciples after the resurrection in Galilee, but there is no other account of a meal with the disciples than this, and this seems to be rather awkwardly melded together with the appearance to Peter, a fishing story. But I'm not really interested this morning at analysis of the passage from that critical standpoint, but rather to see in the midst of that chapter this delightful picture of Jesus on the seashore having prepared breakfast for that group of his disciples, inviting them, "Come and have breakfast," and in the midst of that breakfast meal, they recognize him. As he stood on the seashore and asked them how they had done during the night, they had to say it had been a fruitless night. So he gave them one more instruction, one more cast, and they had this miraculous catch of fish, and they had a sense, could it be? Was it really he? But, they dared not ask. However, in the breaking of bread and the sharing of a meal, their eyes were opened and they knew it was the presence of the risen one. Very much like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, joined by the third, didn't know who he was until they sat at table and he broke bread and their eyes were opened and their hearts burned within them, and they said, "It's the Lord." They experienced the presence of the crucified one and their exclamation, their profession of faith was that the story is not ended, he lives. Jesus lives. And so, we have in this little scene the evocation of the hints of the Eucharist feast that was to become the central sacramental act of the Christian Church. This is not surprising, because Jesus was always breaking bread. Jesus was always at table with someone. In fact, we're told that the open table was the very mark of Jesus' ministry, a table that was open to all, that excluded none, a table where so © Grand Valley State University �Companions: The Mark of Community Richard A. Rhem Page 2 many wonderful things happen in this life. Where there was breakfast or lunch or dinner, it seemed that he did his best work, gathered his community and nurtured that community around the table breaking bread. On the night in which he was betrayed, he gathered with his disciples, whether in an official Passover supper or not, it was, indeed, a momentous last supper. And so, it is not surprising that they had gone back to Galilee, Peter for example. What do you do when you are afraid? When you are disappointed? When you are confused? You go back home. And Peter went back fishing, for what do you do when your world falls apart? You reach out for that which is familiar and you return to the routine. And then, in that setting, in Galilee, after fishing all night, a seaside breakfast and their eyes are opened and they recognize him. Early Christian iconography indicates that the meal of bread and fish was more predominant than the meal of bread and wine. And so, here we have in John's addendum this 21st chapter, a little scene, a breakfast scene of bread and fish which was the place of recognition where their eyes were opened and that translated then into the life of the church into what we have just experienced. It is a shared meal ritualized, to be sure, routinized, to be sure, how else can we do it in an assembly like this? But, the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist has been that central sacramental act in which we have recognized the presence of the Lord. In the history of the Church, that meal became the chief means of explaining the meaning of the death of Christ. We know that history. If you happen to be from a Roman Catholic background, the word transubstantiation may ring a bell with you, for the priest duly ordained has an indelible grace by which he is able to perform the miracle at the table, changing the bread into the body and the wine into the blood. Well, at the time of the Reformation in the 161h century, Martin Luther said, "No, I don't think so. Rather, the word is consubstantiation. Not substance transposed into another, but a substance now surrounding the bread and the cup, over and above and around." And John Calvin said, "Well, Martin Luther, not really. How about through the Holy Spirit? Spiritual partaking of the bread and the cup." And then, of course, there is the Free Church tradition. Those in the sacramental tradition sort of look down their noses at the Free Church, saying, "Well, they have only empty signs, you know. It's just simply a memorial feast." Well, you can see what the Church has done in its splitting of hairs, so to speak, in trying to understand what actually happens in that supper. But, the main central meaning of the church's explanation was that, somehow or other, that supper was a representation of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ whereby our sin was removed and we were reconciled to God. That is the tradition, and that is where most of us began, at least, in experiencing the supper, and for many of you, I suppose, the partaking even this morning would mean "I am forgiven, I have peace with God," and that is wonderful and beautiful, and I don't want to take that away. But, I do want to suggest even another possibility alongside of that. I don't think it is a new © Grand Valley State University �Companions: The Mark of Community Richard A. Rhem Page 3 insight. I think it may well reflect the very earliest experience of those disciples and that early Jesus community. For, as I said, they were always at meal with Jesus, and sharing those moments where bread was broken, where the blessing was said, and where they, in fellowship, came to know each other in intimacy, in that experience, they were experiencing community. And so, I like Dominic Crossan's suggestion that Easter wasn't all crammed into one day or one week or even forty days, but rather, that Easter continued to happen. Easter continued to happen wherever those who had been with Jesus and lived with him and had experienced him broke bread with one another and looked each other in the eye and said, "O my God! He's here. The crucified one lives. Jesus is with us still." The presence of God experienced in the breaking of bread was the confirmation of the fact that the story didn't end on the cross, but there was something more, that ongoing presence of the holy and the sacred in the midst of the community of those who broke bread together. The Gospel of John is preeminently the Gospel of incarnation. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld him." Or, in the letter of John, "No one has seen God, but the one who dwells in love, God dwells in that one." The letter that begins, "The word of life that our hands have handled, our eyes have looked upon," the tangibility of the love of God in the flesh of Jesus - that was the heart of John's Gospel. The word became flesh and, if you hear it, what the gospel is saying is that God is revealed in the human, that the human being becomes the mirror, the reflector, the container of God. Jesus, in this Gospel, in response to the request, "Show us the father and we will be satisfied," says "If you have seen me, you have seen the father." Now, once again, the tendency of the Church has been to take that, isolate that, elevate that, make that a once-for-all preeminent, supreme revelation of God to which we always hark back. But, if we could hear the Gospel, we would hear the message as being that God is revealed in the human, and that means in the flesh of Jesus, and it means in your flesh and in my flesh – that the revelation of God is revealed in the humanity of those who are God's creatures. Incarnation was not once for all. Revelatory luminosity did not nest in one alone. In Jesus we saw it first. In Jesus, they saw it clearly. In Jesus, they said, "O my God!" And he was crucified. And they gathered together here and there, now and again, in this grouping and that grouping. And as they sat at table and they blessed and broke the bread, suddenly they knew in the midst of them who he was. It is in the breaking of bread that God is present. It is in the sharing of a meal that God is experienced, tangibly. It is in looking into the eyes of another and feeling melded to the soul of another and coming into the intimacy of communion that God is experienced. Companions - that is what we are. That is the mark of community. The word companion comes from the Latin prefix con, with, and panis, bread. The word © Grand Valley State University �Companions: The Mark of Community Richard A. Rhem Page 4 companion means with bread. A companion is one with whom one shares a meal, with whom one breaks bread, because to break bread with another is to enter into a dimension of intimacy, and that intimate relationship of sharing a meal is a locus of the revelation of God, of the experience of God. I really believe that is what those post-resurrection stories are trying to tell us - that it was in the continuing gathering of those who had been with him and loved him that they experienced him in the action that had marked him and their relationship with him, at table in fellowship. It is something to experience – in a ritualized service like this. In 1990, when we changed our format from passing plates down the rows to coming forward, I for the first time experienced the wonder of a Eucharist feast, because I have had the privilege of taking the bread and catching the eye, and in a moment of intimacy, being able to say "The body of Christ." I'll tell you that is high drama. That is a sacred moment, a beautiful experience, because it is in that moment that God is present in the body of Christ represented in the bread. But it is not the bread. The Church has had such arguments about what happens to the bread or what happens to the wine. It's not about bread and wine. It's about soul to soul, eye to eye, person to person. It’s about companions who break bread and who in a community of love, time and again, say, "O my God!" And there's a feast to follow, and the potential for God to be experienced in this ritual is no greater than the possibility of God being experienced in the courtyard. I hate to admit that because next year Bob's going to say, "Well then, why don't we just dispense with worship?" And I love worship. As much as I love to eat, I love worship more. But, it's the same thing if I am true to my principle - it's when you're gathered at table, when there is communion, when soul meets soul and eye meets eye, when there is love and grace, where there is forgiveness and understanding and awareness and attention - there God is present. There God is revealed; there God is known; they recognized him. In other words, to re-cognize, cognizance, knowing, re-cognizance, to know again, to know as the one as the same as before, to become aware again of what you knew before. The one you knew you want to see in Galilee. The one you knew, you recognize, your eyes are open, you say, "Oh, oh, oh, aah! That’s it! Jesus lives. God is present. All is not lost. All will be well." And so, in a few moments around those tables, if you take a moment and don't immediately dig into the roast pork or the sweet corn, but if you take a moment to look at those around the table, a moment of recognition, a moment of loving embrace where souls meet souls and the community of God's people, God is there. God will be there. You will be awash with the presence of God. Bread, wine, fish, sweet corn, pig roast - the means is indifferent. It is the relationship. It is the community. God in the presence. Sometime ago I made a hospital visit and the person I was visiting had a visitor, a person I had known for a long time a long time ago, but hadn't seen for a long © Grand Valley State University �Companions: The Mark of Community Richard A. Rhem Page 5 time, and he had not seen me. As I came into the room, he became somewhat startled, and he said, "Oh, oh, I haven't seen you for a long time. You've put on a lot of weight." And I said to him, "Yes, that's true, and thank you for mentioning it." You know, some things are better left unsaid because all of us who fit the national profile of being overweight know it, and we really know what we should be doing about it, but we all have our rationalizations, too, and I have mine, and it's simply the nature of my life in ministry. I'm very serious, it’s the nature of my life in ministry. Somebody is always saying to me, as Jesus did, "Come and have breakfast" or lunch or dinner. My whole life is a life of companionship, companionship with myriads of people with all sorts of conditions, wonderful people, wonderful moments of breaking bread and of being aware of one another and being in conversation, being in the intimacy of human connection. I suppose it's not just the bread. It's probably what I wash it down with, but besides that, it isn't easy to stay trim when you are a companion of so many wonderful people But, I'm deadly serious. You hear me speak often of my Tuesday pilgrimage to Grand Rapids where in a little corner of Duba's bar there is a table set and a band of brothers meets and when we are all assembled, we lift our glasses and our host says, not infrequently with a trembling voice, "To the wonder, miracle, glory and joy of life." I want you to know that God is present and that place is awash with the holy and the sacred. That ritual, that moment, that human community - what can you say but, "O 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 Pentecost VI Scripture Text John 21:12 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20020630 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-06-30 Title A name given to the resource Companions: The Mark of Community Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 June 30, 2002 entitled "Companions: The Mark of Community", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 21:12. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives God experienced in Community Incarnation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/94e4df00ba4878d5c4a72b3ff090593d.mp3 a3f6823c52a3bcc3033b79fe3485710a https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/984a2f525e497d79e71875e52bc69cc0.pdf 48f10236a28aa7762104bd06b1e766b0 PDF Text Text 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 A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20011111 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-11 Title A name given to the resource God and History: What's Happening? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Immanence Incarnation Pentecost https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f06e6bf508bef5c7cab918c4fdf984b6.mp3 c49db49e3f14b69b19260c8785440c28 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cd685fed88327a38efd5d97cb204a646.pdf d171497f8f8b4c2af15e83552805c3f0 PDF Text Text The Icon of God from Cradle to Grave Advent I I Colossians 1:15-20 Luke 2:1-7, 23:32-38 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 1, 2002 Transcription of the spoken sermon What do you imagine God to be like? What is, in your estimation, the nature of God? Or, if God language is uncomfortable, what do you think is the character or the nature of ultimate reality? Or, what is at the center of the mystery of being? Maybe there is nothing. Maybe all of this is just a chance occurrence. But, if there is some center, and you could call it God or you could call it the Infinite Mystery, or however you would think of that, what would its nature be? If you think about God, maybe you think about the old language when we used to speak about the attributes of God. Well, what would be the center, the central attribute of God? Or, the mystery of existence? Or, the heart of reality? You haven't thought about it recently, eh? It is not every day you get asked such a profound question. But, it is an important question, a very significant question, because there is a lot of truth in the claim that we become like the God that we worship, that we reflect in our nature, our being, our actions, our behavior, our attitude and our spirit, that we reflect what we consciously or unconsciously sense is in the deep depths and center of things. And so, it is not just a trick question and it is certainly not an intellectual exercise I invite you to, but rather, really deep down, how do you conceive God? What is your God like? What is the ultimate Ultimate at the heart of reality? That is a fascinating question and an important question, and we enter the Advent season today around the table of our Lord and we come to remember and what do we remember? We remember Jesus, and we come to the table where the bread is broken and the cup is poured out and, as some years ago Dominic Crossan said so simply and yet so potently, where you have body and blood separated, that points to a violent death. Body and blood are not separated when you die in your bed. So, we come to remember Jesus, body broken, blood poured out, Jesus, a violent death. We come to remember that Jesus died, and we say Jesus died for us. In the traditional liturgy of the church down through the centuries, whether Protestant or Catholic, that death has been understood as an atoning death for the sin of the world. Jesus took upon himself our sin, clothed us in his righteousness, therefore opening for us the possibility of forgiveness and © Grand Valley State University �Icon of God from Cradle to Grave Richard A. Rhem Page 2 peace with God. It is that move very early on, that understanding or interpretation of the death of Jesus that has made the church into a salvation cult. This is a place where you come to find salvation. This is a place where you come to have the assurance of sins forgiven and the assurance of life eternal. The church is the place of salvation. And to the extent that the church has become the place of salvation, the church has missed what I would suggest was the heart and center of the life of Jesus. The New Testament speaks in several places of Jesus as the icon of God. I had Don read the passage from Colossians rather than Hebrews because it uses the Greek word ikon from which our word icon comes, which means image or representation or picture or figure. When you see the icon, you see the representation of that to which the icon points, and obviously, the claim is that to look at Jesus is to see the nature of God. We could have used that passage of the writer to the Hebrews, God who in sundry times and diverse places spoke to our forebears by the prophets as in these last days spoken unto us by a son who is the effulgence of God's glory and the expressed image of God. John in his Gospel says in 14:9, "If you have seen me, you have seen the father." Paul in II Corinthians in the 4th chapter, sixth verse, says that we see the light and the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the icon of God. If we go to the Gospel of Luke, in fact, if we go to Matthew, Mark or Luke, one of the first three Gospels, we will find this life set forth, this life portrayed. In Luke's Gospel which is perhaps the most familiar and best loved, we have Jesus being born in a cattle stall, in poverty and obscurity, and dying on a Roman cross in ignominy and shame with grace on his lips. So, if Jesus is the icon of God, if Jesus is the image of God, if Jesus is the reflection of God, if Jesus is the embodiment of God, then this God pictured in the Gospel in Jesus' story is rather unGodlike, right? If you go to John's Gospel, there is a different nuance. Maybe it is more than a nuance. This one comes from eternity assuming human flesh, carrying out the divine mission, but even in those moments of crucifixion very much still in control. But, not so the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. There we have Jesus in the beautiful Christmas story and very much a product of the social-historical moment in which he was born. He was born in the year in which Caesar Augustus was reigning who could make a decree that would cause peasant people to move cross-country, even a very pregnant woman on this torturous journey, as the story tells it so movingly, coming to a place for which there is no room for them, having to move into a cattle stall where a child is born, a child who is born and adored by the off-scouring of society, the shepherds who gather around in adoration. This one, born very much in his social- historical context in poverty and obscurity and humility, and the life of Jesus portrayed in that Gospel, as you go through it, is a life consistent with the humility, the compassion, the care, the love, the grace, not a pussy-cat, but a love that has iron in it, a love that is strong enough to confront the temple establishment or Pilate © Grand Valley State University �Icon of God from Cradle to Grave Richard A. Rhem Page 3 in the moment of his trial, a love that is able - it's a strong love. This is no passive observer of life. This is one who engages life with power and with strength but always with grace and tenderness and humility. And then he dies as he dies on a Roman cross, condemned through the collusion of the church and the state, with grace on his lips. That is the icon of God. That is the representation of God in human flesh, human experience. But there is a tension in the New Testament because the passage that was read a moment ago, the icon of God in I Colossians 1:15 goes on to speak about this one as the firstborn of creation. This one is really something; this one is the agent of creation; this one is in all things preeminent. In fact, in that same letter it says that in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. I am beginning to feel some tension here. The writer to the Hebrews says that this one who was the expressed image of God after he had made atonement for our sins, sat down on the throne and throughout the New Testament there is that movement toward the exaltation of the one who was humiliated. We'll come back to that in a couple of weeks. To be sure, Paul says in Philippians II that Jesus emptied himself. But, because he did, he was given a name above every name that, at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow. So, we have this interesting thing going on in the New Testament. We have this picture of this beautiful human being born in humility, killed in humiliation, and the claim is that he is the icon of God from the cradle to the grave, or from the crib to the cross. And yet, we don't stay there very long. Very soon we want to lift him up. Very soon we want to speak about him as the agent of creation. Very soon