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Awareness and Gratitude
Thanksgiving Day weekend
Text: Psalm 100:3; Psalm 65:11; Psalm 8:4
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
November 21, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It was my intention some weeks ago to speak to you about awareness, that
consciousness that leads us to gratitude and thanksgiving, but when I intended to
do that, I didn't intend to do it the way I intend to do it today. What I intend to do
today is to review with you the past three Lord's Days that we have experienced
together. I don't want simply to move on without us having a moment to reflect
on it together and to lift it up into our consciousness in order that through that
awareness we may be led to a greater level of thanksgiving.
Three weeks ago was All Saints Day; the dancers lighted a candle as the necrology
was read, each person honored, and then with those lights here, they danced in
community until one by one they peeled off and went out, hands joined, lights
burning, but symbolizing the fact that eventually, one by one, we are all removed
from the community, not into the darkness, but into the community of light. I
was told, as I myself experienced, that there were not a lot of dry eyes here.
Then we had Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar who had told me absolutely that
she would not preach and I could not list what she would do as a sermon and so it
had to be an address or a lecture, and she preached to us. A Jewish woman
preaching from her scripture. The reason she said she wouldn't preach was that
that is to tell the good news of Jesus and she is a Jew, but her insight into her
own Hebrew scriptures and into the New Testament documents was illuminating
and inspiring and we came to love her with all her humanity, her humaneness,
and her humor.
And then last week - what can I say of that whole weekend, culminating in a
wonderful worship with Bishop John Shelby Spong? I want to bring to awareness
those experiences, the presence of the bishop with us, our sensing his humanity,
his grace, his positive demeanor, his pastoral sense - all of that is worth a Sunday
morning's reflection, bringing it to awareness.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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To be aware - that's a gift of our humanity, to be conscious, to be self-conscious,
to be able to get out of our skin and observe ourselves, to feel and to know that
we're feeling, to think and to know that we're thinking, to experience and to know
that we are experiencing That's consciousness. That's what makes us human. It's
a marvelous gift. Some of us have dogs or cats that we love very much, but they
just go about their business of living: eating, reproducing, sleeping. They never
get out of their skin to understand what they are doing, although now and again
there is a dog that seems to have moments of consciousness. But, we do. To be
aware. To know what we're doing and why we're doing it, to live with
intentionality, to be able to reflect upon our experience, to savor it over again,
awareness, consciousness, intentionality. That leads to gratitude, and I want us
for a few moments this morning simply to reflect on what we have experienced
together. I'll cast it somewhat in a personal mode. It’s really the only way I can do
it because I'm talking about my story which is your story, but you would have to
tell your story also in personal terms.
As we speak personally I think we are speaking communally because we have
experienced something together that cannot be taken for granted. There has been
a richness here that is unusual, and I don't want us to let it go without awareness
in order that we might be truly thankful.
A Jewish woman preaching. A woman preaching That’s something that couldn't
be taken for granted not very long ago. On the day of my ordination I got a
wonderful letter from my father who said that when I was in my mother's womb,
he prayed for me and dedicated me to God, if I were a boy. If I were a girl, well,
what can you do with a girl?
I remember in 1984 when you graciously gave to Nancy and me a sabbatical. We
spent the first three months of '84 in Schenectady in old First Church, and it was
an old, grand tradition and a great, old liberal congregation, and for years they
had a joint service with the Jewish synagogue once a year. It happened while we
were there and it was at the synagogue and we went. We were a part of the
congregation. I didn't have any part to play. I remember that I felt somewhat
awkward. I didn't know if it was a good thing or not. I'd never known any Jewish
people. I wasn't sure whether I should join in the worship in a Jewish synagogue
of my God whom I knew only through Jesus Christ, whom I thought at that time
superceded the Jewish faith. I still remember my awkwardness. Now I had a
Jewish woman preach in my pulpit. Well, I've come a long way, Baby, not only
the fact that A. J. was here to preach, but the fact that, getting to know the Jewish
community, even coming to envy a bit being Jewish, loving that culture, coming
to hold in great affection those people. On All Saints Day we talked about
fundamental trust. Then on that Sunday with A. J. here, the gift of the JewishChristian Dialogue committee, I spontaneously invited Rabbi Alan Alpert to come
and we sang the last verse of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" together as we embraced
each other, and someone said, "You know, there were tears all over the place
because that was a sign and a symbol of what this community is." I do know that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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when I ended the song , Iwanted to say to him, "Begin the Benediction in
Hebrew," but I didn't have a lot of voice. It touches something very deep and it
feels very right.