we want to speak about him as the eternal word, and very soon we want to talk about him reigning at the right hand until he subdues all his enemies. A little tension there. I wonder why. I suggest it is because the church, when it got some power and credibility, didn't really want to stay with Jesus meek and mild. I mean, after all, if I am going to bow down to this one, I'd like this one to be worthy of my adoration. Now, if you can play God for a day, if you could forget the Bible and the catechisms and all of your preconceptions, if you could just start out now, but basically being the human being you are, and you could create reality, shape it, how would you shape it? If you were going to call all things into being, how would you make it work? What would you like to be at the heart of it? I started out with a question - What do you think is at the heart of it? Now is your chance. Not, is that the way it is, but if you could do it, what would you put at the heart of everything? And then a second question: How would you make that happen? What would you conceive of as the ideal, and how would you bring it about? Let's just say you said I would create a world in which might made right. That's possible. A world in which might made right. Well, then the second question is not necessary because then I know how you would effect it; you would do it © Grand Valley State University �Icon of God from Cradle to Grave Richard A. Rhem Page 4 coercively. You could exercise your power. If might makes right, then it is guaranteed. But, what if you were to conceive of a world whose heart and center were love and grace? Then how would you effect that? Then how would you make that happen? If it is love and grace, there is no coercion. If there is no coercion, there are no guarantees. And if there are no guarantees because there is no coercion, then love can be defeated. It seems to me that is what happened between the cradle and the grave. God embodied in the flesh of Jesus entered the world in humility, lived with passion, love and grace, and died violently because that was the world's response to that embodiment of God as love in our midst. I'm not surprised about the tension in the New Testament because, as a matter of fact, who needs a God like that? If you travel Europe a bit and go to the cathedrals, and if you go particularly to Italy to Ravenna, there are all these marvelous mosaics full of gold and I remember particularly in Ravenna in the dome over the chancel there is the Emperor Caesar, and over here another, and in the center up at the top there is Jesus, and that the name for that particular icon represented in that mosaic is Pantocreator. Pan is the prefix meaning all. This is the ruler over all. This is the ruler over all worlds. This one set in gold mosaic has the emperors down here at a decent level. This Jesus rules. This Jesus reigns. This Jesus will come again, by God! This Jesus will come with power and flashing glory, and will be a total contradiction of the icon of God that he was in the days of his flesh. Icon of God from Crib to Cross, from Cradle to Grave, humility, grace, compassion, tenderness, love. And then, because that is not the kind of world we really believe in, we transformed him into quite another icon, an icon with which we can live more comfortably, an icon who is the representative of a God, God Almighty, God all-powerful, God in control, God in charge. The only problem with this is, as I said at the beginning, we become like the God that we worship. And we, too, would be in control and believe that might makes right if might is ours. So, what kind of a world would you create? © 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 Advent I Scripture Text Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7, 23:32-38 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-0-20021201 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-12-01 Title A name given to the resource Icon of God from Cradle to Grave Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 1, 2002 entitled "Icon of God from Cradle to Grave", on the occasion of Advent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Hebrews 1:1-4, Luke 2:1-7, 23:32-38. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Incarnation Jesus as image of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4258e32ac42487d3f89d949f71c2ea32.pdf a7eddff54faf48f1e26febdc07ee419e PDF Text Text Interreligious Dialogue: What Is Required of Us? Article by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Published in Perspectives A Journal of Reformed Thought May 1995, pp. 10-15 Pilate’s question, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” demands an answer as urgently today as two thousand years ago. By travel and the ubiquitous beams of communications satellites the world has shrunk to a neighborhood, and the devotees of the great religions of the world no longer live in isolation. Increasingly they practice their respective faith traditions in close proximity to each other. Not only the interweaving of the world’s religions within the fabric of the global community but the rise of militant fundamentalisms, fueling ethnic conflict and spawning terrorism, make it imperative that interreligious dialogue take place for the sake of the peace of the world. Political leaders and parties will always attempt to Co-opt the respective religious traditions for their own purposes, but at least the religions in their authentic expression need not condone such misuse, and, with genuine dialogue, a deeper understanding of other faith traditions would be a force for the creation of a more secure world—and a movement toward a reign of peace, surely the intention of the Creator God. For the Christian religion, interreligious dialogue calls for a serious engagement with Pilate’s question. Until we come to a new appraisal of the place of Jesus in the purpose of God and the revelation of that purpose, we will not be able to enter into real dialogue. Beginning with the absoluteness of Christianity based on the finality of God’s revelation in Jesus and a salvation constituted exclusively through his atoning death, we may enter discussion and evidence a civil tolerance but without the openness to new insight that alone makes for serious and honest dialogue. Tolerance may be present in people who are convinced that they possess the final truth but are unwilling to impose it on another. But such an attitude also precludes that such people will learn something from the other since they begin with the assumption that theirs is the exclusive truth. © Grand Valley State University   �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Whatever revisioning interreligious dialogue may demand from other faith traditions, for the Christian tradition, a rethinking of its core creedal Christological formulations and their salvific implications is of first importance. The Quest of the Historical Jesus As I look across my desk at the shelf of books, the name of Jesus is prominent. Book after book published in the last few years seeks to uncover the mystery and meaning of this one who “comes to us as One unknown...,” to use Schweitzer’s familiar designation. Studies emanate from the Jesus Seminar people, as well as many beyond their ranks, such as the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown and the highly respected Jewish scholar E. P. Sanders. My eye catches the title of an older bundle of essays by Marinus de Jonge, Jesus: Inspiring and Disturbing Presence. Indeed. I move to the shelf and pull down the classic study by Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In his preface to the English translation, F. C. Burkitt refers to the sharp controversy that had been raging on the continent in the late nineteenth century over the attempt to discover the historical Jesus behind the Christ figure that appears in the writings, particularly of Paul. Such sharp battle, he notes, is somewhat foreign to the more genteel English, but even those whose lives of Jesus were “written with hate” have performed a great service in bringing to light an understanding “of the greatest historical problem in the history of our race.” The new understanding, Burkitt claims, makes clear that the object of attack was not the historical Jesus after all, but a temporary idea of Him, inadequate because it did not truly represent him or the world in which he lived, (vi) Schweitzer’s work brought the first quest to an end by pointing out the eschatological center of Jesus’ message in contrast to the portrait that portrayed Jesus as the ideal person of nineteenth-century, European society. With the rise of historical thinking, it was being recognized that historical research must seek to uncover the context of the first and second centuries if it would discover Jesus of Nazareth. Burkitt was confident that such an understanding would be taken for granted in the ongoing research into Christian origins. He cites a contemporary, Father Tyrrell, who claimed that Christianity was at a crossroads, but Burkitt little doubts that the church would come to terms with the results of historical research and bring the significance of Jesus Christ to fresh expression. That the eschatological prophet of Schweitzer’s description would need to be translated into another image if he were to be meaningfully appropriated in the twentieth century went without saying. The dawning historical consciousness was leading to the recognition, in Burkitt’s words, © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 3   that absolute truth cannot be embodied in human thought and that its expression must always be clothed in symbols. It may be that we have to translate the hopes and fears of our spiritual ancestors into the language of our new world. (vii) That the Absolute can be expressed only in symbol, in metaphor, has been widely recognized through linguistic studies in the last half of the present century. Metaphor in its common understanding is a figure of speech in which there is a transfer of meaning—one term is illuminated by attaching to it some of the associations of another, so that metaphor is “that trope, or figure of speech, in which we speak of one thing in terms suggestive of another” (Soskice, 1985, 54). In this sense, all religious language and speech about God is metaphoric. That does not take away from the truthfulness of what is communicated; indeed, picture language often conveys a truth far better than a formula or abstract definition. It does, however, mean that the truth being conveyed and the linguistic form, the particular figure of speech, are not necessarily tied to each other. The same truth may be able to be conveyed by a different figure of speech, and in another culture or time a figure of speech that communicates the truth at issue may fail to bring that truth to expression with clarity. In other words, the symbols used to express the truth of the Absolute must not themselves be absolutized. The symbolic form of expression points beyond itself; one must “see through” the symbol to the reality symbolized. The form of expression, the specific figure of speech chosen to disclose the reality may be adequate or inadequate; it may disclose or it may mislead. Only those metaphoric forms that prove themselves in usage will last. But even those that prove valuable over the ages and generations must not be understood as identical with the truth or reality signified. There may arise in evolving cultural experience reason to cease using a metaphor or to modify its use if it becomes evident that it has conveyed not only aspects of truth but also misunderstanding that has proven detrimental – for example, the metaphor of God as Father in current feminist critique of patriarchy. When a metaphor for the Absolute is challenged, it must be recognized that it is not the Absolute that is challenged, but only the symbolic form used to disclose the truth of the Absolute. The Rise of Historical Thinking As he wrote the preface to Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1910, Burkitt pointed to the growing recognition of the symbolic character of religious language in the wake of the rise of historical thinking in the nineteenth century. It was in that cultural context that the first quest of the historical Jesus took place, which Schweitzer showed to be naive. Further historical-critical research revealed the inadequacy of the historical methods employed and of the understanding of the nature of the biblical documents examined. Nevertheless, © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 4   thinking historically is the mark of modernity and remains so in post-modernism which, in general, denies the possibility of formulating principles or doctrines identical with foundational reality, along with rejecting the Enlightenment claim that there are universal truths of reason. We can see the implications of this new way of thinking—thinking with historical consciousness—if we examine the work of Ernst Troeltsch. He is best identified as an exponent of historicism, a term used here to define the interpretation of the totality of cultural development (including the Christian tradition) as phenomena of the historical process. Troeltsch recognized that the advent of the historicalcritical method signified more than just a new means by which to gain knowledge of the past. Far more, it symbolized a revolution in the consciousness of the person of the West. He was convinced that the employment of this method was incompatible with the traditional Christian faith based on a supernaturalistic metaphysics. This clash was most evident, as we have noted above, in the area of biblical criticism. Troeltsch did not point to particular results of scholarly research that was troubling to believers; rather, he pointed to the method that yielded the disturbing data. The assumptions of the method, he claimed, were irreconcilable with the traditional dogmatic method. Traditional dogmatic formulation regarded the Scriptures as supernaturally inspired; the historian assumed they must be understood in terms of the historical context in which they arose, subject to the same principles of interpretation and criticism applied to any ancient literature. The historian, following this method, according to Troeltsch, could not assume events recorded in Scripture were supernatural interventions by God; rather, the historian must treat them in the causal nexus of their times. And rather than granting uniqueness to the central redemptive events to which the Bible pointed, the historian must treat them as analogous to all other historical events past and present. Further, the historian’s research can yield only probable results, an inadequate ground for faith. Troeltsch’s ability to recognize the revolutionary nature of the employment of the historical-critical method revealed to him what remained hidden for many theological thinkers, namely, that one has to make a choice to accept the method and its consequences or to reject the method as inappropriate. What could not be done was to use the method as long as the consequences were compatible with one’s theological presuppositions and reject it when they went counter to one’s prior belief. The church must choose, Troeltsch was certain, to employ the method and accept the consequences, letting burn what must burn and then building again a truer, if more humble, foundation. It was his conviction that historical thinking had penetrated the mind of the Western person so deeply that it was no longer possible to think in any other vein. Either the Christian tradition would © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 5   accommodate itself to the spirit of the times or it would become a relic of the past. In his discussion of the significance of the historicity of Jesus for Christian faith, Troeltsch included Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Herrmann in his criticism, for while the liberal Protestant tradition recognized the validity of the historicalcritical method for the investigation of Christian origins, it failed to recognize the relativity of all historical phenomena including Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently Troeltsch could but condemn their view that Jesus is the absolute Savior for all people of all times and places (cf. Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben p. 51). In Troeltsch’s view the very historical-critical approach to Christian origins, especially to Jesus himself, undercut any attempt to salvage from the uniformity of history a final and absolute revelation of God. Thus Troeltsch was convinced that the theology of the future would have to purge away the last vestiges of the old dogmatic approach and carry through more rigorously the requirements of the historical-critical method that draws all historical phenomena, Jesus of Nazareth not excepted, into the movement of historical process, allowing for no absolute uniqueness in the midst of the relative. Paradoxical as it may appear, Karl Barth quite agreed with Troeltsch—agreed, that is, that to subject Jesus to historical-critical research behind the witness of the New Testament is to level him down to one historical person among others, in whom there cannot possibly be found the final and definitive revelation of God. Of course, agreement with Troeltsch that having followed the path it did, there was no stopping halfway, does not imply that Barth advocates with Troeltsch that their successors should draw the logical conclusion as Troeltsch advocated. On the contrary, Barth discovers their fatal error in the course they chose to follow in the first place. It was not their decision to grant recognition to the use of the historical-critical method and then fail to draw the conclusions to which it led. Rather, it was their understanding of religion as an innate potential of the human spirit and their failure to see that, defined in such terms, the Christian faith was not being spoken of at all. If Christianity were a phenomenon of the religious capacity of the human person, then it would be one religion among others and could be understood only, as Troeltsch maintained, by a comparative historical study. In such an instance there could be no talk of an absolute and definitive revelatory significance or meaning in history. If one started where Troeltsch started, Barth maintained, one would end where Troeltsch ended. But then, according to Barth, we have to do not with the religion of revelation but with the revelation of religion (Church Dogmatics I, 2, 284), and the application of the historical-critical method will discover in Jesus no more than a man among other men and in Christianity no more than a religion among other religions. The History of Religions school is only the logical outcome of a theology that speaks of the believing person rather than of the revealing God. Theology that takes itself © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 6   seriously can speak only from the revelation of God that has grasped it, paying homage to no worldview, be it ancient or modern, to no philosophical system, and to no anthropological analysis of the human religious capacity. Theology must speak from out of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Thus Barth completely repudiated the method of Troeltsch, and, to the dismay of the academic world, pursued the traditional dogmatic method, reducing historical-critical research to a secondary, helping role in the explication of the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. Barth’s repudiation of Troeltsch and the whole project of nineteenth-century liberalism prevailed. A whole generation of theologians was shaped by the theology of the Word that, while not a uniform movement, was at one in removing the truth of Christian faith from the results of historical investigation. But as the twentieth century nears its end, Troeltsch is being studied anew. Garrett E. Paul in a 1993 Christian Century article asks and answers in his title, “Why Troeltsch? Why Today? Theology for the 21st Century.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer had exposed the Achilles’ heel of Barth’s dogmatic method with his recognition of Barth’s “positivism of revelation.” Writing from prison to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer pointed out that Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion but that he replaced it with a positivist doctrine of revelation that says in effect, “Take it or leave it.” In a later letter he affirmed Barth’s ethical observations as well as his dogmatic views, but went on to write: it was that he gave no concrete guidance, either in dogmatics or in ethics, on the non-religious interpretation of theological concepts. There lies his limitation, and because of it his theology of revelation becomes positivist, a “positivism of revelation,” as I put it. Bultmann, who joined Barth in the removal of Christian origins from historical investigation, claiming the necessity only of the “dass” of the historical Jesus for faith, also saw his disciples move away from this view as they engaged in “the new quest of the historical Jesus.” Presently the flood of studies being published, including the work of the Jesus Seminar scholars, indicates that the implications of historical thinking recognized and applied by Troeltsch will not go away. Karl Barth, arguably the greatest theological thinker of the century and among the greats of all time, was able by the power of his thought and the circumstances of his historical moment to stem the tide of historical thinking applied to theological formulation for a generation, but the kerygma sheltered in a safe haven denying investigation of historical foundations cannot finally be maintained no matter how brilliantly and powerfully proclaimed. Hans Küng in Great Christian Thinkers (1994) identifies Barth as one of a line of theologians—Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Schleiermacher— © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 7   who effected a paradigm shift in theological understanding. But in his analysis of Barth, Küng claims that he initiated the paradigm shift to postmodernity but did not complete it. With great regard for Barth’s accomplishments, Küng nevertheless confirms Bonhoeffer’s claim made a half century ago. Recognizing that the later Barth was reevaluating the knowledge of God available from the world of creation, natural theology, and world religions, Kung maintains that in the end this dogmatic edifice conceived on such a large scale, stringently constructed and carefully built, had at least in principle (though most Barthians hardly noticed) been blown up! It is Küng’s contention that if Barth could start over, “he would attempt to work out a Christian theology in the context of the world religions and the world regions.” How would Barth go about this, according to Küng? He would have attempted to work out a responsible historical-critical dogmatics in the light of an exegesis with a historical-critical foundation, in order in this way co translate the original Christian message... for the future that had dawned in such a way that it was again understood as a liberating address from God. (120) And, Küng contends, the “historical Jesus,” apart from whom the “Christ of dogma” becomes a myth to be manipulated at will, might “again become of the utmost importance and urgency.” We have come, it would appear, full circle during the course of this century. The current reconsideration of Ernst Troeltsch stems from his early grasp of the implications of historical thinking for theological formulation. He was an interdisciplinary thinker at home in various realms of inquiry. He faced up to the demise of Eurocentricism and the relativity of all historical events and human knowledge – religious, philosophical, and scientific. Thus he acknowledged that Christian faith was relative to its largely Western orientation and environment. At the beginning of this century Troeltsch foresaw the global pluralism with which we are finally beginning to come to terms. In 1910, Burkitt was expressing the implication of a new way of thinking, thinking historically, thinking in terms of development, the evolving conception of truth. Such a way of thinking is widely accepted in our world, but it has been resisted in the conservative sectors of the church because it can lead to the morass of relativism and the denial of the Absolute and of absolute truth. But such a result is not the necessary consequence of historical thinking. Rather, it can simply lead to the recognition expressed by Burkitt—that every human attempt to express absolute truth is only a relative expression—relative to one’s cultural context—a partial grasp of the absolute that will always transcend any historically conditional expression. Further, that expression is possible only in symbolic form, by use of metaphor. © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 8   My purpose in introducing the limits and possibilities of historical thinking is in order to point the way to authentic and fruitful interreligious dialogue. Such dialogue is imperative for our world. The frightening prospect of a world in the throes of religious conflict makes it incumbent upon us to find a way to effect communication and mutual respect among the world religions. That will not be possible unless we are willing to apply the insights of historical thinking to the core credal development of Christology, including the various theories of the atonement that have been formulated throughout the centuries. The Development of Doctrine Burkitt was too confident in 1910. The twentieth century has not seen a fresh expression of the meaning of Jesus Christ in the church. Rather there has been strenuous resistance to any revisioning of core Christological formulations. This resistance to revisioning has been pointed out by the Anglican priest John Bowden in Jesus: The Unanswered Questions (1988). He is troubled by the church’s refusal to engage in serious discussion of the unavoidable questions surrounding Jesus that have arisen as our knowledge of the cultural context of his life and the checkered history of credal development have become apparent. Bowden writes from the perspective of faith, from within the tradition of the Christian church, and for love of the faith and the church. But he raises the unanswered and disturbing questions that must be addressed if the church is to engage the spiritual quest of those for whom responsible, intelligent inquiry must accompany the commitment of faith. Thus, his purpose in writing is pastoral and positive. From a broad spectrum of research he has distilled the critical questions that demand a hearing. Reflecting on his own theological training, he finds it remarkable that, after a thorough immersion in the historical-critical study of Scripture, he found quite a different approach to the history of Christian doctrine up to the year 451, the year of the Council of Chalcedon and the formulation of the classical statement about the natures of Jesus Christ. The theological reasoning and philosophical argument of those early centuries used the Bible in quite another fashion than he had learned to use it in his biblical studies. While the different cultural patterns of the early centuries of Christian dogmatic formulation were recognized, the conclusions of the church fathers were not to be questioned after Chalcedon; they were a given. But, Bowden contends, the conclusions of those early centuries need to be questioned as seriously as the gospel record has been. Biblical criticism must be joined by doctrinal criticism that will examine the historical development in those early centuries that culminated in the classic credal definitions of Incarnation and Trinity, an historical development about which we have data enough to trace the interplay of cultural forces involving not only concern for the truth but political power plays and ecclesiastical intrigue. We really know the story. We © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page 9   have simply refused to draw out the implications for this core credal affirmation. But until we do, we will not be able to engage in honest interreligious discussion. Doctrinal formulation is a human enterprise. Human thought forms and human language are the tools of such formulation. To acknowledge that as fundamental for historical thinking is not a denial of absolute truth, as previously stated. It is only to recognize that any particular articulation of the truth cannot be absolutized and be raised to a status beyond further reflection and possible reformulation. It is simply to acknowledge that it is a given of our human historical condition that we are limited to relative apprehensions, partial understandings that need always to be adjusted in light of new information gathered from research and ongoing historical experience. John Hick is a Christian thinker who has utilized the distinction between the Absolute and the respective relative apprehensions of the Absolute in the great world religions. Being a Christian, he has applied that insight to the development of the Christological formulations of the early centuries in the interest of developing a Christology in a pluralistic age. Christology Revisited John Hick has a ready grasp of the development of the Christian theological tradition as well as a deep knowledge of other religious traditions. For him, the window to the Real, to God, is Jesus and the Christian tradition. But he believes that the Real is apprehended through other traditions as well. Thus he believes there is a pluralism of ways of salvation. He argues his case in The Metaphor of God Incarnate (1993), in which he contends that the necessary revision of Christological understanding that alone can make way for genuine interreligious dialogue will involve “liberation from the network of theories—about Incarnation, Trinity and Atonement….” Hick contends that divine incarnation in its standard Christian form, in which both genuine humanity and genuine deity are insisted upon, has never been given a satisfactory literal sense; but that on the other hand it makes excellent metaphorical sense….We see in Jesus a human being extraordinarily open to God’s influence and thus living to an extraordinary extent as God’s agent on earth, “incarnating” the divine purpose for human life. He thus embodied within the circumstances of his time and place the ideal of humanity living in openness and response to God, and in doing so he “incarnated” a love that reflects the divine love. (12) Hick, in a sense, is attempting to fulfill the task that in 1910 Burkitt foresaw as necessary if the church were going to face the consequences of the historical study of Christian origins and translate the figure of Jesus into an understanding meaningful to the twentieth century. © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page10   Yet, the work of translation does not proceed without resistance, as Bowden points out. In his opening chapter, Hick himself reviews the explosion that erupted following the publication in 1977 of The Myth of God Incarnate, a volume of essays by leading New Testament scholars and theologians, of which he was one. “Thundering sermons and clerical pronouncements,” along with articles in the British press called for the Anglicans among the authors to resign their orders, and publication of a flurry of conservative retorts erected a wall of opposition to the insights and implications as they were articulated in The Myth of God Incarnate. From the tenor of the responses, one would have thought nothing in the church’s understanding had been affected in spite of two hundred years of intensive research and discussion. While the results of the historicalcritical study of the Bible had gained some acceptance, there obviously remained a formidable barrier to the same kind of investigation of the historical process that transformed Jesus of Nazareth into the ontological Son of God, second person of the Trinity, in the credal development of the fourth and fifth centuries. Hick addresses the third element of the doctrinal triad he contends needs revisioning, the understanding of the death of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice. He traces the history of the development of the doctrine, pointing out the cultural contexts that influenced the respective theories over the centuries. Then he asks, as in the case with other doctrines, what was the original experience out of which atonement theory arose, for it is that same gracious, liberating experience that we seek in our day. Rejecting the idea of an objective justice requiring punishment for wrongdoing, a moral law that God can and must satisfy by punishing the innocent in place of the guilty, Hick searches for a way to express the idea of atonement in the broad sense, in the etymological meaning of at-one-ment becoming one with God—not ontologically but, rather, being in right relationship with God, being in a state of salvation. He points to Eastern Orthodoxy as a valuable source for understanding with its idea of restoration to the divine image, salvation as a process of transformation. In such a view, “Jesus’ death was a piece with his life, expressing a total integrity in his self-giving to God; and his cross continues to inspire and challenge on a level that does not involve the atonement theories developed by the Churches.” With such an understanding of the death of Jesus, Hick is able to find similar meanings of salvation in other religious faiths. Thus he contends, these different conceptions of salvation are specifications of what, in a generic formula, is the transformation of human existence from selfcenteredness to a new orientation centered in the divine Reality.... The great world religions, then, are ways of salvation. Each claims to constitute an effective context within which the transformation of human existence can and does take place from self-centeredness to Realitycenteredness. (136) © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page11   With such a perspective, genuine interreligious dialogue can begin. It will become an empirical process of seeking to discover the fruits of the respective religions in human life. The alternative to such a stance is to bring to the discussion an understanding of atonement that necessitates a Christian absolutism of the exclusivist variety—that outside of the knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, salvation is not possible, or, an inclusivist view that salvation is only through Christ but explicit knowledge and trust are not necessary to receive the benefits of his death and resurrection. The ranks of the exclusivists are thinning. Evangelicals are increasingly trying to find a broader arena for God’s saving embrace. Clark Pinnock’s A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions and John Sanders’s No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized attempt this, although they thread a tortuous way because they have not yet shed an earlier view of biblical authority nor questioned the core Christological formulation. Schubert Ogden suggests an alternative to Hick. In a 1993 address at the Divinity School in Chicago, he argued against the pluralists’ claim as well as rejecting the claims of exclusivists and inclusivists alike. But in his approach there is also a revisioning of the classical Christological formulations in which salvation is constituted through Jesus Christ alone. Rather than a constitutive Christology, Ogden argues for a representative Christology. In this view, the Christ event represents the claim that “salvation has always already been constituted by what Christians are wont to think and speak of as the primordial and everlasting love of God.” Whether and where that love of God might elsewhere be represented is to be determined in the discussion without prior commitment to exclusivism, inclusivism, or pluralism. One simply enters the dialogue open to the truth claim of the other. My intention is not to advocate Hick or Ogden or any other thinker who is addressing the matter of interreligious dialogue. Rather, I wish to point to the necessity of honestly drawing out the consequences of the recognition that human grasp of the truth develops, evolves, and needs ongoing assessment and adjustment—and sometimes conceptions need to be rejected. By use of historical imagination the originating experience that gave rise to a theological formulation needs to be recovered in order to express the same reality differently, in order to make the experience available in a totally different cultural context. Rather than seeing this as a burden, a cause for fear and defensiveness, it should be seen as an exciting challenge. Is not such a pursuit of the truth to love God with mind as well as heart? And is not the recognition that every biblical and theological expression is marked by the human and historical limitations that adhere to all human thought the reason there is need for continual reformation? To be Reformed is not to be in possession of a set of timeless and eternal truths but, rather, to refuse to absolutize any human arrangement or formulation. It is © Grand Valley State University �Interreligious Dialogue Richard A. Rhem Page12   not to be saddled with a set of truths that were once new, innovative, and destabilizing of the established order of the sixteenth century, or the first century. It is an approach, a spirit, a posture that is open to new knowledge, fresh insight, and cumulative human experience within historical development. The church has managed to spend the century in a state of schizophrenia, pursuing research in the academy and sharing the results in the lecture hall, while the liturgy, prayers, hymns, and sermons have given little evidence of the honest engagement with insights of the modern period. My mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, claimed the only heresy was to make the gospel boring. I would add another—the heresy of orthodoxy, the evidence of a failure of nerve and lack of trust in the living God. It is the heresy of an inordinate lust for certitude that seeks premature closure, the shutting down of the quest for truth and growth of knowledge in the magnificent and mysterious cosmos by the creatures whom the Creator calls to consciousness and embraces in a grace that pervades the unfolding cosmic process. References: John Stephen Bowden. Jesus: The Unanswered Questions. Abingdon Press, 1989. F.C. Burkitt, Preface to The Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer. Dover Publications, Dover Ed edition, 2005. John Hick. The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Second edition). Westminster John Knox Press, 2nd edition, 2006. Ernst Troeltsch. Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben. © 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 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References John S. Bowden, Jesus: The Unanswered Questions, 1989, John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 2006, Albert Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 2005, Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu fur den Glauben. 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 RA-4-19950501 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-05-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Interreligious Dialogue: What is Required of Us? Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 eng Description An account of the resource Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 1, 1995 entitled "Interreligious Dialogue: What is Required of Us?", it appeared in Perspectives, pp. 10-15. Tags: Global Community, Pluralism, Interfaith, Historical Jesus, Metaphor, Grace, Mystery, Incarnation. Scripture references: John S. Bowden, Jesus: The Unanswered Questions, 1989, John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 2006, Albert Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 2005, Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu fur den Glauben.. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Global Community Grace Historical Jesus Incarnation Interfaith Metaphor Mystery Pluralism https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/16dd2ff5245dadf2f636d112ef2e7e02.pdf 9407e0b0c1ca8b8a6a0575953663d5d0 PDF Text Text Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? From the series: Varieties of Religious Experience Text: John 1:1, 14, 17; II Corinthians 4:6 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan April 11, 1999 Transcription of the spoken sermon I find that it’s really wonderful to grow old; actually, every decade has been better than the one before. But, there is a downside, too - one doesn’t necessarily go right off into dreamland immediately, as sometimes one wakes up two or three times during the night, for whatever reason. When I can’t get to sleep, I do a little late night surfing. When Jay Leno’s having a bad night and when I’m really, really desperate to sleep, I’ll tune into a TV preacher because preaching, you know, has been defined as one man talking in another man’s sleep. Of course, I’m always thinking about what’s coming up to preach and I just happened a couple nights ago to see a rather well known TV preacher and he was preaching about the resurrection of our bodies and, toward the end of the service, as these services tend to go, there was the presentation of the Gospel, the invitation aspect where one is invited to become a Christian, to believe in Jesus, and so forth, and the ritual is pretty much the same. I’ve done it myself in years past. I know it pretty well; I know all the Bible verses that go with it. We are sinners; we cannot help ourselves; we stand under the condemnation of God; God sent Jesus, God’s son, into the world to bear our sin as a penalty for our sin on the cross, and God raised him up as indication that the sacrifice had been received and now there was forgiveness and there was heaven for all who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus. And that was all very familiar. I’m sure it’s very familiar to almost everyone here. At one point the TV preacher got down on his knee, and he said, "If you will say, ‘God, I believe Jesus was Your Son, I believe Jesus died for my sin, I give myself to him, forgive me and make me Your child,’" and then he said, "It’s done. If you do that, it’s done. You are a new creation and you are no longer under condemnation and you have the promise of eternal life." I tell you that story because I’ve been thinking about Jesus - whether or not Jesus is an episode or an epiphany, and I thought to myself that that is the traditional Gospel paradigm of evangelical, conservative Christianity really in all of its aspects, all of its branches. Jesus is an episode. Now, the word episode comes from the Greek language, and it refers to the entrance of something in-between, such as in the Greek tragedies, with two great © Grand Valley State University   �Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Richard A. Rhem Page 2   choral pieces and an act, a part of the play between separating the two great choral pieces, and so an episode is something complete in itself, but a part of a larger picture. I thought to myself that is the traditional understanding of Jesus Christ and what Jesus has done. Jesus is an episode in God’s grand creative sweep of things. Jesus came in from outside because God is outside. Jesus becomes the Divine Intruder; God sends Jesus who intervenes into our history for a brief time in order to do something, in order to effect our salvation primarily, supremely, in his death bearing our sins, taking our guilt, making a sacrifice acceptable to God, making us, thereby, who believe in him, acceptable to God. Jesus comes in, accomplishes that work, and departs. He’s in again, out again. It’s an episode. That really is the way traditionally that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been presented. And like the TV preacher says, that was good news because we are fallen, under condemnation, incapable, and therefore in need of being saved. Now, there’s nothing new in that. That’s just "old hat." You learned it first in Kindergarten. But, what if the world is not fallen? What if creation is not fallen? What if humankind is not totally depraved and totally incapable of salvaging itself? What if there was not a moment of pristine perfection in paradise from which everything fell to this present abysmal state? Then, how would one understand what Jesus did? Then why would Jesus come? What if we are not fallen from some pristine perfection but, rather, what if we are clawing our way out of the jungle? What if we are slithering out of the slime? What if we, in our animality and our bestiality, are trying to