And then the Bishop comes, purported to be the most controversial churchman in
the country, certainly in the mainline Protestant tradition – in the Episcopal
Protestant tradition what Hans Küng has been in the Catholic tradition - a gadfly,
a catalyst, pushing and probing and needling in order to push the Church into the
21st century, in order to have a faith to express with integrity. I spent 45 minutes
on the telephone with the religious editor of The Grand Rapids Press addressing
all of those controversial comments that are made in newspaper articles. Read
those articles and we judge people. It didn't do any good. But then the Bishop
comes and here he is as I had promised you, a gentle giant full of grace who
comes with that great pastoral heart and who is so impressed with you. You drew
from him. On the way to the airport Sunday afternoon he absolutely crashed. He
said, "You know, I could have gone another three or four hours with the people
there because they energized me." You drew it out of him and he and Christine
were so impressed with you. They said in all of their travels, in all of their
visitation of churches, they've only had a couple of experiences that would have
matched what they sensed in you, what this community has captured. And we
had that exhilarating experience of having someone from the outside say
gracefully and articulately all of that which we have ever hoped and dreamed to
be and to become.
Well, you can't take those kinds of things for granted and we shouldn't just let
them pass by. So, I'm spending another Lord's Day simply savoring it in order to
bring it to consciousness, in order to come to a deeper awareness, in order that
we might be grateful, adequate to the gift that God has given us. As I think of all
of that, let me just say it in a couple of items here, reflecting on it.
I'm so very grateful for the awareness I have that fundamental trust in God is
prior to, independent of, and more important than my specific belief system. My
little belief system, oh, it’s a grand system, it's a grand tradition, but my little
Christian faith tradition is but a pointer to a Mystery that cannot be grasped,
comprehended in a belief structure. I have a fundamental trust in a God who
transcends my little tradition, and the respective, great traditions of the world.
They're all important and they're all good, some more adequate than others as
pointers to the Absolute Mystery, but all of them simply human constructs
through which one is moved to the experience of the Ultimate. The Bishop said it
very simply and very clearly, that distinction between the experience of God and
the explanation of the experience. The explanation is relative; the experience is
the thing. The explanation is always in terms of one's immediate context and
one's world view and one's understanding of reality so that it's always time
anchored and limited and always needs to be restructured and refreshed and
revisioned, re-imagined. The structure itself, be it Christian faith or Jewish faith
or Buddhist meditation, all of those are simply human belief constructs that
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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would point us beyond themselves to the God beyond all tribal gods, in whom we
lose ourselves in that abyss of love.
I am aware that I have journeyed a long way. I am aware that I have moved from
a very conservative, exclusive, defensive Christian to an unabashed, unapologetic
pluralist, and have a freedom and a joy and a celebration in my religious faith
such as I never would have thought possible years ago. That is an awareness that
brings gratitude, and gratitude causes one to be humble and gives one deep joy.
That's the awareness that I have in reflection, and I hope you do, too, because we
have traveled a long road and we've come to a beautiful place, and it is the place
for which I believe the world is longing, that place of grace, full of love, where we
stand before the infinite and inexhaustible ground of our being, who calls us to
live fully, to love wastefully, and to be all that we can be.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Pentecost XXVII
Scripture Text
Psalm 100:3, Psalm 65:11, Psalm 8:4
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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1999-11-21
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Awareness and Gratitude
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 21, 1999 entitled "Awareness and Gratitude", on the occasion of Pentecost XXVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 100:3, Psalm 65:11, Psalm 8:4.
Awareness
Gratitude
Intentional
Pluralism
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PDF Text
Text
Scheduled to Death With Good Things
Text: Joshua 4:6; 24:15; Psalm 78:4-7; Matthew 18:14
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
September 12, 1999
Transcription of the spoken sermon
There has been a long debate about when life begins. There are those who say
that life begins at the moment of conception. I think John Calvin argued that the
soul was invested in the fetus at 40 days. (On most things he was smarter than
that.) Others say that life begins at actual birth. It is an ancient debate and it
continues into our contemporary situation. But, I tend to agree with the person
who said life begins when the last kid is out of the house and the dog dies... (Your
laughter is all too revealing.)