move by the nudging of God’s creative Spirit toward the manifestation of Spirit? What if we are as humankind on a long trajectory which began billions of years ago in an inanimate state, moving to animate state, to life, to self-conscious life, to human life, to tribal existence? And what if we do not so much need to be redeemed from a fallen state, but continue to be beckoned to that intention of God for us? What if, in the midst of our human darkness, we saw a face, we encountered a human being, and we saw there something that was deep and true, and we said, "Oh, I see." That, of course, would be an epiphany, wouldn’t it? For epiphany also comes from the Greek language, and the epi begins it as episode, but that’s the prefix which can be moved around a bit in terms of the context of the root word of the intention of the statement. An epiphany is manifestation; it is that moment of intuitive insight. It is that flash of insight. It is that "Aha" moment. It is that which we speak of when we say, "It dawned upon me. Suddenly it dawned upon me." We see something and we see deep down into the truth and the nature of things. What if Jesus was not sent from outside in to assume our human nature, but what if Jesus, in the intention of God, became that moment in our history when there was full-blown a human being whom to look upon would be to say, "My God!" and whom to look upon would lead one to say, "And there, by the grace of © Grand Valley State University �Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Richard A. Rhem Page 3   God, I ought to be. I must be." What if such a manifestation were not coming into the historical drama, but arising within the historical drama? (Even now that I say that, I can hear Karl Barth rolling over in his grave, so intent to deny that history could lead to the manifestation of anything divine. Nonetheless, down, Karl, listen to me.) What if the historical, biological, evolutionary track on which we find ourselves at that point, call it the fullness of time, if you will, but at that point, emerged in the humanity of Jesus who, according to the intentions of God and through the creative Spirit of God was that epiphany of what God is all about, what God is and what God is about? Then Jesus would not be simply an episode, sent, then, to do something, a grand transaction, leaving again, preparing for us a kind of salvation that would spring us loose from this veil of tears, this realm of darkness, promising to us peace with God and eventual home in heaven. But, what if Jesus came into the midst of history according to the purpose of God in order to show us what history was to be all about, what the intention of God was for our history? What if Jesus wasn’t just an episode? What if Jesus was that manifestation of what is true everywhere at all time, what God has been about from the beginning and what God will be about to the end? What if Jesus was the epiphany, a realization, an incarnation of God’s eternal intention? I think Paul and John were trying to say that, but let me be honest. Paul and John were episodic. Jesus was an episode for Paul and for John and I don’t try to make John and Paul into something else. Jesus came in from outside and left again, and in the Gospel of John, the 14th chapter, Jesus says, "I came from the father and I return to the father." John understood Jesus as an episode. Paul understood Jesus as an episode. Paul understood Jesus as an episode coming in to effect the salvation of the world which was going to end very soon. Now, I grant you that. What if we read them and if we understand them better than they understood themselves? What a presumptuous thing to say! But, what if we see what was operative in them? What were they saying? John starts his gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the word," in the beginning obviously referring us to Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John is talking about the one true and eternal God, Creator of all. He is connecting the word, the intention, the idea of this Creator God with, in the 14th verse, this word, idea, intention becoming flesh, and he says we beheld him and behold, we saw in him the glory of God. He says no one has ever seen God, that Ultimate Mystery of things, but the son has revealed God from an eternal realm into the realm of our history, John episodic at that point, nonetheless understanding that Ultimate Mystery of God landed in our history and in our history became incarnate so that we could look upon the flesh of Jesus, look into the face of Jesus, and we could see the nature of God. In fact, this is what Paul says explicitly in the second letter to the Corinthians, the fourth chapter, the sixth verse, where the God who said, "Let light shine out of © Grand Valley State University �Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Richard A. Rhem Page 4   darkness." Whose God is it? Of course, it’s the Creator God Who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth and said, "Let there be light." The same God John is talking about Paul is talking about. They want to be very clear. We’re not talking about some little tribal deity over here; we’re talking about God! And this God Who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Fantastic claim, but again both of them suggesting that in the midst of the trajectory of history which has behind it that biological evolutionary development which has behind it all of those eons of cosmic development. At this point there arose in this process one whose very flesh became the incarnation of God and it is no wonder that, when the Church for several hundred years struggled to understand who Jesus was, what happened in Jesus, what in the world God was doing, the Church came finally to make a contradictory statement in the Council of Chalcedon, 451, but that’s where we get that famous phrase with which the Church has rested for all these centuries, "Jesus Christ, true God, true human." What they’re saying is, I see Jesus and I say, "Oh, God!" I see Jesus and I say, "There’s the human in the midst of this historical, biological, evolutionary continuum upon which we are traveling; there has been a moment in which there was a face that shined the light of the eternal God into our hearts as we beheld him." That, I think, is Jesus as epiphany who in his incarnation was telling us what is true about God and what is true about humanity and what is true about human history. In Jesus we get the clue as to the grain of the universe. When I see a preacher do as admittedly I myself have done in earlier years, boil it all down to a Jesus coming from outside in order to die for my sins in order that I might have heaven, I want to say to myself that’s really not terribly important. That’s awfully self-centered and frankly, simply irrelevant to what’s happening in my world. I don’t think Jesus would even recognize himself, for was Jesus about getting us to heaven, or was Jesus about changing the world? Was Jesus about some future age, or was Jesus about the here and now, the rough and tumble of history? Was not Jesus that non-violent resister of the world as it is in order to bring it to the intention of God, the God of justice and mercy? And I am so struck by it because our world is again in the convulsions of war. A couple of weeks ago I said to you if you were meeting with the President this morning, how would you vote - do we bomb or not? And last week it seemed as though that bombing which was the decision was simply violence eliciting greater violence. And now here we are on a third Lord’s Day and I really can’t gather you in worship and speak to you of eternal things without constantly having before my mind and putting before your mind what’s going on in the world because I think that’s what the Gospel is about; I think that’s what God is about; I think that’s what Jesus is about, and it would seem today, in spite of all the spin doctors and all of the critique that we have to do with the filtered news that we get in quotation marks, it would seem that there is a horror being perpetrated in our world. It would seem that there are some resemblances, not in numbers, but © Grand Valley State University �Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Richard A. Rhem Page 5   nonetheless in intention and in consequence to the Holocaust of the Second World War, and it would seem that in a world where we would follow Jesus who stands for the God of justice non-violently, that our world has not yet come to a point where non-violent protest will stop the slaughter, and so in this world which is still so much in darkness, so marked by brokenness, we are having to use violence on behalf of humanity. I say to myself it’s Easter Sunday in Orthodox country, it’s Easter Sunday in Serbia Yugoslavia, and I think about not only the orthodox church, but the Roman Catholic Church and all brands of Protestant church and I think for 2000 years we have made Jesus Christ into a salvation figure; we have made Christian faith into a salvation cult; we have made the Church into an institution of salvation, and we have done precious little to effect the things that Jesus was about. The darkness continues, and we are satisfied to have a Savior when that one who was the epiphany, the manifestation of the intention of God in our history was about the concrete stuff of history. We do our liturgy and we let our incense flow heavenward and repeat our creeds and we have, in my opinion, missed it so drastically that Easter can be celebrated in Serbia today with not much connection with ethnic cleansing that is going on over there. But, wasn’t Jesus simply the exemplification of the intention of God? Didn’t Jesus say to his disciples, "As the father has sent me, so send I you. Receive the Holy Spirit." Did Jesus ever say, "I am unique and have a monopoly on this?" Did not Jesus rather say, "As I have been, you are to be. Go forth, do this as I have done. Be what I have been." We in the evangelical Church have been so concerned about the uniqueness of Jesus. Tell me why. Why is it so important that Jesus be the only way? Why must Jesus be unique? Of course, if he is a salvation figure, if he’s someone from outside who came in to do this thing, I can see, I suppose, that you need to hedge him around and make him unique. But for God’s sake, he didn’t want to be unique. He wanted to be one of us in order that we might be one with him. I think what Jesus was about was for all of us, more and more to manifest that spirit, that fullness that dwelt in him in order that we might stand in solidarity with him, in order that we might make our world a different place. So, here we are in Europe again, in war. I was reminded of the book, A Man Called Intrepid, I read several years ago by William Stevenson about Sir William Stephenson, the Englishman who ran the secret war in the Second World War. He writes about November 5 of 1940, shortly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to his third term, Roosevelt gathered with his neighbors in Hyde Park. His opponent that year was Wendell Wilke who had said that electing Roosevelt to a third term would mean, "dictatorship and war." Roosevelt had said, "I will not send our boys to fight a foreign war." But Roosevelt saw more than the American people. For two years he had been working with Churchill and the English, and then the English were able to break the Nazi code and in order to © Grand Valley State University �Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Richard A. Rhem Page 6   make that a valuable accomplishment, they couldn’t let the Nazis know that they had broken the code, and so now Hitler, irate, was ready to begin to bomb cities, non-military targets. November 14, 1940, Churchill learned through the breaking of the code, the decoding of the message that it was to be Coventry, England. If you go there you will find a grand contemporary cathedral on the ruins of the old, bombed out cathedral. Coventry was to be bombed. Did Churchill let them know so they could evacuate the city? That would have tipped off the Nazis that they had the code. And so, a sleepless night he tossed and turned and while Coventry was bombed, he knowing that they would be bombed, not able to let them know, lest they faltered in the larger picture. You see, this world of darkness where there is all this ambiguity, and FDR said to Sir William Stephenson shortly after that, "We are being forced more and more to play God." And I would say, "Exactly, exactly. We are called to play God!" God is not the God of the quick fix, dipping in here and there, fixing that, healing that, saving this one. Damning that one. God of infinite patience has come to full expression in humankind in a human face; we have looked into the face of Jesus and we have seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and Jesus said, "As I am in this world, you are to be." God is waiting for us to play God. We are making those hard decisions with particular judgment and not enough knowledge, fallible and flawed that we are, we are called to be that, the Church of Jesus Christ, the people of God in the midst of this world to break that cycle of vengeance and retaliation and hatred. What’s going on in the Balkans is the result of centuries of tribalism, us against them, nursing old wounds, blood feuds. We have to stop it. We have to address it. We have to deal with it gently, kindly, now firmly. But, we cannot sit by and allow evil to happen. It has happened with the knowledge of the Holy Father and the President of the United States during the Holocaust. And maybe, eventually, maybe more and more will come to a dawning of the truth if they see it, that which came to expression in Jesus, coming to expression in more and more who are not nearly so concerned about heaven as earth, about the next life as this life. In last night’s news there was a note about millions being raised in Israel for relief because they remember, you see. They remember when it was them. And there was the flash of 75 Israeli doctors at the Macedonian border ministering to Kosovars who are Muslims who, during the second World War, supported Hitler. You see, that’s what has to happen. There has to be a forgiving; there has to be resistance to violence; there has to be a refusal to do any harm; there has to be where possible that manifestation, that epiphany, that grace that came to expression in Jesus, and here and there, now and again when someone in solidarity with Jesus decides to heal and forgive and to embrace in order that the world may be changed. Heaven can wait. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/64dc013092819ee8444e5cb6b8d53b4c.mp3 97738b02ec3ff25b16f6666788c8d2b9 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 II Series Varieties of Religious Experience Scripture Text John 1:1, 14, 17, II Corinthians 4:6 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19990411 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-04-11 Title A name given to the resource Jesus: Episode or Epiphany? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 11, 1999 entitled "Jesus: Episode or Epiphany?", as part of the series "Varieties of Religious Experience", on the occasion of Eastertide II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 1:1, 14, 17, II Corinthians 4:6. Cosmic Evolution Divine Intention Epiphany Incarnation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bbdc2e52859c10bb1c82aead0f897df0.pdf 54a02004ada197cf0fd440bad88ce153 PDF Text Text Life Broken and Poured Out From the sermon series: Now – But Then Text: Luke 15:51-52; I Corinthians 13:12 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Advent I, December 3, 1995 Transcription of the spoken sermon I am finding that I am entering this season of Advent and this new Christian year with anticipation, and my experience is that that is a growing anticipation and a growing delight in the celebration of the Christian year. I am perhaps just getting older, but I am enjoying the structure of the Christian Year, the form that it gives to my spiritual life and pilgrimage, the life of worship. Obviously, for me whose chief responsibility is worship, I suppose that's understandable, but I would hope that it is true for you, too, that as a people you might even have thought this week, "Advent begins. A new Christian Year begins. The color will be purple. Soon the trees will be dressed, the stars lighted. We'll gather around the table; the Advent wreath will be in our midst." Those things are becoming increasingly meaningful to me over the years. I had to learn all of that after the fact, because I grew up, as many of you have, in a tradition where the Christian Year was not observed. Oh, well, Christmas, to be sure. Easter, Pentecost, and I think we celebrated Ascension Day, too, because I had to go to church on Thursday night. But, in this old Dutch Reformed Church in which I grew up, we didn't observe the Christian Year because that was Catholic, and even if it'd been 500 years, you can't protest too long! Actually, I was trained that the order for preaching should be the doctrines of the Heidelberg Catechism - Lord's Day by Lord's Day by Lord's Day. And so, if you followed those doctrinal themes, you might be considering the death of Christ in the Advent season, or you might be considering the Holy Spirit during Lent, because you didn't observe Advent or Lent or Eastertide or Christmas as a season of the Christian Year. But, I'm finding the observance of the Christian Year meaningful. Obviously in the wisdom of the ancient Church, they understood that to go through this cycle was a way of remembering, the way of remembering the way in which God has touched our history. "The Word became flesh, lived among us, died among us, rose among us. The spirit came to dwell within us." You see, the Christian Year puts it in story, in a narrative, and we can live in it and live through it and I'm © Grand Valley State University   �Life Broken and Poured Out Richard A. Rhem Page 2   simply finding that I am eager to go through the cycle again. We begin this morning, the First Lord's Day of the new Christian Year - the season of Advent. Advent means "coming." And, of course, four Sundays before Christmas the focus would be the One who came when the Word was made flesh. We are preparing for Christmas. But, the real focus of Advent is not simply the One who came, but that the One who came is the One who is coming. And so, the real theme of Advent is the fact that there is a future and an end. And it is a season in which we are invited to pause, to reflect, to ask in regard to our lives, "What time is it?" In regard to our congregation, "What time is it?" In regard to the society of which we are a part, "What time is it?" In regard to the world and world history, "What time is it?" Because, as a matter of fact, what the Advent season calls to our mind is the fact that we are people on the move; we are people underway; we are people going somewhere, and something's happening. That was the insight of the Hebrew prophets. Israel gave to the world the sense of history. Over against that was that cyclic sense of reality where things come and go and come and go in endless cycle. But the Hebrews had the insight, "Not so. Beginning, movement, end." And it's fascinating to me that the most recent cosmology, the work of physics, those who study the stars and the planets and all of that deep, deep, mysterious reality of our cosmos - they tell us now that time is irreversible. That means that the best scientific sense of things is now concurring with that biblical sense of things, that there is a point of beginning. There is a movement, an emergence if you will, and an end. Emergence has become a very important word to me. I suggested this summer that it might be a word, an idea that could help us to make more sense of our lives and of history and the cosmos - more sense than the idea of Creation and Fall. I like the idea of Creation and evolutionary development with constant new emergence. And the Advent season tells us that there is not only this process of movement, this irreversible time line, but there is something out there. We're moving toward something. And so, for the theme of this Advent season, I want the phrase to burn into your consciousness and into your minds, into your heart. NOW, BUT THEN. NOW, BUT THEN. I hope every party you attend, there will be a moment in which you'll think, "Now, but then." I hope with every present you purchase, you'll think, “Now, but then.” I hope in whatever quiet moments you can find in this month of December, you'll think, "Now, but then." I was at a seminar earlier, well last week, and it was a very stimulating couple of days, thinking about our nation. The seminar was entitled, "Shall the Christian Coalition Win?" And there was an evangelical leader, Jim Wallis, who founded the Sojourners community years ago, and Joan Campbell, the Executive Secretary of the National Council of Churches, who is the voice for the mainline churches that seem to be in such trouble, and Alan Boesak from South Africa, who is so intricately involved in the dismantling of Apartheid, and as we were discussing © Grand Valley State University �Life Broken and Poured Out Richard A. Rhem Page 3   together the state of the nation, the condition of society, the polarization, the politicization of issues of social welfare and well-being, there were three young men there who were pastors, graduates of Princeton. And as we were talking about our lives and the life of the church and of society, one of these young men said, "Dear God, I can't even get to know my people. My people (he's a pastor in New Jersey, a bedroom community for the city), he said, "My people get on the train at 5, 6 o'clock in the morning, they go into the city, they work all day, they get home 7, 8,9 o'clock at night, exhausted; they get up in the morning, get on the train, go into the city, come home exhausted." And he said, "They have no time!" And Alan Boesak spontaneously responded, "They are corporate migrants!" And then he went on to explain. Where he comes from in South Africa there are migrant workers who still, out from camps, get on buses five o'clock in the morning, go into the cities, work all day, come home 8, 9 o'clock at night, exhausted, in order to get up in the morning to get on the bus to go into the cities to work in order to come home, exhausted, 8 or 9 o'clock at night. They're migrant workers. But, Alan said, your up-and-outers, your affluent New Jersey corporate executives are also migrants. They're corporate migrants. And I thought to myself, "Isn't it true of us all?" We came home in the middle of the week and I opened up the calendar to December! It is a disaster! And I thought to myself, I'll be saying to my people on Sunday, Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipating, of preparation for the feast of Christmas, a celebration that the Word became flesh, but more than that, it is a time of waiting, anticipation, preparation for the fact that there is an end out there, that in this evolving, emerging process there is something out there, an endpoint. And I thought, how will we have time, how will we take time? And then I thought perhaps the words of Paul to the Corinthians might keep surfacing in our consciousness, Now, but then, reminding us to ask the question - "What time is it?" What time is it in my life? What time is it in my nation? What time is it in this world of ours? Where are we going? And where will we end? Because we are on the way. It's just that we don't often have a moment to step back and to reflect on the whole thing - What time is it in your life on this first Sunday in Advent? I can do little more than set the theme this morning. Now Paul says, "We see through a glass darkly." We grope, we see fuzzy images, we have a sense of something, but it's not clear. We can't penetrate through the mystery, the mystery that is life, that is history, that is cosmos. Now, dimly, but then - clearly! Now, he says, we know in part. Dear God, don't we know a lot? Really? When you think of the explosion of knowledge and then when you think of the computer capacity to make that knowledge exponentially more applicable - what a world we live in! What a fascinating time to be alive! Now! Knowledge. But, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. And it's not as though we edge up to the mystery in order to dissolve it. As we edge up to the mystery, the mystery grows, doesn't it? Now we know in part, but then we will know even as we are fully known. © Grand Valley State University �Life Broken and Poured Out Richard A. Rhem Page 4   This Advent season let me try to set this into your mind, this idea - Now, But Then. Now in part; then fully. Now dimly, then clearly. Because, you see, we're going somewhere. Something's happening. There's a process under foot, and we are being moved along in that stream, either unconsciously or, if by God's grace for just a moment we could step back and realize that we are in a process for which we ought to be taking responsibility and living with intention. What is emerging? That's the other thing I want to say this morning. What is emerging? Well, if we take what Mary thought was emerging, we can look at that Magnificat. She thought what was emerging was the gift of the child that she had conceived : a new world, a different kind of world. And it excited her. She praised God! But, as I reflected on the Magnificat, dear friends, and I thought how am I going to say this to my people -I realized that the Gospel is Good News, really, for the underdog. Mary was a peasant girl. Mary was one of the voiceless ones. Mary had no power. And what did she celebrate? She celebrated the fact that in her world, in her day, folks like us would be put down so that folks like her would be raised up. Mary's song was a subversive song. He puts down the proud; he lifts up the lowly. He turns away those whose tables are full and brings food to the hungry. That's good news? Really? You got to be one of the underclass to celebrate the Gospel. Unless, unless there's a way for us, the rich and the powerful, to find a way to a new world. Unless, in this Advent season, we who have voice, we who have power, we who call the shots for our world, unless we could come to some kind of negotiation with that emerging future and perhaps even become a part of the movement to bring it into being. I know what it would cost. It only comes about through life broken and poured out. You see, the child of Mary's womb, whom she celebrated in that anthem, was a child who grew up to be crucified. If you would go into the next chapter of Luke's Gospel, you could see that Luke was already foreshadowing that, because he said to Mary, "A sword will pierce your heart because this one will be a sign spoken again, this one will be for the fall and rising of many in Israel." It's obvious that, in the Christian Church down 2000 years, we still call this the Gospel, we don't understand what it's all about. I mean, it's really obvious, isn't it? The Gospel is about the great reversal. The Gospel is about the creation of a world, a community where everyone has enough and has a voice and has dignity and can live in a community of compassion. And you know what that would cost? It cost Jesus his life. It cost Gandhi his life. It cost Martin Luther King his life. It cost Bonhoeffer his life. It cost Itzak Rabin his life. Because, you see, our world is organized to hold off the future. Our world, our politics, our social structures - they are put together in order to maintain what is. I like it the way it is. Because the way it is puts me in a place of real privilege, unbelievable privilege. If I would be true to the Gospel, I would become one of those subversives that would undercut the way it is in order that there might emerge a different kind of world. I don't have the blueprint for it. I don't really have the courage for it. But, in this Advent season, I'm going to be just a bit © Grand Valley State University �Life Broken and Poured Out Richard A. Rhem Page 5   uneasy about the fact that the cost of that emerging future may involve my life. We've been to the Table; we've taken bread and cup, the sign of life broken and poured out, the sign of our identification with that One. The Good News in all of this is that, if I ever had the courage, the wisdom, the heart to follow Jesus, I would find abundant life. Because in many ways I'm a migrant, too. Life can become that, where I no longer live it out of my insides, but am lived by the outside. Advent - wonderful time of the year to take time, to count the cost and to be drawn by the vision of that life, which is life indeed. I dare you. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ca906742f8a11e44b62a8b74c40b1f0.mp3 36bed7f97deac76cb3c45d52959801cc 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 Advent I Series Now _ But Then Scripture Text Luke 15:51-52, I Corinthians 13:12 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19951203 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-12-03 Title A name given to the resource Life Broken and Poured Out Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 3, 1995 entitled "Life Broken and Poured Out", as part of the series "Now - But Then", on the occasion of Advent I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 15:51-52, I Corinthians 13:12. Advent Community of Compassion Emergence Incarnation Liturgical Calendar 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Community of Grace Fear God is Love Incarnation Love at the Core of Reality Transforming Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/37c6ce31d56affa51b69cab49417ecdb.mp3 ffcd90a52b1f11f16ac5e0ba312714b0 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4aff2660c7225e86b5abed67a3edceec.pdf 96a7bca886a56236c52f83a45129f7ff 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 � 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 New Years Eve Scripture Text Luke 2:9, 30, Galatians 4:6 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20001231 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-12-31 Title A name given to the resource Of Angels, Songs in the Night and Deep Human Intuition Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Incarnation Love at the core of reality https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a3d70fecbf0c09da682624a0bddb0ea3.pdf d0c255f9b73b60d2f5c8c28423af9757 PDF Text Text Spirit: The Now of the Future From the series: The Presence of the Future Text: Isaiah 61:1; John 14:18-19 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 6, 1998 Transcription of the spoken sermon We had our first Advent Midweek Eucharist on Wednesday. It is such a lovely hour - the warmth of the Parlour beautifully decorated in the festive garb of the Christmas season, the intimate setting - there is something quite wonderful about it. I hope the secret doesn’t get out, because about 75 is all that we can comfortably handle. Well, Wednesday I had a rather startling revelation for those gathered - I told them Jesus is not coming again, which, of course, is the theme of Advent - The one who came a babe in human flesh, will come again in glory to judge and rule. I just came out with it; the early followers of Jesus, including Paul, expected Jesus to return in power and glory to bring history to its close and usher in the age to come. They got it wrong; the ongoing unfolding drama of history and human culture should surely tip us off - 2000 years of subsequent history and we still hear talk of the Second Coming of our Lord from Glory. Let me suggest in this season of Advent 1998, that it is time for us to take a sober look at the biblical time line - the divine calendar as it has been understood and declared over the centuries, and recognize that it really makes no sense of the reality we live, the cosmic unfolding, history developing, and the emerging of humankind. I have been thinking about this for a few years now. When I was in Europe in the 60s, there was a circle of young scholars who were swinging the pendulum back to an appreciation of God’s action within our history. It gave me a way to return here and preach good news. One European biblical scholar, Oscar Cullman, was not of that circle, but he had written a very influential book entitled Christ and Time. He pointed out what may seem obvious to one familiar with the Bible story - that the whole biblical drama was seen on a time line. Out of eternity issues the creative word, "Let there be" and the cosmos is formed, and time and history began - a time still ongoing in © Grand Valley State University   �Spirit: The Now of the Future Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the biblical drama. The biblical understanding was that those who were living the drama were in what they called "this age" or "the present age." But, they were looking for "The Age to Come." The whole Creation/historical drama was seen under that model or paradigm. This age and the Age to Come. The Hebrew prophets longed for the Age to Come on earth in history when Shalom would everywhere prevail. Then the fortunes of Judah reversed - they returned from Babylonian Exile, but never saw the glory return. They were the pawns of conquering powers, poor, oppressed, and without hope. For them, history was hopeless; they cried out to their God to intervene, to dash the wicked and vindicate them as God’s chosen. This was a move from the prophetic with its dream of Shalom to Apocalyptic - the longing for God to ring down the curtain on history and usher in the Age to Come. This is the setting of the time of Jesus. I suspect Jesus shared that longing, although that is a matter of debate. But, certainly St. Paul was looking for the return of Jesus who had been crucified, risen, and ascended to the throne of God. That was the picture: Jesus at the right hand of God ruling from heaven and soon to come again - this time not in human weakness, but in Divine Power. In Revelation, we hear the cry of that early church, "Maranatha," which, translated, is "Our Lord, Come," and we hear the ascended Lord declare, "I am coming soon." In the calendar of the church this cry of 2000 years is remembered with every returning Advent - The one who came is coming again. And there has never lacked Christian groups that have continued to affirm: He is coming soon! It is quite amazing that such a conception, such a hope could be sustained for 2000 years. Well, as I said, in Wednesday’s meditation I said quite simply, "He is not coming again." I say it that bluntly to catch your attention because I want you to hear what I am saying and I finally say it now because we are on the threshold of the Third Millennium. As the calendar moved toward 1000, there was a large scale stirring and disturbance. Expectation was aroused and many claimed they were at the end of the age. I am beginning to hear it now again as though the turn of the calendar will bring us to the end and the appearing of our Lord in glory for judgment and the final consummation of all things. My word to you is, "Don’t believe it, don’t get worked up about it, don’t be afraid." The Jesus who came is not coming again in the sense that is understood in the biblical story. Now if you have heard that rather bold denial, I hope you will be ready to hear an alternative declaration - Jesus who came, the word made flesh, the one in whom God was embodied, has already come again - again and again and again. © Grand Valley State University �Spirit: The Now of the Future Richard A. Rhem Page 3   Let me give you the text that says this very clearly. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is purported to say: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” (14:18) Just prior to this promise, Jesus promises the gift of the Spirit, the Spirit of truth. It is significant that this Gospel is late, probably in the 90s of that first century. Jesus had not returned on the clouds. Many of the Jews who had been part of the movement were returning to their Jewish spiritual home in the Synagogue. The Pharisaic Rabbinic movement was proving to be the ongoing shape of Jewish faith. As that movement gained power, there was an edict passed that said if one confessed Jesus as God’s Messiah, that one would be put out of the Synagogue. And so, it was decision time - continue to confess Jesus Messiah and be put out of the community, or give up that confession and continue in the Jewish community and tradition. That is always a crisis of great import. And what was no doubt the deciding factor? Jesus did not return. It is easy to understand that the early community expected a literal return of the ascended Lord from the throne of God. Jesus was a flesh and blood human being. Jesus lived, taught, healed, was killed - all the hard facts of historical existence. And they sensed his presence still - thus the resurrection claim - this one who died lives. God raised him up and took him "up." Why wouldn’t they expect him to come back in literal fashion? Read Acts 1:11. The scene is Jesus’ ascent into heaven. The disciples look on amazed. An angel appears and says to them: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. There you have it; it could not be plainer. Decades after the actual life and death of Jesus, that is how they told the story and expressed their hope and expectation. But, now John is writing even later. Now it is decision time - to remain in the Jewish Synagogue and faith tradition, or, to persist in the faith that Jesus was the Messiah who would soon return to bring the Age to an end and usher in the Age to Come. But, he didn’t come. And he still didn’t come. Nothing happened. Now, what is the Gospel writer to say? Will he say, "Hold on; he’s coming!" The author of II Peter did. He wrote, " ... in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his © Grand Valley State University �Spirit: The Now of the Future Richard A. Rhem Page 4   coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!’ ... with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day ... The day will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed." (II Peter 3:1-13) But, the author of the fourth Gospel did not simply plead with the Jesus movement to hold on because surely he was coming soon. Rather, in the Gospel of John, we see a significant shift from the expectation of the imminent return of Jesus to a present experience of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ the Spirit is variously designated in the New Testament. He came: John says the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. This was the literal, historical presence of God in human form. And, crucified, resurrected and returned to the presence of God he comes again - not in human historical form this time; not in visible display of signs and wonder. No. Rather, he comes in Spirit, the spiritual presence of God abiding in the life of the one who believed and in the community that believes that he was the embodiment of God in the days of his flesh. The English biblical scholar, C. H. Dodd, whose special expertise was the Gospel of John, coined a phrase to point up this shift. He called John’s revision “Realized Eschatology." Eschaton is the Greek word for the end and Eschatology, the teaching about the end of history. Dodd, on the basis of the Fourth Gospel, claimed that the end had already occurred. The New Age Jesus ushered in was the Age of the Spirit. He understood the Fourth Gospel to be a dismantling of the future expectation and the declaration of the New Age in the Spirit. Although he was not widely followed in this claim, his point of the significant shift in focus has been acknowledged. This shift is pointed to in the Advent theme “The Presence of the Future.” For our present experience the future is not future, but present. I mean, in our human, historical experience, we have the presence of the Presence of God, the God enfleshed in Jesus, given us in the Spirit. Thus my title - Spirit: The Now of the Future. What I am suggesting is thus a shift from the commonly held assumption about the biblical teaching about the end of history. That biblical view is most commonly designated by the phrase "Second Coming." What I am suggesting is not without biblical basis, however. What we see with the New Testament itself is a shifting. There is no one consistent biblical scheme. I am picking up the hint from the fourth Gospel that we need to find another way to understand our ongoing historical experience that keeps moving into an uncharted future. We © Grand Valley State University �Spirit: The Now of the Future Richard A. Rhem Page 5   must have a fresh sense of the meaning of a key conviction of the Hebrew prophets and the Christmas story - the conviction contained in the name Emmanuel, God with us. God with us; the Spirit with us; the Presence present to us; the Mystery once enfleshed, but always the enlivening, creative Presence in the whole cosmic drama, the whole unfolding story we call history. In the beginning the Spirit hovered over the created Chaos. In Israel’s life, the prophet cried, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ..." The angel said to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you ..." On the Day of Pentecost, suddenly "... from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind ... all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit." Through two millennia, the church has confessed"... Conceived by the Holy Spirit." Spirit: the Now of the Future. Spirit - God’s breath, in creation of cosmos and unfolding of history - the life, the creative, energizing Presence that in the evolving of Nature finally brought to emergence a creature conscious, aware, giving the whole amazing Reality a voice full of wonder. The biblical story was clear that Creation or Nature stemmed from God’s creative word, but it was in history that Israel heard God’s voice. They divorced themselves from Nature in repudiation of the Canaanite religion that was bound to the cyclic natural order with the seasons coming round in regular order. And there was great gain in that exalted view of the Creator who spoke reality into existence and was a living, active presence in the historical unfolding. History is where Israel encountered God, or better, was encountered by God. Thus, that the Word became flesh was an amazing claim. Spirit, the instrument of creating, creates a human being who was the Mystery embodied. And is it any wonder that such a sense of Reality should then look for this embodied one to return to bring history to its consummation? But, we no longer divorce history from Nature. Rather, we see one grand process from the cosmic explosion 15 billion years ago, to the present continuing evolving of Nature which has gained a sense of history because we have emerged who are conscious, aware, recognizing the unfolding. There is not Nature and history. Rather, Nature has a history. And that created Reality we call Nature is alive, evolving because it is permeated with a creative Spirit that gives life and nudges the whole process on. © Grand Valley State University �Spirit: The Now of the Future Richard A. Rhem Page 6   Not some dramatic, cataclysmic future event, some display of power and glory. No. Rather, the future is already present in the Spirit Who mediates to us the Presence of the Mystery - Emmanuel, God with us. That was the prophetic assurance to Israel in its dark moments of crisis. Emmanuel: God with us. That was what the early Jesus movement experienced. Emmanuel: God with us - now in human flesh. And the Revelation’s final vision, chapter 21:3, reads in some manuscripts: God-with-them shall himself be their God in the context where the great declaration is uttered, Now at last God has his dwelling among humankind. There you have, of course, a climax in some near future. That, I am saying, needs revision. But, what is claimed for that future consummation is the same claim made by Isaiah, by Matthew. The claim is Emmanuel - God with us. That is the Now of the Future. The implication of that claim changes our whole perspective on our place in the cosmos. Rather that those who sing mournfully, this world is not my home, I’m just passing through," that is, I’m heaven bound, longing to divest myself of this life, this world which is a vale of tears, we celebrate the wonder of the natural world - the whole creation so richly endowed that there has emerged creatures conscious, aware, with tongues to praise, with spirit to love and care, with vision full of hope. Where is the whole dramatic venture going? Who knows? The future is open. But, what will be true, we can be sure, is that the key to it all will ever be Emmanuel God with us - Spirit creating, moving, and the whole story unfolding. Thus, we wait not with anxious expectation for suns darkened, stars falling, and all hell erupting. Rather, we live now with eyes open, ears cocked, imagination full of dreams and visions in this present moment, marked by the deep trust that God is with us, alert to the ongoing drama, watching with wonder and awe. Spirit: The Now of the Future. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3af7e14d1ee5298a6cce550659ed2e3d.mp3 ccdd93e08140521b1344c2a7d2df730d 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 Advent II Series The Presence of the Future Scripture Text Isaiah 61:1, John 14:18-19 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19981206 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-12-06 Title A name given to the resource Spirit: The Now of the Future Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 6, 1998 entitled "Spirit: The Now of the Future", as part of the series "The Presence of the Future", on the occasion of Advent II, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 61:1, John 14:18-19. Advent Emergence Incarnation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8ad813af0e75066eb0158d36c1ca86f2.mp3 422e413e8ea92181cd8e6197452ae78b https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6c914f3278cc19be9a38d7cc720331fd.pdf 512b43fb964dc9e236b3a521cbb32679 PDF Text Text The Deeper Truth of Incarnation Text: I John 1: 1-4, 4: 7-8; John 1: 1-5, 14-18 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 22, 2002 Transcription of the spoken sermon The title of the sermon this morning invites you to think with me about incarnation and the deeper understanding of it. It is not because I have discovered something about incarnation that is brand new. It is rather that I am recognizing more and more that the old familiar truth of incarnation has become so familiar to us that we fail to see, to understand its radicality and the revolutionary nature of the claim of incarnation. The eternal Word: “In the beginning was the Word,” John begins the gospel. Someone has translated that, “In the beginning was the Intention,” and I like that. The Divine Intention. There was something in the beginning, some intentionality in this whole creative process. So, in the beginning was the Divine Intention. In the fourteenth verse that Divine Intention becomes flesh, human nature. The radicality of that claim is amazing. Luke tells us the story in a beautiful fashion, describing the birth of the child, the mother, the angels, the shepherds and all. But John had a philosophical bent of mind, and he sets this event in a vast cosmic context, reflecting on it philosophically or theologically. (You will be well advised to stick with the storytellers. Theologians are boring, but such is my lot.) So, it is John this morning. “The Word became flesh.” That is a radical claim. All day long yesterday the house was filled with a marvelous aroma, and at suppertime Nancy served us bowls of chili con carne. We often speak about chili, but it is really chili con carne, and con carne comes from the Latin. Con is the preposition with, and carne is meat. We are, those of us who haven’t cleaned up our act and become vegetarians, carnivores, meat eaters, carnivorous. I love it. And I look like it. Carnival. You have never identified that word with chili con carne, but as a matter of fact, carnival is the carni-valle, farewell to red meat, farewell to meat. Carnival time is a time to let out all of the stops and get all that juice out of you because you are about to enter into a fast where you are going to be solemn and serious. And so Mardi Gras, a carnival, is a farewell to the flesh. The incarnation means that what we really have to deal with is God con carne. It’s a little crass, but you should never forget it. Christmas is God con carne. Christmas is God with flesh on, the central truth expressed so powerfully in © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University   �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 2   John’s gospel and reiterated in the letters of John which emanated from that Johannine circle. How could you make it any more concrete than those opening sentences of that first letter? “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen from our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands of the word of life.” John was intent on expressing the fact that God has come to expression in human nature, in humanity, that the human is the embodiment of God, the enfleshment of God. From time immemorial we have wanted some clue about God. Hasn’t there always been that question in the depths of the human spirit—who is God? Where is God? What is God? What is the ultimate? Why is there something rather than nothing? Certainly John knew that. In the fourteenth chapter we have that little conversation between Jesus and Phillip. Jesus has been talking about going to the father and Phillip says, “Well, Lord, just show us the father and we will be satisfied.” Jesus says to him, “Phillip, have I been with you so long and you still don’t get it? If you have seen me, you have seen the father.” Phillip, don’t you get it? Here I am, God in your midst, the embodiment, the enfleshment of God in your midst. Phillip, you want to see the father, you want to understand the father, you want to know the clue to the mystery of that which is ultimate? Touch me. Look in my face, for I am the only God you will ever know, because the amazing claim of our gospel is that the eternal intention has become enfleshed in a human being. In the eighteenth verse we read, “No one has ever seen God.” Once again, there it is. You see, no one has ever seen God. But the only son has made God known. As I have said before, someone has translated that in a rather marvelous fashion. The discipline we learn in seminary is the science of exegesis. You take a text and break it apart and open it up and try to explain it. You interpret it. That is what I am doing as we speak. Exegesis. It is an academic discipline which hopefully would prepare the preacher for opening the text for the people. That eighteenth verse—no one has seen God—has been translated by someone: The only son is the exegesis of the father. That is wonderful. The son breaks open the mystery that is God. So this is what Christmas is about. This is what the central act of Christmas is about—the embodiment, the enfleshment of God in the human. “Ah,” you say to me, “that is not a deeper understanding. That is the same old thing we have always heard.” That’s true. But let me remind you of what I have been circling around in these last weeks and last Advent season particularly. I cannot believe that I have lived all my life, Advent after Advent, and not recognized the contradiction—the conflict between the mirror of God in the incarnation and the mirror of God in the second coming. In Advent we so easily say that the one who came is coming again. And then it struck me that the image © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 3   of God that we have revealed in the life of Jesus from the crib to the cross, that life of obscurity and poverty, of humility, of grace, of compassion, the vulnerability of the child, the vulnerability of the one who was crucified, is a picture of God and we have claimed it. But how do we put it together with the God revealed in that one who will come again? The one who came in poverty and humility will come again in power and great glory? What is mirrored in the first coming contrasts with the God mirrored in the second coming. It seems that the one who came in poverty and humility came from another realm into our realm, took temporary residence, took on flesh temporarily, and then left again, having accomplished redemption in order that we might be delivered from this realm into God’s realm. There are two realms, a dualism, and the God revealed in that child, that God as vulnerable is still apparently above the fray and still in control and still calling the shots. But the God revealed in the child, in the vulnerability of the child, has given up on control. That God embodied in the human is the God who creates us in freedom, beckoning us to love in turn. And that is precisely the risk of love. Love doesn’t have any guarantees. If you have a world where might makes right, you can coerce and have your own way. If God runs the universe that way, then God can have God’s way. But if God indeed emptied God’s self, and if the Infinite has become concrete in the finite so that you can touch and handle a word made flesh, then that kind of vulnerability brings no guarantee. Love can be defeated. Love can be crucified. And the image of that God is quite other than the God who will move from the wings into the main stage and call down the curtain on history and execute judgment on the living and the dead. That God never gave up control. That God in Jesus remained “God” very much. I am suggesting to you that the deeper understanding of incarnation may be that the God revealed in Bethlehem’s child is the real genius of the Christian understanding, but that the Church couldn’t live very long with a vulnerable God. What we want is a God who is strong and in control, the Lord God Almighty. Now just think about this with me, because I am plowing some new ground here and I am not at all sure. I am totally sure, however, that I do not have all the loose ends gathered up. But I am attempting to find a new way to think and speak about God as I see God revealed in Jesus and the incarnation and simply stop there, because I think a major distortion has occurred in the history of the church and it began very early. It began with that apocalyptic expectation in the immediate aftermath of Jesus, that apocalyptic vision that expected the heavens to open and God to come down and to wreak judgment on the world. I am suggesting to you a deeper understanding of the incarnation in that the original intention was to say, “O my god, God is like that!” I am suggesting that the intention of the incarnation in the heart of the Christian proclamation was to portray a God of vulnerability, because that God would create the likes of us in freedom, beckoning us to love. It seems to me that the mistake the Church made © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 4   was to say that what happened in Jesus happened once for all, one for all, when as a matter of fact, the initial encounter with him by those who touched him, who looked upon him, who listened to him was to say, “My God!” and to realize that God was in the human. We are in this cosmic process of billions of years, the Big Bang, stars exploding, elements cooling, and planets forming in a most amazing fashion beyond our ability to fathom. It seems to me that the deeper understanding of the incarnation is that after billions and billions and billions of years, perhaps about three million years ago, life happened. Then maybe a million years ago something similar to human life began to form, and eventually it comes to the likes of us on the edge of the third millennium where we can sit in an assembly like this and think about billions of years and cosmic reality and star explosions. Do you realize the amazing understanding that is ours, the privilege that is ours? We have come to a point where we are aware of that whole thing, aware of that whole process, learning more about it all the time, yet knowing very little about its deep mysteries except that we are the product of the process that has been underway. As we think about it, we human beings become the consciousness of the cosmos, we human beings become the awareness. The cosmos becomes aware in us. We human beings have a voice to praise and stand in wonder at the cosmos. That is an amazing thing! And it seems to me the deeper understanding of the incarnation would be that the process goes along for billions of years and one day some creature wakes up and becomes aware to the point that we say, “There is a human being.” And the awareness continues to grow. The understanding of the incarnation I am suggesting claims that the Infinite, that Creative Spirit, however you wish to speak of the Ultimate Mystery, becomes concrete in the finitude of the likes of us. Finitude, matter which has spirit, matter which thinks and knows and understands and becomes aware—that is the miracle of Christmas, the coming into flesh of God. That is the concretization of the Creative Spirit in a form that you can begin to grasp. The Church wanted to say all of that about Jesus, but only Jesus. And then the rest of us poor middling human beings trudge through this vale of tears waiting to be redeemed in order that we might be exited to another realm. Do you see the dualism of that traditional conception? God sends the Son, the Son takes up temporary residence in our flesh, and after the incarnation there is an exincarnation. The purpose of the incarnation was not to enable us to be the bearers of divinity, but rather to deliver us from our fallen estate. But we have missed the glory of it! We have missed the wonder of it. We sit around here waiting. We wait for the next act of God. We wait for the clouds to open and for God to speak in dramatic fashion and to right the wrongs and bring history to consummation. But that is not going to happen. © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 5   God has acted. God has become human. The human is the bearer of God. The incarnation is a reality, an ongoing reality. We are the extension of the incarnation. We cry out, “How long, O Lord, how long?” I suppose God would resoundingly cry, “How long? How long, indeed! When will you get it? You are it!” I think the writer of that first letter had something like that in mind, for after the opening paragraphs of chapter one saying God is tangible in the flesh, in the fourth chapter he writes God is love. And he repeats that line from the gospel’s first chapter: “No one has ever seen God.” But then he adds content to it. He says that the one who dwells in love dwells in God and God dwells in that one. A few lines later, the one who abides in love abides in God and God in that one. In other words, humanity is the bearer of divinity. And it is the one who has learned to love who is the one in whom that divinity dwells in full expression. Well, I shouldn’t say “full expression.” Let’s say tentative expression, or inadequate expression, perhaps flawed expression. But nonetheless, there was something about Jesus, the flesh of Jesus, the person of Jesus which caused those who saw him, who walked with him, who had an encounter with him to say, “My God!” And that wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning. It wasn’t once for all and at one time and place, but true every place at all times. The whole process has been tending toward this. The whole cosmic process has been issuing in spirit, spirit marked by love, for God is love. The world lies in such darkness and there is such grief and pain, it is only in the midst of that darkness when the human embraces me that I can feel the embrace of God; when another looks into my eyes and says, “I care, I love.” Then I look into the face of God. All that sounds like naive preacher talk, the kind of silly sentimental stuff you would expect at Christmas. Well, it’s your fault. You came to church at Christmas time. Sometimes I question myself about harping on this all the time, because someone might say to me, “Don’t you know there is a real world out there? Don’t you know how dark it is? You are saying that the human animal is a God-bearer? You are saying that the only God accessible, visible, tangible is the God enfleshed in the human?” And I have to say, “Yes.” Because I believe that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life and no one will ever experience the Ultimate Mystery except in the way of Jesus, which is the way of love, of self-emptying love. The deeper truth of the incarnation is the radicality of the divinity in humanity that is crying to come to expression. But we can’t live with that for very long. Then it’s in our hands, it is up to us. Then we have to change the world. Once in a while I just smile at myself ranting on like this in such naive fashion, except that the real naiveté is to think that the © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 6   kingdom will come in any other way, that it will come through power or might or glory, that it will come with the exercise of muscle, that we can establish once and for all freedom and justice. No. Fear controls and power coerces. Love transforms. Once in a while I get a fax on Sunday night. This one said, “Dick, following is a bit of verse that fits with your sermon this morning. I believe the original stimulus was one of your Wednesday evening Advent messages a year ago. You will also find a number of thoughts borrowed from your sermons.” What if we loved one another? What if we Christians, Muslims and Jews loved one another? What if we Christians, Hindus and Buddhists loved one another? What if we Christians, Confucians and agnostics loved one another? What if we evangelicals, fundamentalists, and liberals loved one another? What if God’s people of all faiths loved one another? Would we miss the illusion of superiority? Would we miss the exhilaration of judging others? Would we miss the view from higher moral ground? Would we miss the thrill of killing them with swords or words? What if we white and black loved one another? What if we black and yellow loved one another? What if we yellow, red and brown loved one another? What if we Europeans, Asians, Africans and Latinos loved one another? What if God’s children of every color and nation loved one another? Would we miss the illusion of superiority? Would we miss the exhilaration of judging others? Would we miss the view from the higher moral ground? Would we miss the thrill of killing them with swords or words? What if we old and young loved one another? What if we single or married loved one another? What if we without academic degrees loved one another? What if we straight and gay loved one another? What if we female and male loved one another? What if we blue collar and white collar loved one another? What if God’s daughters and sons of every label loved one another? Would we miss the illusion of superiority? Would we miss the exhilaration of judging others? Would we miss the view from the higher moral ground? © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Grand Valley State University �Deeper Truth of Incarnation Richard A. Rhem Page 7   Would we miss the thrill of killing them with swords or words? September 11th showed us what love’s absence can do. The days after have shown us what happens when love is activated, superiority stifled by the quiet but tireless power of humility, judgment overruled by the celebration of diversity that enriches us. Higher ground was held only by those tired, dusty heroes who emptied themselves in service, blood-red battlefields transformed into green meadows of mercy and healing. What if we loved one another? What if we started with simple respect? What if we humans become what we are intended to be? Would God’s people of all faith languages worship in unison? Would God’s children of every color compose one picture? Would God’s daughters and sons of every label celebrate as siblings? Would we then finally understand the meaning of incarnation? Of God with us? Of God in us? Of human divinity? © 2013 Kaufman Interfaith Institute and 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 Advent IV Scripture Text I John 1:1-4, 4:7-8, John 1:1-5, 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20021222 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-12-22 Title A name given to the resource The Deeper Truth of Incarnation Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 22, 2002 entitled "The Deeper Truth of Incarnation", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: I John 1:1-4, 4:7-8, John 1:1-5, 14-18. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Divine Intention Incarnation Way of Love https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ca42644c383418158d2d380c040df47e.pdf 8b3936a2a36beb2a8ee986a1f4cc65d0 PDF Text Text The Divine Dilemma: The Human Paradox Text: Matthew 1:23; II Corinthians 12:9-10 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Christmastide, December 29, 1996 Transcription of the spoken sermon Søren Kierkegaard was an interesting Danish thinker, Christian, philosopher, theologian. He thought a lot about the divine-human relationship and he told a story one time about a king who had the misfortune of falling in love. He fell in love with a peasant woman, and for a king to fall in love with a peasant woman is to create a great problem. It is a royal dilemma, for kings ought to know better than to fall in love. When one falls in love, one loses control. When one falls in love, one is tempted to do foolish things. When one falls in love, one no longer operates rationally, using one’s head. One leads from the heart and it creates all kinds of difficulties. Anyone who wants a smooth ride, a well-managed life, free of pain, would be well advised never to fall in love. But, especially if you're a king, because if you're a king, there is an added dimension to the dilemma. You see, the king knew that he had the power to command the woman's presence. But, when you're in love, the only thing that will satisfy you is love in return. We know that, don't we? The only thing that satisfies the deep yearning of love is to be loved by the beloved, freely and spontaneously in return. The king understood his problem. He called all his wise advisers around him that they might strategize with him as to how he could win the love of this peasant woman so that it would really be her love. Well, they came up with all kinds of schemes, as you can imagine. That's what they were paid for; that's what they were kept in the king's care for, in order to help him out in difficult situations. And so, they devised one strategy after another. Arrive at her door in a golden coach, dazzle her with diamonds. They say that diamonds will do anything. But, the king was in love. His advisers were not. They were using their head, and he knew that what he really wanted was her heart, and he knew that not even a king can command love. Being frustrated by their ill counsel, it finally dawned on him. One evening he slipped out the back door of the palace, evaded the Secret Service agents and made his way, dressed as a peasant, to the door of the cottage of the woman he loved. And he knocked on the door and offered his heart and asked if he might come and dwell with her. © Grand Valley State University   �Divine Dilemma; Human Paradox Richard A. Rhem Page 2   Well, if you want to know how it came out, come next week. But, you can see the analogy to the divine dilemma that God dealt with at Christmas. Because if it doesn't help to be a king when you're in love, it helps even less to be God, because if God is the incurable lover that the biblical story tells us of, then God has a problem, for the one thing that God cannot command is the freely offered and spontaneous love of the other. And so, of course, at Christmas time, we speak of incarnation, we speak of how God came to dwell in one of our kind, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone in order that the eternal and infinite One might be localized in the person of Jesus; in order that the Eternal God, the Infinite One might have a face, a face with which we might fall in love. God becoming one with us, identifying with us, making God's love known to us in the deep passionate hope that we might love God in return, because it doesn't help to be God when you're in love because Love is a thing that is not even at God's disposal. When one is in love then, as the king knew, the only love that can satisfy the deep ache in the heart is the freely offered love of the one beloved. Well, the king was foolish, of course, to fall in love. He might better have been, as that famous king of Persia, Ahasuerus, whose wife was Vashti. Ahasuerus, the king of the great Persian empire, called on all of his generals and all of his officials from across the empire and threw a great party. They knew how to do it better than we. They partied for seven days. And Vashti, the queen, was quite willing to go along with this. She even entertained the spouses of the officials. But, on the seventh day when the food had been plenty and the wine had flowed liberally and the king was feeling no pain, he wanted one last time to impress all of the company gathered around his table. He wanted his queen Vashti, known for her striking beauty, to come on and be on display. Well Vashti said, "It's a pretty good deal here, but enough is enough," and she said no. The king was enraged to be turned down by his queen. And so, he called his counselors and he said to them, "What should I do? What has she done?" They said, "What she has done is very serious, for she has not only disobeyed you and offended you. She has set a precedent in not obeying her husband and, if it should leak out of the palace, the whole of society should go down the tubes. There would be no more family values if women are not subservient to their husbands." (Oh, come on now. That's funny!) Well, in the case of Ahasuerus and Vashti, they had a royal connection and a royal arrangement. Vashti had a role to play and, as long as she played her role, she got her baubles. And when she didn't play her role anymore, the king simply dumped her. No problem, because he didn't love her. He simply held a beauty contest, the first Miss America contest held in the ancient world, and of course, you know the story. Esther, the beautiful Esther, the Jewish young lady was chosen as the queen for her beauty. She comes into the court and eventually - I'll tell you the ending - she saved her people and is celebrated for that fact. The point is this: between a king and a queen there cannot afford to be love because arrangements, relationships get fouled up when love is involved, because © Grand Valley State University �Divine Dilemma; Human Paradox Richard A. Rhem Page 3   love makes one vulnerable and love puts one out of control, and, therefore, a wise sovereign will put love on the back burner. The story of Christmas is the story of God Who is a hopeless and incurable lover, who was willing to yield sovereignty in order so radically to identify with the other, the creature, that the creature might be put on a level playing ground with the Creator. Well, now, that's a radical statement, but I want you to think about it with me this morning. This was the divine dilemma. If it is true that God is a God of passionate love, Whose yearning for the other knows no limits, then God has a problem, because there is no way that a king, human or divine, can be certain of the freely offered love of the other unless there comes to be a kind of equality , an even playing ground, where the love of the lover is displayed with a human face to which the other may love in return or say no. Matthew's Gospel, the birth story of Jesus, picks up that name Emmanuel. Emmanuel is reflective of the old tradition of Israel that knew God as a lover, as One yearning for God's people. Emmanuel - God with us, a sign back in ancient Israel, a child so named in order that the king might constantly be reminded in the presence of the child that God is with us, God is with us, God is with us, even when the king was not interested in having God with them. He would rather have had Egypt with them. Emmanuel - God with us - the Gospel writers said, was the reality of Christmas, that now the eternal One dwelt in the human form and we beheld grace and glory in a human face, because the whole biblical story is the story of a divine dilemma, of a God Who loves and will be satisfied with nothing less than the love of the other. The Gospels say it. And then I think of the first letter of John, the 4th chapter. John is the one who writes, "God is love," and he says no one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and God's love is perfected in us. God is love and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them. This is the John of "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so," that we might translate it, “Love became flesh and dwelt among us,” so that those who look into the face of Jesus and fall in love, are falling in love with God, but on an equal playing ground, because only love freely offered, only love spontaneously given will really satisfy the heart of one who is in love. This was God's problem. Of course, that created a second facet of the divine dilemma, because then God had to create another over against God's self to whom God could give love and from whom God could receive love. But, to create one like that was to create an awesome creature. That's why that biblical phrase that the human person was created in the image of God says something very profound. It says that the human creature is the mirror image of God. God created one over against God's self to be in relationship with, and the only other that would be worthy of the love of God would be an other who had the dignity to say, "Yes," freely and spontaneously, but to be able to say "Yes" freely and spontaneously, genuinely to love God would also be to have the possibility of © Grand Valley State University �Divine Dilemma; Human Paradox Richard A. Rhem Page 4   saying "No" to God. It is part of the human dignity of the human person that we can say no to God. This, of course, was the risk of the whole creative venture of God, the whole impulse to create, the calling into being that which was not, the out flowing of the love of God, God's breath, God's spirit lacing the other with life, sustaining the other in life - that whole episode was fraught with the possibility of disaster, because if you create another that is another worthy enough to love, a worthy lover, then you have created the possibility of one who can say no. In fact, you have created the possibility of one who just might play God. I think that's what the Apostle Paul understood. Paul, I think, from what I read and sense in the New Testament, was one that would not have minded a day or two running the universe. Paul always wanted to fix everything. First of all, he wanted to make the whole world Jewish. And then he wanted to make the whole world Christian. He was an accident going about to happen; he was feverishly fanatical, not always right, but always certain. And I suppose it came from the fact that he had had such an experience of the wonder and glory of God. When he's in trouble in the Corinthian congregation and he must defend his apostleship and his ministry, he tells them something he says that happened fourteen years before. "I've never spoken of it," he says, "I don't even know if I was in the body or out of the body. It was totally ecstatic. It was a vision. It was a kind of experience about which one simply cannot speak. But," he said, "I had that." And then he says with, I think, some real insight, knowing his own tendency to like to run the universe, to play God, "In order to keep my feet on the ground, I was given a thorn in the flesh." We don't know what it was, but it must have been something with which the Apostle Paul agonized, creating great pain, creating embarrassment, great humiliation, who knows? And he said, "It was so bad that I urgently prayed to God to remove that thorn, until I came to understand. I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'My grace is sufficient for you; my strength is made perfect in weakness.'" Or, I like the New English translation: "My grace is enough." You can take that with you for 1997 - "My grace is enough." Paul says, "You know, I came to understand that it was in my very brokenness that I experienced the love and grace of God that enabled me to be whole, to be strong, to love, to be gracious." The human paradox is that, having been created, this awesome creature that can stand over against God and say "Yes" to God or to say "No" to God, this human creature who can seek to usurp the place of God, try his hand at playing God, this human creature is resistant to the very thing that God would give, in that haughty posture, in that God-like frame of mind. And so, Paul says, "The very thing I dreaded, the very thing I sought to have removed was the thing that was the minister to me of a grace that enabled me to see God's love for me such as I had never known it before." That's the human paradox. The very thing that we are inclined to do to secure ourselves, to build walls against the world, to make certain that we are in control © Grand Valley State University �Divine Dilemma; Human Paradox Richard A. Rhem Page 5   and that we can manage and on a good day, try our hand at running the universe, that very posture is what keeps us from the deep experience of God's love and grace. It's really quite fascinating that the divine dilemma issued not only in God's identification with us in the flesh of Jesus, but that identification was so complete that when the human rebellion rose up to reject that offer in the face of Jesus, the lover God withheld His hand and allowed the word made flesh to be rejected, even to the point of crucifixion, so that we can speak of the crucified God. Such a lover that God would suffer rather than crush and strike out and cut off the possibility that ultimately the lovers will find each other. I suppose that simply is another instance of the fact that love always involves suffering, because it will not control, coerce, overpower or abandon. Ah, if only we could play God for a day. If only we could realize the impetus of our hearts to secure ourselves, to guarantee ourselves against suffering and hurt. If only we could keep our hearts, not lose our heads, and manage our lives. But, you see, the story of Christmas is the story of a crucified God, identifying with us, dying in order to show us that there is only one thing that will satisfy the divine yearning. It is when at the cottage door of our hearts there comes the knock of a God veiled in flesh who says, "I would come in and dwell with you." And we say, "Come in. Dwell with us." That is Christmas. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/725cca6c33ac0a00a96e02cef79dd94a.mp3 4f3d6938468c445efc7109c4276e4506 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 I Scripture Text II Corinthians 12:1-10, Matthew 1:18-25 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-0-19961229 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-12-29 Title A name given to the resource The Divine Dilemma: The Human Paradox Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 29, 1996 entitled "The Divine Dilemma: The Human Paradox", on the occasion of Christmastide I, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: II Corinthians 12:1-10, Matthew 1:18-25. God of Love Grace Incarnation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/49d0e80abcfa7c811db222e4b44009ea.mp3 1b2ac37108e45b7254ad9bb2196c19c8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/402cc7b8ccdea3c44aca8e2697c62413.pdf 1aa40eae3aa44c6fe01e02686bcd952c 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 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 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Divine Intention Incarnation https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/04fae8e78999c087f73acbf444bd5df3.mp3 5c900bd76f93dda4743073d5e871cbe1 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/92824c9b7765dd1454c511e648063236.pdf 7a097dda5e6479bb20737536e724ed17 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 © Grand Valley State University �The Lost Cause of Christmas Richard A. Rhem Page 3   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 © Grand Valley State University �The Lost Cause of Christmas Richard A. Rhem Page 4   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 © Grand Valley State University �The Lost Cause of Christmas Richard A. Rhem Page 5   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 © Grand Valley State University �The Lost Cause of Christmas Richard A. Rhem Page 6   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, © Grand Valley State University �The Lost Cause of Christmas Richard A. Rhem Page 7   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 � 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 Advent III Scripture Text I Samuel 2:8, Luke 1:52-53 Location The location of the interview 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. 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-0-20001217 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-12-17 Title A name given to the resource The Lost Cause of Christmas Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Advent Awareness Incarnation Intention https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a7c503237a64b9af6921e548d3afc0b2.pdf 45e95dd2e89b03109196977835877092 PDF Text Text The Threatened Present in the Presence of the Future From the series: The Presence of the Future Text: Matthew 2:3; 2:18 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan December 13, 1998 Transcription of the spoken sermon I left off last week with the question, "Where is the future going? What will become of us? Where will the process lead next?" And I admitted that we simply do not know. We do not know about the things of the beginning and that’s why the Hebrews long ago wrote stories, stories of a Garden of Eden, of a tree and a couple and a snake. Neither do we know things of the future and therefore, people have created stories about the end, visions and dreams of what might be. Visions and dreams that reflected their deep yearning and their longing. But, we noted last week that those stories of the end, the visions painted by the biblical writers, the expectation and anticipation of the Apostles simply were not realized in the way that they thought they would be, and for 2000 years now we have perpetuated those stories, even though they don’t really mesh with our understanding of reality and its cosmic form or its historic manifestation. And so, we noted that it is time for a new paradigm, for a new model of the end. We no longer really, literally, actually wait for the coming of our Lord in the sense of that Second Coming as it is expressed in the scriptures. But, the good news is that Jesus has come again and again and again and again, for he said, "I will come to you, I will not leave you alone, orphaned." And so, we noted that the key to a biblical understanding of history can better be understood under the word Immanuel, the name God With Us, God with us in the midst of the process, the Creator-Spirit from the beginning in that cosmic development of 15 billion years, emerging finally into history with the development of human consciousness and awareness, the development of human cultures. The story of human history of which we are at the vortex, moving into the future, continuing to write the story. And so, we need a new vision, a new dream, a new paradigm, a new model for that understanding of the cosmos from which we have emerged and the history in which process we find ourselves, so that we might have a life map and some orientation in order to find meaning and purpose in our present day, given the understanding we have of the human, of the world. We need a new paradigm in order that our faith vision may connect with our actual experience. © Grand Valley State University   �The Threatened Present Richard A. Rhem Page 2   To the question, "Where is it going?" as in the Advent season we think about the future, we really don’t know. I like the image of Martin Luther who gave expression to it this way. He said, if you can picture the infants baptized this morning, the secure and warm floating in the embryonic soup of the mother’s womb until the moment of birthing arrives, the pain that shoves that little embryo down the birth canal and out into a world, kicking and screaming, what infant in the womb could conceive of the drastic transformation of its world in a moment’s time, coming out into the harsh light and the chill of the real world into which it is being born? I saw a photograph someone showed me this week, taken by the Hubbell space telescope of the Eagle Nebula, which was caught exploding. I don’t know all the details, and I would be better off not even to attempt to describe what I saw in the photograph. It was like a cloud or an exploding star, I don’t know, but there were a couple of little fingers that went up at the top of this mass of whatever was happening and the person who showed me the photograph said those two little fingers each are larger than our whole galaxy. You can’t conceive of it, can you? Space and time beyond our imagination and in such a world so amazing, so full of wonder, where the future is already present in incubation, where the future is already present in the Spirit, where the present is pregnant with the future - in such a situation, we have to come to understand Advent anew as it calls us to our task to be engaged in the human endeavor. We need a new story that will energize us and motivate us to take responsibility for this history which is unfolding with us and through us, for, and I almost don’t dare say this, lest I be struck with lightning, being raised a sturdy Calvinist as I was, but, even though I almost don’t dare say it, I must say it - the future is in our hands. The future is in human hands, not apart from the Creator Spirit, but certainly in our hands now to move from that jungle survival instinct situation into which we have emerged, still having at the ready all of those survival skills that cling to us, threatened creatures that we are. It is our responsibility to move this cosmic drama, this unfolding history, this human story now, God’s story - to move it into a future, into a new day, into a brighter tomorrow. That’s the Advent task. And it’s a heavy responsibility, and of course, we’re not equal to it, we’re not up to it, and we will foul it terribly. Such is the nature of human history. Such has been the course, and will continue to be the course, because the present is not only pregnant with the future, full of promise, it is full of peril, as well, and it is our responsibility to address that reality. Let me give you a historical illustration from Matthew’s Gospel. The birth of Jesus is being recounted. The story of the Magi from the east, the astrologers who saw the star that signalled the birth of royalty, they followed the star until it came to Jerusalem and, naturally, they went to the royal court to learn of the birth. But, the birth was not in the royal court with King Herod the Great on the throne, and © Grand Valley State University �The Threatened Present Richard A. Rhem Page 3   when he heard of a star to announce a birth of one born to be king, he was terribly threatened. He was alarmed and afraid, and all Jerusalem with him, and he inquired of the scriptures where this event might be, and the scholars said to him, in Bethlehem. He sent the Magi there to seek out the child, requesting that they return to give him information, that he, too, might worship. But they, being warned, returned another way and when he recognized that he had been tricked, he was in a furious rage and decreed that all male children two years and under be slaughtered. That would fix any threat to the throne. And in the calendar of the Church, we call the event the Slaughter of the Innocents. One could write a story of human history under that title, the Slaughter of the Innocents. Matthew, in telling the story, reaches back to Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15, where Jeremiah holds up the image of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are not. Rachel was the wife of Jacob in the Genesis story, his favorite wife who birthed him Joseph, his favorite son, who was given a coat with sleeves, whose brothers were jealous of him, who sold him off into Egyptian slavery, bringing back the special coat drenched in animal blood in order to convince their father that a wild beast had done him in. Jacob wept for his son, and we read that he refused to be comforted, because his son was not. On his way back from his uncle Laban, where he had gotten his wives and a family, Jacob came to Ramah in Galilee, where his beloved Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin, and Rachel’s tomb is in Ramah, and centuries later the poet-prophet Jeremiah saw the devastation of Jerusalem, the torn down walls, the charred temple, the rape of the city, and he lamented over the terrible horror that had befallen Jerusalem and the people of God there, even though he had clearly foreseen it, and Jeremiah reached back to Rachel, because Rachel’s tomb was on the way that the exiles had to take from Jerusalem to Babylon in captivity. Jeremiah said, as the exiles