Raising children is a very, very great task and responsibility. It takes the very best
that we have of our time and our energy and our resources, and it is not easy, and
it’s not getting any easier. I think that it becomes more difficult. As I have the
luxury of being in the position of a grandparent, I can now from safe distance
watch my own children raise their children, and I honestly believe that they are
much better parents than I was. I don’t even think I knew that I was supposed to
be a parent. After all, I was in the Lord’s work, you know. But, I have the privilege
of watching my children in those marvelous years when they have adolescents,
and I have a couple who are dealing with two-year-olds. So that whole spectrum
is rather interesting to me to observe. I think that it is much more difficult than
when I grew up and when I was raising my children, not only because there are
more perils and pitfalls available, but also because there are more wonderful
options and opportunities available, and I recognize the possibility of being
scheduled to death with good things.
I knew that I would probably be preaching in September on opening Sunday, and
it was already in June when Time magazine came out with a cover that caught my
eye and gave me today’s sermon. I knew in June this is what I would deal with.
The June 12 issue has a cover with a Little Leaguer on it, in his helmet, swinging a
bat, his tongue out, Michael Jordan style, and the cover says Sports crazed kids:
Year ‘round play, summer clinics, pushy parents - is this too much of a good
thing? Well, it’s a typical media type of presentation; not everybody is like the
people who are described here and there are some pretty extreme cases in terms
of the time invested and the money invested and the obsessional level with which
it is pursued. But, nonetheless, I knew from my own observation that there are
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many wonderful things that are available to children and young people today and
I sense that it is not so easy to know how to set the priorities and determine the
agendas in order that there might be balance and in order that that which is done
would be life-enhancing and not, on the other hand, life-defeating.
In the article there is one paragraph that I thought I would share with you. After
recounting all of this tremendous outlay of money and time and energy and
commitment, the writers say,
So, what are parents to do? We do what Americans have always done. This
is, after all, a country that systematizes. We create seminars on how to
make friends, teach classes in grieving, and make pet-walking a
profession. In that light, Greg Heintzman’s praise of unstructured play
seems almost un-American. Any activity, no matter how innocent or trivial
or spontaneous, can become specialized in America. So, if our children are
to have sports, we will make leagues and teams, write schedules and rule
books, publish box scores and rankings, hire coaches and refs, buy
uniforms and equipment to the limit of our means. We will kiss our
weekends goodbye and maybe more than our weekends.
That is a voice from the broader culture and, as I said when I saw it last June, I
thought there is a word there for the people of God, because we have not only the
ongoing responsibility to do what we can to protect our children and ourselves
from the perils and pitfalls that are open, but also from the multitude, the
plethora of good things hereby we can be scheduled to death, and find that we are
being determined by all of those things that play upon us rather than determining
our own lives, the course of our lives, the way we spend our days, our time, and
our resources. And so, this morning I simply want to engage in some
consciousness-raising with you. I don’t have any special wisdom. I just think that
together we need to be very self-aware and self-conscious about that to which we
give our lives, and how we structure, to the extent that it is possible, the lives of
our children and our youth. And I want to say, first of all, that we should be
intentional about it. We should be self-aware and self-conscious; we ought to
have thought about it in order that we are doing that which we intend to do, that
which we really want to do, that which is reflective of the things that we believe
most deeply and value most highly. We should be conscious; we ought to live
consciously.
There’s a story told of Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas, that he saw a man
gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, and gathering sticks on the Sabbath day
could get one stoned. But Jesus, in typical fashion, said to him, "If you
understand what you’re doing, blessed are you. But, if you don’t understand what
you’re doing, you are cursed," for Jesus knew that the law of the Sabbath was not
simply an external legalism to be observed, but it should come out of the inward
motivation of the heart. If you know what you’re doing, even though you are
breaking the law, if there is an intentionality about it for a proper purpose, then
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you’re blessed. But, if you’re just willy-nilly without even thinking about the
Sabbath or knowing what the Sabbath is all about, you’re cursed, and to live
without intention, without self-knowledge and awareness is to be cursed.
So, that’s simply the first thing that I want to say this morning, on a day of new
beginnings, to have us for a moment ask ourselves, "What are our priorities, and
do our activities reflect our values and the things that we really want to be about for ourselves and for our children and our grandchildren?"
Raising that question, I want to put in a word for the programming in of those
things that point to the spiritual dimension, the shaping of the life, the mind and
the heart of ourselves, of our children, and our grandchildren, because in our day,
with our freedoms, with our affluence, and with that plethora of opportunities
that are out there, it is very easy to let slide the things that require a certain
discipline and commitment and I think especially in a place like Christ
Community where no one hounds you to do anything, where we have majored in
an attitude of grace. One of the nicest compliments that we receive here, and it
comes again and again, is the compliment, "Most of my life I went to church
because it was Sunday and I felt that I ought to go, and now I look forward to
Sunday in order that I may go to church." That’s beautiful. That’s I want it to be.
That’s the way it should be.
I met a friend this week whom I hadn’t seen for a while; he’d been traveling,
stopping at a child’s home in another part of the country and the son-in-law said
to him, "Do you want to go to church with us Sunday?" And he said, "What is it?
How is it?" The son-in-law said, "I don’t think you’d like it. I can hardly stand it,
but I go for little Johnny."
I don’t want you here for Johnny’s sake. If you can’t be here because this place is
reflective of who you are and what you believe and what you feel, then you ought
not to be here for the sake of your child, because your child will pick it up in a
minute. Your child will know.
I always think of a friend of some years ago. I remember how angry she was as
she spouted out the fact that she went to church every Sunday, every morning
and every evening, and she had a bad back, to boot, and she had to sit on a
straight chair back of the choir, but she said, "I went every Sunday, every service,
to set an example for my children and as soon as they grew up and got out of the
house, I don’t think any of them has ever been to an evening service, and they
hardly make morning." She was so angry, not really because they weren’t going,
but because she had put in all that effort going when she didn’t want to go, so
finally when they got out of the house, they simply did what she always wanted to
do because they knew what she really wanted to do! Of course.
This place is not a place to come for the sake of your children unless it reflects
your heart and your passion. Then, your children will find this to be a fine place
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that will be positive, that will give them good experiences. So, a place like Christ
Community, a place of grace, where you’re not hounded, where you’re welcomed
whenever you show up and never questioned when you don’t, is a place where
you really need to be mature enough and responsible enough to make those
decisions and to make them in such fashion that there will be the spiritual
formation of your children as well as your own lives.
I think it’s so important that we are authentic and consistent in the exercise of
our spiritual discipline. I want to tell you a little story. I was a Professor of
Preaching at one time, a very short time, and the textbooks say never to make any
personal references, but then I don’t do anything else I was taught in the
seminary, either, so I’ll tell you a little of my own story.
Growing up as a kid, my home was so devout and so serious about it all that, for
me, I absolutely was saved by going to the public school. Christian education
advocates say that it shapes a Christian, biblical world and life view, and if you
send your child to the public school, they won’t get that. Well, in my case, I
needed enough fresh air to breathe and a little light because I was so shaped in
my home and in my church that it was in the public school that I had any kind of
exposure to anything else. For me, it was saving. But, as a kid, all I wanted to do
was play ball. Now, my parents were so devout and so consistent in my spiritual
nurture. There wasn’t anything of church life I didn’t ever attend. They did make
one little sortie into the cultural field when they tried to give me music lessons,
piano lessons. I sat there and I doodled, and I would go week after week and I
made no progress and finally, thank God, the teacher was a Christian, who called
my mother and said, "In good conscience, I can’t take your money anymore."
My mother said, "Dicky, you’re going to be sorry," and I said, "I really believe
you," and I am, but I just didn’t want ... I wanted to play ball.
In the ninth grade, the superintendent of the schools, a very rather austere man
who intimidated the daylights out of us, pulled me out of class. Now what? Well,
it so happened the week before it was the opening day of baseball practice, but it
was also the tryouts for the spring play which he directed for the junior high,
every spring. Big deal. And I didn’t show up. I went to baseball practice. He
pulled me aside because, as a matter of fact, he was trying to say to me, "You need
to be broadened, Boy. I’m going to talk to you about values." He asked me who
were the heroes of the Kalamazoo Maroon Giants a year or two or three ago. Well,
I did know some of them. But, he was saying to me, "You’re not cultivating a
broad enough spectrum." It was an honest attempt. It was good. But, I still went
out for baseball.