were making their way into captivity, passing Rachel’s tomb, that Rachel was weeping in the tomb and would not be comforted because her children were not. And, when Jesus was born and King Herod decreed that the innocents be slaughtered, Matthew reaches back to weeping Rachel, weeping because her children are not, refusing to be comforted. Those images are the stories of human history. If nature is red in tooth and claw, then the human story is a veritable river of blood and violence. It is a story of brutality and unthinkable cruelty. That is the story, the history for which we are responsible. Such a history and such a story certainly makes it obvious why those who were dreamers and visionaries, who saw all of the hell on earth, longed for another world, for another day, for another reality - the prophetic vision of the lion and the lamb lying down together, therefore, the reconciliation of nature, where they would not hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain, therefore Peace, Shalom coming to earth. Were they not responding to the terrible violence and the hurt © Grand Valley State University �The Threatened Present Richard A. Rhem Page 4   and the pain, the Rachels weeping for their children because they were not? Certainly we can understand that eschatological hope, that yearning for something else, just as in the beginning they created stories about human responsibility because certainly the hell on earth could not be the consequences of a good God creating a good earth, therefore, stories of human rebellion. So, in the end are not those stories the human response to the harsh reality of human history, dreaming of another place and another time wherein dwells righteousness and justice marked by compassion and peace? We can understand how the stories arise. But, if it denigrates our present unfolding historical reality and our engagement with it, then we need a new model and a new paradigm, because the Herods of this world are all too plentiful yet in our day. Herod was half-Jew and half Edomite, the descendant of Esau. Herod had within himself Jacob and Esau, the conflict of brothers. It ran in his veins. He made himself useful to Rome and in 47 B.C.E. was appointed governor and then in 40, king, and he’s called Herod the Great. He was great. He at one time melted down his own gold to buy corn for the starving masses in a famine. On another time, in difficult times, he remitted the taxes in order that the people might have some relief. That disruptive, disorderly people was brought to law and order, and peace reigned for that long reign of Herod the Great. He was a great builder. People came from the ancient world to see Jerusalem and the marvels of its architecture, the glory of its buildings. Herod the Great. And he was a suspicious man. I suppose we’d call him a paranoiac today. He had his wife murdered, and her mother, Alexandra. He had his eldest son murdered, and two other sons. When he came to power, he had the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, slaughtered. At another time he had slaughtered 300 court officials. He had a long reign, you see. And when he was about to die, he retired to Jericho, having had the leading citizens of Jerusalem arrested on trumped up charges and imprisoned with the order that at the moment of his death they would be put to death, because Herod said no one will mourn Herod’s death, but at Herod’s death, nonetheless, tears will flow. Caesar Augustus, Emperor of Rome, said it is better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son. So, he was Herod the Great, at times moved with compassion, able to administer, create order and peace. And he was a murderer, taken over by brutality and violence and unspeakable horror, causing Rachel to weep in her tomb because her children are not. That’s the human story, and again, one can understand in the midst of the furnace, as was true of those early Christians at the end of the first century when the fires of persecution were burning, that they looked heavenward and said, "Maranatha. Our Lord come." Who wouldn’t want to escape the fiery furnace? © Grand Valley State University �The Threatened Present Richard A. Rhem Page 5   Who wouldn’t want release and relief from the anguish of this human experience? But, it is not so and it will not be so. It is for us to take responsibility and to change our world by the grace of God and the Spirit that is at work within us, the Spirit of the Jesus who comes again and again and again to those who are of open heart and open mind. It is for us to bring in a new day in our world, not to yield to cynicism or to bitterness, never to give up, but to work with hope unconquerable for a better world. On the 10th of December in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a fine document, speaking to the rights of every human being, social, political, economic, the kind of rights, the kind of regard that one, simply being human, should be accorded. It was celebrated this past week. It has only made a small dent in the realities and the brutalities of our history, and yet, it has made a mark, for this same week Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary, determined that General Pinochet could be extradited to Spain to be tried for human atrocities. And those who study these things are celebrating the fact that there is at least this one token sign that no dictator or totalitarian, evil leader of any nation can with impunity slaughter and kill. Herod is still alive and well on planet Earth, and we could point to several places on the globe where it is happening, even now. But, at least Pinochet, who was the military leader who led the coup that led to the assassination of the Socialist, duly elected Aliende some years ago in Chile - you remember the story? We were complicit in that action. We supported the coup that upended Aliende whose politics was threatening to the U.S. of A. This place of human rights and freedom and liberty has a very colored, checkered past in regard to universal human rights. We have been self-serving and self-protective, like every other people. We have had a strain of Herod in us, now and again, as I think Roosevelt said, who was instrumental in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about some Latin dictator that we were supporting. "He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch." In Advent 1998, if we want to keep Advent, if we want to be faithful followers of Jesus, it is that kind of pragmatism, that kind of politics of expediency, the kind of toying that’s going on in the Congress of the United States, even now, it is that against which we must speak as the followers of Jesus. As the angels said to the disciples when Jesus was ascending in clouds of glory, "Why stand you gazing up?" Get on with the work, because the responsibility is yours and mine, and we might be utterly frustrated if we try to change the whole world, but at least let us be certain that in this community of faith every human being is accorded dignity, that no one is excluded, no one is slighted, no one is denigrated, no matter who they are, no matter what their history, and that when it comes to the broader © Grand Valley State University �The Threatened Present Richard A. Rhem Page 6   community, let us be with clear voice taking the stand for all of the things for which the prophet longed and the church in its cry, "Maranatha," has yearned for. Jesus is not going to come back and do it for us. Jesus waits for us to follow him into the fray. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/94a321f88a80b11c6b7fef07d72756c6.mp3 f8bebd78284195863149a380e600e899 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 Advent III Series The Presence of the Future Scripture Text Matthew 2:3, 2:18 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-0-19981213 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-12-13 Title A name given to the resource The Threatened Present in the Presence of the Future Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 13, 1998 entitled "The Threatened Present in the Presence of the Future", as part of the series "The Presence of the Future", on the occasion of Advent III, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 2:3, 2:18. Advent Incarnation Inclusive Grace https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/617013094e622c71e5bb1b65034f2767.mp3 a32fc3b7bed85673de5ab7e835aab04f https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d20290c159099837d9d8b05315b8fc38.pdf 2ed64db7c8aefab2bd983d64a36dde01 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 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 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 An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20001224 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-12-24 Title A name given to the resource This Is Our Story Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives Advent Incarnation Love at the core of reality https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d0cbc4c2f0b9f7e6e1b19de7c6956fb8.pdf 6385cb79fef014fcf82e08e237e04668 PDF Text Text To Bring Joy From the series: Waiting For Messiah To Come – Text: Isaiah 65:18; Luke 2:10 Richard A. Rhem Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Advent, December 22, 1996 Transcription of the spoken sermon It is appropriate that twice a year the sanctuary is resplendent in beauty and we take a moment to remember those we've loved and lost a while, and to honor others whom we would value and affirm. It is appropriate that we do it on the two high feast days of the Christian Church. We do it, obviously, on Easter, because we celebrate the Resurrection and our confident affirmation that this is not all there is, that there is something more, and that those we've loved and lost a while are home in Eternal Light. But, it's appropriate that we do it also on Christmas, the Festival of the Incarnation, for if Easter declares that there is something more, the Incarnation declares that what is now is really good. It is the story of God's identification with the world; it is God's affirmation of creation; it is God's affirmation of the body, of material, of this life, of the human drama being played out in time and space - this present life, this present moment. Thus, the Christian faith makes two great affirmations. It says on Easter that this is not all there is, but there is something more; and it says on Christmas, what is now is very good. It is appropriate that we celebrate the Resurrection remembering those we've loved and lost, and that we celebrate Christmas as an affirmation of God with us, here and now. As we do that, we understand that this world is God's world and this life is a gift of God. What I've been trying to say in this Advent season is that there are some things that cannot be put off. I want to be very clear about my affirmation of that which lies beyond, but this morning I want to say that we ought not to wait for Messiah to come for the gift of joy, for joy is for now; it is for this present experience. To enter deeply into the experience of joy is the invitation of God and is that which enriches and deepens this present human experience. I've been suggesting during Advent that there is a tendency in the Christian Church to project into the future that which God intends for the here and now, that there has been a tendency in the Christian Church to miss this moment, throwing up our hands as though what is, is and cannot be altered and we simply endure this life, waiting for it to pass until we enter into that perfection, that © Grand Valley State University   �To Bring Joy Richard A. Rhem Page 2   bliss, that perfect state of righteousness and peace. I believe that if we are waiting for Messiah to come to do justice or to make peace, or to live with joy, we are missing God's intention for this moment, for this world, for this life. And so, at the risk of being misunderstood, let me be clear again - what I say detracts not at all from our Christian affirmation that this life is not all that there is. But, let me suggest to you that the way to live life fully with joy is to live as though this is the only life and this is the only day we'll ever have. Joy is not for the future. Joy is for now. I realize that to say that is simple enough, but I don't have some magic wand I can wave over you and send you on your way rejoicing. I also know that we're all programmed differently, our genetic makeup, the environment in which we've been raised - all of those things constitute the person that we are, and there are some of you that are sunny personalities. I can tell by looking at your face. And there are some of you that are grumps. I can tell that from your face, too. (No fair poking one another, now.) Well, it goes without saying that we do have a certain personality. And there are some of us that just live life in a happier mood than others. But, I'm not talking about happiness. Happiness is a surface thing. Happiness is having your Christmas list all fulfilled on Christmas morning; happiness is having the Detroit Lions win their final game on Monday Night Football; happiness is having Wayne Fontes back for another season or whatever it may be. Happiness is up and down; there are moments when things go well and we're happy and then everything falls apart and we're sad. I'm not talking about happiness. I'm talking about joy, which is something deeper. I'm talking about joy, which is a consistent perspective, a posture over against the whole of life and the whole of reality. I'm talking about a joy that sees through the surface, deep down in things, and has come to a kind of lightness of heart quite independent of the immediate circumstances of one's life. It is that posture of heart that keeps us steady, in sunshine and rain, in light and in darkness. Joy is a present possibility for those who get their thinking straight. And I do believe it is a matter of thinking correctly. We are shaped, finally, by our thinking and that's true of us as individuals, and it's true of us as a community of people. The Christian faith, the Christian Church was born out of the womb of Judaism, and somehow or other, Jewish people with that rich Hebrew scripture tradition, have been able to enter, I believe, more wholesomely into the celebration of this life than is often the case with Christian people. I believe that, in the Christian Church we have tended to project into another world God's intention for this world, and we have failed to celebrate Creation as God's creation, and we have often failed to enter fully into this present life with zest because we have tended to see it under a cloud. Oftentimes the impression I get from Christian preaching that I hear on occasion, or the expressions of Christian piety, is that this life and this world are something to be gotten through and endured in order that we © Grand Valley State University �To Bring Joy Richard A. Rhem Page 3   might enter into that final blessed state beyond. That is a denigration of this human existence in time and space, and quite illegitimately so, for this life, this creation, this human existence, these days have been affirmed by the Eternal God Who called it into being and in the Incarnation fully identified with it. We did not bring along with us out of our Hebrew past that celebration of this world, this life, this day. Now, it was not that the Hebrew Prophet did not know of the darkness and the pain of human existence. The 65th chapter of Isaiah indicates that the writer had experienced the darkness that is all too true. He says there's a day coming when they'll build houses and dwell in them, they'll plant gardens and eat the fruit thereof. No longer will they build houses and another dwell in them, or plant gardens and another eat. He says the day is coming when there will no infant die in infancy and everyone will live to a ripe old age. He's looking to those, to that future day when those things that are so painful in the present will be overcome. There was a future orientation in these prophets, to be sure, but it was a future within this world, it was a future within history. It was not projected into another world; it was not something about heaven out there. It was about here and now, this world, and it would come, the prophet said, because God would send a shoot out of the stump of Jesse. This one would judge according to righteousness and truth. There would be that day when one would come and they would beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they would not learn war anymore. They would not hurt. There was a day, this prophet says, when they'll not hurt in all my holy mountain, when the lion and the lamb and the wolf, the whole of creation will live at peace. There will be Shalom. But, it was a this-worldly reality. So, they knew the darkness, but they knew something else, and this is where joy comes in. They knew that God was about something deep down in things. They knew that what was, the darkness they were experiencing, was not the intention of the Creator, because the intention of the Creator was for this life to be a sacrament, for this life to be a joy. God intended it as such, says the prophet. Listen to what he says: I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people. I am about to create Jerusalem as the joy and its people as a delight. And God caused the people, in turn, to rejoice. The creator says, according to the Hebrew prophet, "I delight in you. I delight in my people." Creation's end is delight. I have a friend who threatens to write a theology book, "The Theology of Delight." He was a student of A. A. Van Ruler at Utrecht in The Netherlands. Van Ruler used to chide the Church for putting so much stress on salvation, redemption, sin, guilt and that stuff. He said that's almost an appendix to what God is about. God is about creation. God is about new creation; God is about this whole drama and the bringing to fullness the human experience before God's face. God says "I delight in my people. I create Jerusalem with joy, so rejoice, my people." © Grand Valley State University �To Bring Joy Richard A. Rhem Page 4   That was the vision that shaped the thinking of the Jewish people, to be able to celebrate this world rather than seeing this world as a vale of tears to be traversed, endured and delivered from in order that we might finally arrive home in heaven. No, that is to fail to live fully into the gift of now which is marked through the Incarnation with the presence of God, Immanuel, God with us, here and now. So, I want to suggest this morning that if we wait for Messiah to come for joy, we will have sadly missed God's intention for our present, which is to revel in creation, to live fully, to actualize our potential, to live lovingly, embracing one another, to savor this world. I was driving down Lakeshore in the middle of the week, and all the snow had just fallen freshly. It was cold and crisp and snowballs tufted the pine trees and laid the dunes with a coat of ermine. For a moment the sun broke through. It was a transforming magnificence, and I thought to myself, "Dear God, what a world! What a splendid garden in which to dwell. What a home in which to be at home and celebrate God, the Creator of it all, who would have the creature live with joy on tiptoe, celebrating this present gift." I cannot speak of joy this morning without acknowledging that that joy must transcend the darkness. We've had too much death around here in this community of faith. I have buried too many recently whose lives were too brief. I know the agony; I cannot preach on joy this morning, having walked through the week that I have just walked through, without having to face up to the fact that there is a full complement of pain and sadness. But, again, if I cannot this morning speak of joy now, then our gospel is hollow. Then we're just kidding ourselves; then it is true what we need is a rescue operation to release us from this present wicked world. Ah, but the Church has majored in bad news, casting aspersions on Creation and this present existence. Joy is something that sees down more deeply and is able, even in the present circumstance, to say neither sword, nor hunger, nor famine, nor peril - none of these things will separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus, who is Emmanuel, who is God with us here and now in this present moment. There is nothing in life or death or principality or power, or things in the heights or the depths or anything in all of creation that shall ever separate us from that God who at Christmas has come to identify with us, and who, through the Easter miracle, promises that this is not all there is. But, if we could only live as if this were the only day we had, if we could only live as if this were the only life we had, the only world we had, the only possibility we had if we could so live so fully, then we could throw ourselves with abandon into today - then, whatever else there is, is pure bonus. But already, this is pure gift, and so not when Messiah comes, but today. You see, today is the only day you'll ever have. If the gift of tomorrow comes, it will be today. So, if there are words of love to speak, speak them today. If there are those to embrace, embrace them today. If there are dreams brewing in your © Grand Valley State University �To Bring Joy Richard A. Rhem Page 5   heart, make work of them today. God delights in you and God calls you to delight in this present moment, in this present world, for it is a God-drenched world and it is made for your joy. So, enjoy and the rest will take care of itself. © Grand Valley State University � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c01dbe14d761e17da905328d9338ce97.mp3 246a81a530cc7d0e317bfefb5cc16979 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 Advent IV Series Waiting for the Messiah to Come Scripture Text Isaiah 65:17-25, Luke 2:1-20 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-0-19961222 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-12-22 Title A name given to the resource To Bring Joy Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on December 22, 1996 entitled "To Bring Joy", as part of the series "Waiting for the Messiah to Come", on the occasion of Advent IV, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 65:17-25, Luke 2:1-20. Advent Divine Intention God of Love Incarnation Joy