There was one time in the ninth grade when I just made the starting five. Now,
this was a small school and you have to be really poor not to make the team, but I
just made it because I wasn’t a very good athlete. The coach was my salvation. He
was a fallen Catholic, shanty Irish, had a good sense of humor; he liked me very
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much and I liked him very much. He knew I was a good student, he had me in
math, but he would always tease me about my piety and that was so healthy for
me. On Tuesdays I had to go to Catechism. Now, when you’re hanging on by your
fingernails to stay on the first team and you have to miss one practice a week,
that’s tough. We’d take a shower on Monday night and he’d say, "Well, Charlie
(everybody called me Charlie), say a ‘Hail Mary’ for me tomorrow night and I
hope you start Friday."
Well, we could handle that. Then one noon hour at the table I told my mother and
father that next week I couldn’t go to Catechism because we had one game on a
Tuesday night all season and I, of course, had to go to the game. Guess what? I
went to Catechism. It wasn’t a big argument. It wasn’t even an argument!
I tell you that a lot of years later, and I can tell you that I think my parents were
wrong. I think they should have let me play that game. But, I never rebelled and I
honor them to this day because they were simply being consistent. They were
totally authentic, and they never asked of me what they had not first modeled out
for me, and I can say I think they should have let me play ball, but in their good
judgment, I went to Catechism.
I have been very conscious of the fact that I have not been able to replicate with
my children the way I was raised. I didn’t even try. I mean, it wouldn’t have
worked anyway, but I didn’t even try because I knew that what they did was the
reflection of the authenticity of their heart and their passion, and if I would try to
replicate that, my heart wouldn’t be in it. I would be a slave to a particular mode
that wasn’t really mine, even though it had been that to which I was raised. I had
to make my own way with my own children, stammering and stumbling along,
but trying to be at least honest and authentic. And it seems to me that is key, the
spiritual disciplines, and they are disciplines, take discipline, and while in this
place that is left to your own mature judgment to pick and to choose, to engage or
not engage, I want to encourage you to be self-aware, self-conscious, deliberate,
authentic, and then committed to it.
There are fifty-four involved in our Worship Center program for young children
and, again, I use this as an illustration. It is very unusual. I want to say in all my
years of ministry, I have never known a committed group of people who come
back here year after year after year in a beautifully conceived educational
nurturing experience. But, they can only do it if the children are there. And if it is
to be a genuine educational experience, then there has to be consistency, a
regularity. The curriculum is set out in order to shape and to form the child, but
it’s conceived as a whole, and I think, I have to say to you we’ll have probably the
record attendance down there today and then it will drop off.
Now, in my courses, my adult courses, I usually have about 50 the first time, and
25 the second time, but that’s because I’m the kind of teacher I am and deal with
the kind of esoteric stuff I do. But, that’s not an excuse for down there. They are
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teaching and leading the children week after week after week in a well-conceived
program. It does take the kind of discipline that it takes to make the Striker
soccer team. When I saw the Time article I thought I want to call my people to
consciousness about being self-aware, self-conscious, intentional, authentic, and
then committed.
Israel is still a people of God because they continued to tell their story. There’s no
magic in it. They were on the threshold of entering the Promised Land and
Joshua, their leader said to a leader from every tribe, "Take a stone out of the
river bed and make a stack of stones on the other side as a sign so that when your
children say, ‘What do these stones mean?’ you have a story to tell them."
I love Psalm 78. The second verse can be translated, "I will tell you a story with a
meaning." That’s precisely what is happening in the lower level today. A story
with a meaning. Why? So that they may come to set their hope in God. It’s
beautiful. And, of course, we have the image of Jesus who says, "Bring them to
me because the kingdom of God is made up of the likes of them." And as Bob said
to all of you, you are a child of God. So, let me simply invite you today to do as
Joshua did. They got into the Promised Land and they had been pretty slipshod
about everything, but this was the time for covenant renewal and he said to them,
"You choose. But, as for me and my house, we’re going to get into this thing." I
invite you to do the same.
© Grand Valley State University
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aa040c682a8bb7e2dbfefa375539fec3.mp3
595a91bc19be66e8d2b5f8ffafeb86ca
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
Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII
Scripture Text
Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19990912
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-09-12
Title
A name given to the resource
Scheduled to Death With Good Things,
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on September 12, 1999 entitled "Scheduled to Death With Good Things,", on the occasion of Education Sunday, Pentecost XVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Joshua 4:6, 24:15, Psalm 78:4-7, Matthew 18:14.
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Intentional